Stormgate is leaving early access before it's technically finished: 'We believe that our campaign and 1v1 are ready for a broader audience'

Stormgate developer Frost Giant Studios recently announced that its Warcraft-inspired RTS will receive its first proper single-player campaign in August, and that this juncture would mark the game's official departure from Steam early access. However, this reveal led to some confusion, as Frost Giant numbered its launch version "0.6" instead, causing players to speculate that the game was leaving early access unfinished.

Now, Frost Giant has issued an update apologising for the mix-up, while announcing that, henceforth, Stormgate updates will no longer be numbered.

"We shared our long-term vision for Stormgate at the inception of our company. Our four pillars have always been campaign, co-op, competitive, and custom games, and those features remain integral to our plans," Frost Giant wrote in a Steam post. "Players have told us that calling our exit from early access '0.6' may have been well-meant, but it didn't properly convey that Stormgate's foundational content is complete and ready for players to enjoy. They said it was confusing, and we respect that feedback."

In its clarification, Frost Giant reiterates the point that the release of the campaign—which is titled Ashes of Earth—represents the game's launch out of early access. Alongside the campaign, Frost Giant says the release will include "a robust 1v1 mode, as well as access to the terrain editor alpha and co-op mode that are still in active development based on community feedback".

Wait, hold on. If the cooperative mode is still in active development, and the terrain editor is in alpha and also in active development, then it kinda sounds like two of those four foundational pillars are not, as it happens, complete. Indeed, I'd suggest Frost Giant is just over halfway through erecting those four foundational pillars, one might even say 60% of the way though, or in decimal format, a completion rate of 0.6.

Regardless, in place of these numbered patches, Frost Giant will implement a codename system for forthcoming updates inspired by RTS units. This has apparently been going on for a while anyway, as Frost Giant says it's a system the studio "still use[s] internally to this day."

Consequently, the version formerly known as 0.6 will now be referred to as the Necrolyte release, while the coming autumn update will be called Ornithopter. Frost Giant also plans to name smaller updates and hotfixes, pointing out that its "Griffin" build was followed by "Griffinish-line".

Frost Giant claims this system will help the studio better reflect what each update is, namely "not an incremental addition to a progress bar with an arbitrary '1.0' at the end, but a meaningful addition to what has come before." Personally, I think it's tremendously confusing and obfuscates the status of the game for anyone who isn't intimately familiar with it already. I couldn't tell you whether a Baneling is better than a Necrolyte, but I know that 0.6 is closer to a whole number than 0.5.

At least Frost Giant's explanation for why it wants to leave early access now is clear. "We believe that our campaign and 1v1 are ready for a broader audience," the studio writes, and as such, wants to draw more players to them by pushing the game into a "full" release.

Further down the post, Frost Giant also states that it has "limited resources" and "exiting early access is a critical step toward sustaining our ongoing development." Which sounds rather like the studio is running out of financial road and needs to attract new players pronto.

As for how the launch version will be structured, the Ashes of Earth campaign will release with 12 missions and is a "complete story", though Frost Giant also intends to expand upon it with some extra, free missions further down the line. It also plans to differentiate between finished and unfinished features by putting co-op missions and the editor into an in-game "test kitchen", which Frost Giant refers to as Sigma Labs (ugh). Here, the modes will be "available in a developmental state" and "continue to expand over time."

While all of this is incredibly messy, a game "launching" doesn't really mean a whole lot these days anyway. What matters is whether it's fun to play, and given the state Stormgate was in when it hit early access last year, having a proper campaign and one fully kitted out multiplayer mode should represent a significant improvement. They could still completely fumble the ball, of course. But either way, we'll find out on August 5.