Makers, are you ready?
Next Wednesday, November 11th 2026, The Maker Way will launch in Early Access on Steam.
I wanted to share what you can expect from this version, the launch price point and what the future holds.
What's in the Early Access version
If you are one of the thousands of players who enjoyed the demo, the Early Access is a meaningful step up in four main ways:
Quality - I used the demo and playtest sessions to track bugs and gather over 300 written feedback points from players. The vast majority of those have been addressed for the Early Access release, in addition to improvements to the UI, to the environment and of course to the core loop gameplay
Content - I estimate the Early Access version has around 10x-15x the amount of content of the demo in terms of world elements: points of interest, resources, extractables, scannables, enemies etc. You can expect 8 new parts: small wheel, small steering hinge, hacking terminal, data drives, helium tank, helium ascender, propeller and a data core extractor. And lastly 3 new base modules: Data Monitor, Core Processor and a Cooling Unit.
Game Mechanics - the data retrieval and storage loop was extended and now includes new data artifacts, hacking mechanism, and a data core crane extraction and haul (which I think is pretty cool!). On top of that server cooling game loop was added. Structure temperature is affected by weather and there is now a risk of overheating servers which will prevent you from storing more data.
Localization - French, Polish, German, Spanish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Portuguese and Russian were introduced (indie devs, don’t leave that to the last minute! haha).
The Price
My goal is for The Maker Way to be an affordable game. I think most indies will price a similarly sized game at $19.99 in Early Access. My goal is to have as many people around the world have access to it, so I decided to price it $12.99 with a 25% launch discount, putting the launch price under $10. This will be the lowest price (in dollars) the game will ever be. Players who buy the early access game will get 1.0 for free of course. The price will increase gradually during the early access period as more content is added.
The Future
It is hard to predict the success of a launch. So many parameters play a factor. But it is easy to predict one’s own actions. So here’s my commitment to you: I’ll keep working on The Maker Way to build an incredible V1.0. There’s a lot more in store beyond the game itself but I’ll leave that for another day.
I hope you choose to give The Maker Way a try next week and I’m always here (email, Discord, game feedback widget) to hear your thoughts and feedback.
Fight for liberty, Fight for progress!