Nobody sets out with the intent of screwing up. This certainly wasn't the intent when Atajrubah was released on Early Access and it has been a deeply humiliating and humbling experience.
There are some points that myself and the team would like to address.
[Update regularity & Development Intentions]
Over the course of development we'll be striving to deliver an updated build every 2-4 weeks depending on the speed of development. Some features may be implemented faster than others, we may also get chunks of content integrated sooner than anticipated. If that is the case an update will be published sooner.
[Why do we feel that Atajrubah is not a tech demo ?]
There is really not a whole lot that you can do in Atajrubah right now beyond exploring the environment and limited interaction.
The systems in place (when functioning as intended) are not simply there for demonstration purposes however. A great deal of effort has gone into ensuring that these systems,both visible and non-visible form a flexible framework.A framework that can be rapidly iterated upon and populated with new content and features on a regular basis.
[Are you trying to profit off of Early Access ?]'
The short answer is no.
In the spirit of transparency I'd like to share with you how the income from Early Access will be distributed.
There are six team members including myself. Once Valve have taken their dues(exactly what the cut is I cannot disclose) an additional 5% goes to the wonderful folks at epic, for allowing us to use their engine at such a reasonable price. Following that the remainder of the funds are split 60/40, with each team member receiving 10% and the remaining 40% going into a development fund. This development fund helps us cover the cost of things like software subscriptions and hosting for the blog and community forums.
Taking these factors into account the Early Access model is far from what one may consider profitable. The sheer volume of units that we would have to sell to make a profit is just not something that we will see during Early Access.
With that said the money that does come through from sales goes a long way towards helping support us.
[Will development slow if sales do ?]
The answer to this is no. The team and I have a responsability to the people who have purchased the game, slowing development or withholding updates because of that would be counter productive. The more updates we make the better the game will get, this is our motivation and if sales pick up it should be due to that.
[Why don't you do a Kickstarter]
Kickstarter wasn't an option for us because its not available in my region. Sure we could have run a campaign via one of our team members,Two of whom are based in the US, however I didn't feel that it would be right putting them in that position as I'm the project lead and my name is on all the paper work.
We did attempt an IndieGoGo campaign with fixed funding as an option. This didn't come through for us at the time but we were fortunate to get Greenlit as a result.
Greenlight and Early Access are not perfect systems and both have been abused recently and in the past.
[Isn't there a better model you can follow ? Making the game free until it's worth $15 ?]
We understand the concern and while that may have been an option prior to launch, 28 people have chosen to support us with their hard earned money and this is commitment that we take very seriously.
I hope that goes some way to answering some of the questions and concerns you may have. However as the saying goes 'Talk is cheap' , myself and the team hope that we can prove ourselves to you in our actions.
Best Regards
MrNexy
