It’s been a good while since Spookware has had a community news post, and it feels like it’s more than time to address where Spookware is at, and what the plan is going forward for it.
The first two episodes of Spookware represent the state that the game will stay in, and we’re updating the Steam page to make sure this is very clear to any prospective buyers. Updating the Steam and Itch.io pages had been the plan once a decision was made, but with the update on itch.io going up first it caught some people by surprise. In addition to the page updates, we’ll be permanently reducing the price of the game to $4.99 to reflect the final length of the game as well.
Without getting too into details, the original vision for Spookware’s episodic release didn’t work out, and after coming to that conclusion both the development team and publishing partners realized that an announcement and update to the Steam/Itch pages was necessary to reflect that. We also wanted Beeswax to be able to confidently talk about their future projects without any confusion about Spookware. We all feel really proud of the episodes that were launched, and want to make sure that you can still play Spookware for what it is. However, we want to make it clear that, though in-game it will still list later episodes (3 & 4) Spookware is in its final state as it is now.
We’ve seen people’s recent reviews, and again we hope that making this clear alleviates some of the concerns expressed there about clarity for potential future buyers. Games can be complicated, and for a multitude of reasons a project can find itself either never making it to launch at all, or in this case not realizing the grander initial vision for a game, but we understand that may still be disappointing. In hindsight the way that the later episodes were announced isn’t something anyone would have done knowing what we do now. If you’re beyond your 2 hour window and want to request a refund, we’ll be reaching out to Steam to let them know about the situation which should help with anyone who wants to request one.
On behalf of both Beeswax Games and DreadXP, we all deeply appreciate the support that fans have shown the game since release. We appreciate your willingness to take a chance on an experimental plan and game, and hope that you enjoyed the time you spent with it. We also truly hope that others yet will find enjoyment and fun with Spookware.
Edit: Though we have messaged Steam to ask them to honor any refund requests, and received a response from them they would, we've heard that a few people are still not being approved. If you're running into an issue and have attempted to request a refund through Steam, send an email with your Steam username info to [email protected] and we will see what we can do to sort it out.