Hi, my name is Carlo Stregapede, I'm the owner of Kimu Studios, and I need to let you know about the current situation of Steam Veins. It's been more than a year since Steam Veins launched in Early Access. At the time, I funded out of my own pocket a talented team of 3 visual artists, 1 programmer and 1 audio designer (visual artists, because to me everyone makes art), plus one more programmer, which was me. It was my first professional project, and as the producer I made many mistakes that caused a lot of problems during development. At least I learned a lot from those mistakes, and the team as a whole came out waaaaay more experienced than when the project started.
Going into Early Access was an emergency decision, because I could no longer afford to pay the team. So I bet everything I had and everyone gave their best, but unfortunately the results were nowhere near what I expected: total sales of Steam Veins didn't even reach 5% of what was invested in its production. I don't blame Steam, the players, or the world. First, because the game simply should have been better, and that comes down to my poor management of the project. Second, because the marketing should also have been much better, and that was my job too. When it comes to project management, I feel much better prepared now, especially with everything I've learned from past mistakes. Marketing, however, is still something I'm bad at, but I'm going to start trying some things to improve.
Since I haven't been able to fund the completion of Steam Veins, I've been working on some solo projects since then, like KimuNote (a productivity and project organization app) on Steam and Wraite (a narrative writing app) on itch.io, to raise money for it (and to pay my bills too). I'm currently working on two game projects that I'll be revealing on social media soon.
This whole situation was very sad for everyone on the team. We made this game with all our effort and heart, and in the end the buyers didn't receive the game at the quality they expected, and the studio went under. I sincerely apologize to all of you for not yet having received the complete game at the quality it should have. As soon as I have more news, I'll let you know here and on our Discord server.
And finally, I want to thank every single one of you who played Steam Veins. We're happy to at least see that some players still enjoyed the game despite everything. Thank you so much.
Carlo Stregapede