Hey everybody.
There has been some confusion regarding "Open Beta". So I thought I would take a moment to clarify.
In the open beta announcement we said:
We're not quite ready for the massive rush of early-access yet. When a game goes into early-access it becomes part of the entire Steam ecosystem with curators, reviews, banner rotations and top sellers lists. So we're keeping a low profile for now until we believe we are ready for early-access. "
When a game goes into early access, it is then part of steam. So it will suggest the game to people who like that sort of game or games your friends are playing. It appears in top sellers lists, it's open for reviews, Steam recommends it to your friends and basically the game is given a soft marketing push by Steam. We don't want this right now. However, we have a lot of people who want to play the game. So. We're doing an open beta.
Basically, we want to sell the game through steam to people who know about it, but we don't want steam to help people find it.
This is the same thing we have done for Don't Starve, Don't Starve Together, Invisible Inc and most recently Oxygen Not Included. However, previously we sold keys to be redeemed in Steam through our website- beginning with Oxygen Not Included we can sell directly through Steam Thanks to Valve.
We put a banner up on the store page so it was super clear that the game is in Open Beta - hopefully Steam will have better messaging for this in the future like they do for Early-Access.
We realize this was confusing, and we appologize. Last time we did this for Oxygen Not Included you couldn't even search for the game on steam and you could only get it through a special link... THAT was confusing.
Sorry for the mix up. We'll see what we can do to clarify that directly on the store page.
Thanks everybody.
EDIT: (Thanks for the questions)
Closed Beta - Invite only. If you didn't sign up in time, you couldn't play.
Open Beta - Anybody can purchase the game and play.
I understand that some games use a free open beta to stress test their servers before they launch, and I apologize that I did not realize there would be confusion there.
Additionally, if you played during closed beta, we let players keep the game, for free. No need to pay for the game again. Ever.
Anybody who buys the game now or in the future keeps the game including people who were given the game for free or were gifted by friends.
Hopefully that clears it all up. Once again, thanks for the feedback and support.