Those who've read the Early Access section on the store page will know that my initial purpose in putting Zero G Arena in Early Access was to determine whether or not the basic concept would be well liked enough to justify continuing development.
At this point, I think I can safely say the response has been positive enough (even more so from those who fully appreciate the game's current state), so the game will continue development.
Many thanks to anyone who's provided the feedback necessary to make this decision.
Although it is, of course, impossible to guarantee any specific additions or changes (as with any Early Access game), I now plan to develop ZGA into a fully featured game, from it's current state as a prototype of sorts.
Anyway, ZGA has been getting an alarming amount of attention lately (and has had an order of magnitude more downloads than planned for by this stage). This is great, and confirms beyond reasonable doubt that there will be an interest in the game in future, but, for various reasons, it is making development quite difficult while the game is this unfinished.
Furthermore, since the plan was also to make the game paid later in development, when it was more complete (but allow players who download it for free to keep it), the lost sales from giving the game away for free are becoming an actual concern. One advantage of giving the game away for free like this is that it helps establish a player base, which is vital to the survival of a multiplayer game. This advantage is currently being mitigated by the fact that there's just not enough content to maintain anyone's interest for much more than 0.5-1 hours.
In light of this, I think I need to either make the game paid sooner than planned, or to temporarily withdraw the game from "sale" to new players, while I get the game closer to saleability.
Given that, as I've already said, the unforeseen volume of players is making development more difficult at the moment, and also that I think it is fairer than making the game paid sooner, I'm currently leaning towards the second option of temporarily withdrawing the game from sale. Note that it would remain playable to current owners though. In any case, I'll make an announcement on this to provide warning if it goes ahead.