Hi everyone,
We listened to what you've been saying and have put off launching for a week.
Today, we'll release relay server functionality to closed testing players. This service is isn't entirely functional right now as there are bandwidth limitations (with Unity Cloud Services) meaning that games are capped at 4 players (otherwise they would just time out quickly). We're discussing this with Unity just now and hope to have this cap increased soon. However, it will mean that our test group can play online matches without the need for 3rd party services and we're also hoping to get some good feedback on this.
Work on dedicated servers is also continuing and as originally planned, we would expect these to become available within a few weeks.
Thanks to everyone for their comments and also for voicing your concerns. Launching a game like this is a delicate process and we were also concerned about the impact of negative reviews will have on the future of the game. We did feel that on balance there were more benefits to launching today than later, but given the feedback from the community, we've moved to a more suitable solution.
For what it's worth, we believe that one of the most important aspects of launching a game like this is the community that builds around it. That's why we invited Ship fans to closed testing and gave all of our former Kickstarter backers keys for the new game. We believe this is the best starting point for building a new Ship community and, well, we wouldn't be doing very well at the first step if we didn't listen to you! :)
We're sure the next few weeks are going to be pretty hectic for us and indeed, some people may not be happy with the product we're offering right now. But, we believe that a combination of Ship fans and Early Access fans are a strong foundation to build a community on and we're confident if you stick with us for the duration (even if you don't buy the game right away), you'll be happy about the progress that is made.
- the Blazing Griffin team