https://youtu.be/i1bZtaZIdVM
We are human, we make mistakes. I am referring to both myself as well as the artist involved during the Steam Summer Sale. I don't believe that the individual is a bad person, just that they did a few bad things. You can begin to lose yourself in what are torrents of blind hatred. But it can also allow you to experience yourself and reevaluate what you are doing, why you are doing it and who you are doing it for.It can ultimately lead to moments of incredible growth. We've had a few moments that really challenged us as developers, others that challenged us simply as people. Some moments we are proud of and others we are learning from. Despite everything, we know we have great intentions and that everything we do is to either benefit Orion or the Fans. We are extremely proud of Orion as a game series and everything we've accomplished so far. We had a long journey getting our first game (ORION: Prelude) to where it needed to be. In the end, we couldn't be more happy with the experience we delivered. Some great people reached out during this event and are now assisting with development. Ultimately the game will *benefit* from moments like these rather than be hindered by them. Most importantly, I and everyone at Trek are eternally grateful for our fans, especially in difficult times. Your support is the fuel that keeps us in drive and what we do is either for Orion or for those that share the same love we have for it. We simply want to do what we do best - make great games. Anything else is secondary and working on Orion benefits both Trek and those who invest in us. Orion has always been an IP that has marketed itself and we have spent next to nothing on marketing up to this point. We prefer this and instead invest our money right back into the product to grow it as much as possible. When we originally released "Guardians of Orion" (now The ORION Project) in December 2015, the reception was far lower than expected. So instead of ditching it we changed to a model that we knew and trusted ($1 model) in addition to increasing the scope and scale. This was at no cost to the already-invested Fans. This is called Loss-Leader Marketing. It is a pricing strategy where a product is sold at a price below it's market cost to stimulate other sales of more profitable goods or services located within said product. It especially only works because we are working with a digital, duplicated/replicated product and not an actual physical production. It was a system that worked, many people enjoyed it and were surprised or impressed with what we were capable of doing. Being able to lower it to $1 (like ORION: Prelude before it) allowed for amazing growth in both our community and the actual production. Now we can offer a new FREE edition of the game to further allow more friends and gamers to experience Orion and help us bring it to the next level. The F2P Edition of The ORION Project will go on sale August 25, 2016. We want to put our creation into your hands with absolutely no risk at all. Try it out and see what you think. We believe you will absolutely love it. This was a process that took a lot of time and likely will take a lot of hard work to ensure it's pulled off correctly. We've been testing models and performance since 2013 alongside ORION: Dino Horde and we believe in both the gaming community and Orion that this will be the best for both. The ORION Project will not only survive on a F2P model, but it will thrive. This process will start be starting out in BETA form on August 25, 2016. This will allow us to continue beating down on growing server architecture. We've been testing this through a variety of events, including the recent Summer Sale and we are making adjustments and improvements as needed. This F2P edition will be be massive in regards to what we can learn from it for our Servers. The Beta period is expected to last anywhere from 1-3 months and scheduled to end within the 2016 window. Initially stuff will break, connection issues will appear and things will be a bit annoying for a few days - I am certain of this. But we are very hard and fast-working and will repair and learn as quickly as you could expect us to. This is part of the process. To any Orion fans that have paid for The ORION Project - we appreciate you and will be taking quite good care of you. Any and all content you already own will come towards the new editions of the game.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/407840/