In Frost Giant's most recent community discussion post, they have announced that they will be implementing a Kickstarter to enable production of Founders Editions for the game - and they're looking for people's feedback about what they would like to see in different tiers.
Collectors Editions
The headline announcement is that Stormgate will have a Collectors Edition available to purchase through a kickstarter in the "near future." As Frost Giant only has a budget of ~$35 million USD (and all of that goes towards developing the game), the only way they can fund a collectors edition is through some sort of kickstarter - startup costs would be too high otherwise, as they would have to front the money and hope to make it back. Kickstarter allows Frost Giant to only produce as many as required and receive the funds in advance.
What do you get out of the collectors edition? That remains to be seen at this point, but at the very least you'll get a scale model of the Vulcan - they shared a 3D printed prototype for our viewing pleasure (plus what I think is new music!).
Founders Edition
On top of wanting to be able to produce physical collectors edition, the other reason that Frost Giant is looking to produce a Kickstarter is due to a weird quirk with Steam's Early Access rules. Adding significantly more testers before the game is monetizable adds hardware requirements that would be expensive, and so the best way to get everyone into the beta that wants to would be to sell some Early Access beta key (coupled with a Founders Pack or something like that). Unfortunately for Frost Giant, Steam Early Access rules stipulate that the only way this is possible is through a crowdfunding campaign - Frost Giant is not allowed to sell an a-la-carte Founders Pack to get access to the game whenever you would like.
This means that for Frost Giant to be able to sell beta keys (and therefore fund the enhanced server costs, etc), a Kickstarter campaign is really the only option - plus we should get some awesome goodies on top of it. I know I'm super excited to have a Vulcan occupying space on my desk!
Community Questions
With all that being said, what do you think? Specifically, Frost Giant has asked three questions to the community:
- Reward tiers: What kinds of reward tiers would you find most appealing in a Stormgate crowdfunding campaign?
- Beta access: How important is earlier access, particularly beta access, to you? (We’ll be giving out a few beta keys to commenters below, as our thanks for reading this far.)
- Collector's Edition: How interested are you in owning a physical Collector's Edition (including the Vulcan mech statue)? Would you be interested in an unpainted version?
If you've got thoughts, make sure to chime in on the reddit thread!
Getting Involved
As always, if you want to engage with the Frost Giant developers and get information from them as they post it, you should sign up for their newsletter, head on over to /r/Stormgate on reddit, and sign up for the beta and wishlist the game on steam!