StarCraft 2 spiritual successor Stormgate launches to a mixed rating on Steam, but Frost Giant is undaunted: 'Mixed reviews are to be expected at this stage'

Stormgate was unveiled in 2022 and it's come a long way since then: It was the biggest videogame Kickstarter of 2023, earning $2 million on top of $35 million already raised through an initial funding round, and even managed to attract some celebrity voice acting from Simu Liu and Chris Metzen. It also made a big impression on online editor and PC Gamer strategysmith Fraser Brown, who declared that "for the first time in a while, I'm excited to dip my toes into the competitive side of real-time strategy again."

The early access launch for Kickstarter backers hasn't gone smoothly, however. Since its debut on July 30, Stormgate has earned a "mixed" rating on Steam across just over 2,000 user reviews: Common complaints include an incomplete story and unremarkable unit interactions, sub-par enemy AI in PvE modes, the lack of manual saving and loading, and over-aggressive monetization.

That's far from a catastrophe, especially given that it's an early access release and expected to stay in that state for at least a year, and doubly especially because the full early access launch, which will see Stormgate go free to play, doesn't happen until August 13. For now, access is limited to Kickstarter backers and anyone who purchases an "early access pack."

Developer Frost Giant Studios emphasized those points in an update released a few days after Stormgate's early-early access launch, saying there's still "a long road ahead" before the 1.0 release is ready. It also addressed some of the current complaints about the game, foremost among them that a new in-game hero, not included with any of the Kickstarter bundles, was available for separate purchase on launch day: To ensure that early backers of Stormgate "feel rewarded" for supporting the game, the next paid hero to be released will be given to everyone who purchased the "UItimate Founder's Pack" tier or higher on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, as well as to everyone who purchases the Ultimate Early Access pack on Steam.

Frost Giant said it's taking action on "critical feedback" about the state of the game itself, including complaints about character models in cutscenes, inconsistent audio levels, and the "stylized art direction." In-game features including customizable hotkeys, a pause function for the campaign, and a save system that will work independently of the current checkpoint save system, are also on the way.

In a bit of a departure from this sort of thing, the studio also addressed comments about Frost Giant's "possible financial outcomes," apparently sparked by a Reddit analysis predicting that Frost Giant will be facing financial trouble by early 2025. 

"Those projections were wildly inaccurate," the studio wrote. "Like any business, Frost Giant needs to make products that people decide to purchase in order to succeed. We're trying very hard to do that, and we're grateful to be well-funded relative to most start-ups, including many who never get to see their game in players’ hands."

The reaction to Stormgate up to this point puts a spotlight on the risks of early access releases. Early access games are explicitly not complete: To varying degrees, they're essentially beta versions you have to pay for. And that's where the risk comes from: When you hand someone a beta build and tell them it's for testing, bugs and bullshit are expected; but when you charge for a product, "early access" or not, expectations are naturally elevated—so what might have been a "we'll see how this goes at launch" ends up an ugly Reddit thread about the various ways a game has failed.

"Early access has meant different things to different studios; it’s still a relatively new way to develop and publish games," Frost Giant CEO and production director Tim Morten told PC Gamer. "Some players came into our early access preview expecting a near-final product and not a work-in-progress. 

"To us, early access means this is a knowingly unfinished work. We see early access as an active development phase where we will introduce new systems, new game modes, and our editor. We have a lot of content we plan to add to the game before we will feel like it’s '1.0.' That also encompasses less immediately visible aspects like audio, localization, performance optimization, and so on."

Morten said expectations for Stormgate may have been further inflated because of comparisons to StarCraft 2. Frost Giant was founded by a core of former Blizzard developers, and the game is widely seen as the long-overdue proper successor to that great RTS. There are clear similarities between them in terms of core gameplay, but Frost Giant simply doesn't have access to Blizzard-tier resources at this point.

"[StarCraft 2] benefited from more than a decade of development time, support from Blizzard’s world-class cinematics team, all the social features of Battle.net, and so on," Morten said. "As a smaller and more modestly-funded team, our cutscenes (which are the focus of much of the critical feedback) fall short of Blizzard’s Pixar-like quality. They will improve over time, but this is one area where an independent studio will always be at a disadvantage."

Some of the negative feedback received so far was anticipated by developers, while other critiques have been "thought-provoking." But Morten said that all of it has been valuable to Frost Giant because it helps set priorities for the future.

"We’re making adjustments to our production schedule based on player feedback," he explained. "That’s actually one of the major benefits of early access: getting feedback that positively improves what we deliver for our eventual 1.0. We’re moving up some work that was slated for later in development, such as more detailed character models for our in-engine cutscenes. We’re taking this opportunity to reprioritize a variety of work."

As for the predictions of financial doom and gloom, Morten was blunt, describing the analyses he's seen as "deeply flawed." And while superficially those messages could be interpreted as gamers rooting for the studio to fail, he sees it differently: "I believe the underlying message is that these players want Frost Giant to stay in business. That’s a sentiment I can get behind, even when their attempts at financial analysis miss the mark."

Frost Giant plans to release Stormgate's next big content update, which will include "some meaningful response" to player feedback as well as new content, in the second half of September, with comparable updates expected to follow at least every two months thereafter. Ahead of that, a balance patch is expected to roll out ahead of the full early access release on August 13, and another smaller patch aimed at fixing bugs and other issues the team can tackle quickly is coming "shortly."

"Mixed reviews are to be expected at this stage," Morten said. "There are so many amazing games that get polished into gems after mixed initial responses. We firmly believe that we’re building something special, and we have big plans for Stormgate’s future. 

"As Stormgate continues to improve and progress towards 1.0, I hope and expect that many players will come around. Stormgate is very much a passion project for us, and the entire team at Frost Giant is committed to making it great."