The last couple of days at pg5-Studio: Steam release, FAQ

So, stein.world has found its way onto Steam a week ago and let’s just say that things have been a little bit crazy ever since. I would like to thank everybody who has joined our humble community in the last couple of days. It has been absolutely mind-boggling to see that many people enjoying our game at once. That being said: with the major influx of new players, I would like to take the opportunity to answer the most commonly asked questions and talk about the things we will focus on in the very near future. Before I get into the nitty gritty, please keep in mind that stein.world is still a passion project that is being made in our free time. Pg5-Studio is a two and a half men team, so some updates might take a little longer than in other development studios. So please be a little patient with us. We have heard and read every bit of feedback that we received over the last couple of days and here is how we will address it:

Will there be a –insert random language- version of the game?

Probably yes, with time. We can’t give you a certain date though. Our primary focus over the last days was completely restructuring many, many, many elements of our game in order to make them easily translatable. We honestly didn’t expect such a high demand to support different languages this early, but we’ve figured that the sooner we make these changes to our game the less painful these changes will be with further development of the game. Since we speak three different languages between the three of us, we can say that the first two other languages we will support will be Polish and German. Moreover, the beta release of the Polish translation is imminent. For the languages that we don’t speak ourselves: We also plan to introduce a system that’ll allow 3^rd parties or the community to translate the game, but that will take some time until we’re ready to do so. We heard you loud and clear, friends from Spain, Portugal, France & Russia! We’re working on it!

Add US and Asia Server to the game!

Yes! They are coming! We still need to tweak our server infrastructure, but they are definitely coming. The lag for our friends in the US and Asia will hopefully come to an end soon over the next couple of weeks. We’ll keep you guys posted.

Where’s the game sound?

Some of the folks coming from Steam might have missed this, but as a reminder: stein.world is built from the ground up to run in its entirety in a common internet browser as well. Therefore, something trivial as adding sounds into the game is actually a lot more complicated for us than you might think. We still need to restructure some significant portions of our game to be able to add sounds in places where they´re common for other games. We also want to keep the data that is streamed and required to play the game over the browser and on mobile devices as low as possible. And the more sounds we add, the further we will be deviating from that goal. It’s a careful balance that we must strike. We have some UI and environmental sounds ready in the pipeline and those will be added soon. Then, the next step will be designing the sound around combat, especially in a scenario where a lot is happening at once, e.g. a wave dungeon run with a group of five people. It’s very challenging to not make it sound like a handful of toddlers going ham at a synthesizer simultaneously, since 3D sound isn’t really an option in a 2D game. However, we will be updating you regularly on our progress!

Where’s the PVP?

We also love some PvP in the games that we play and as much as we would like to flip a switch and watch you guys solve your conflicts the good old-fashioned way, we want to make it worthwhile and fun and integrate the mechanic in a meaningful way into the game. For now, all I can do is to give you these bullet points, because we don’t want to spoil the surprise yet:

• Internal PvP Tests will start next week
• There will be new playable areas solely dedicated to PvP
• The first implementation will be fairly basic, but we’ll introduce entirely new gameplay elements for a better PvP experience over time

This game is Pay 2 Win!

So, our payment model has been bothering quite a few new players. It has been the number 1 point of criticism over the last days. We think that some of the wording and design of the shop might have been poorly chosen and therefore might have given the impression to newer players that you’ll need the subscription to fully experience the game. But in all honesty, that’s not what we want to achieve. And as we see it, those who actually gave our game a shot and weren’t put off immediately, seem to share our sentiment that this is not a Pay 2 Win game.

Nonetheless, we want to present our point of view on the monetization of the game. We want to explain why we have chosen this type of model over others.

Stein.world started and, as of today, still is a passion project that we develop in our own free time while still working regular day jobs. Even well before the development of the game, we really didn’t want to sell anything based on empty promises, since it was our first attempt at developing a game this large in scale. Therefore, any sort of crowdfunding simply wasn’t an option for us.

Stein.world also was originally conceptualized as a browser game only. After a few months into development, we’ve realized that our prototype would also work well on mobile platforms. We liked the idea of progressing in the game, even if you’re on the go.  And since nobody wants to pay for a browser or mobile game upfront, the idea of selling the game for a fixed price beforehand seemed unfeasible as well.

That’s why we’ve settled for an optional subscription-based system. Everybody has his own tolerance when it comes to perceiving what constitutes as Pay 2 Win and what doesn’t. But these are the core principles that we want to uphold during the future development of the game:

The game is for everyone to enjoy, paying or not. No gameplay element will be locked behind a paywall. [Yes, the subscription might make things a little faster or make some elements more convenient, but everything in this game should be achievable without spending a dime.]

If an item is solely attainable through the shop, it will be purely cosmetical.

Nothing in the shop is set in stone, we’re monitoring your feedback very seriously, and there are already plans in motion to tweak the offers we have on the store front.

Well, that was quite a bit of text, huh? J  As always: If you want to get in touch with us, have questions, or want to leave your feedback consider joining our community discord or follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. A review on Steam would also be greatly appreciated. Cheers!