Star Traders 2 will be available as Steam Early Access version in October 2017:

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Next Step: Steam Early Access

As we knew it would be, the Alpha has been invaluable. It has given us a direct line into the challenges, wishes, and play styles of many Captains. Their insights have helped us zero in on the player experiences we want to further build the game around.

This is always how our small studio has always worked. From the original Star Traders to our latest title, Templar Battleforce, we are constantly working with and listening to our player community to drive updates, improvements, new content and better balance. If you’re on our forums or Steam discussion boards, you can see us there every single day, responded to basically every post. To fully realize Star Traders 2, we’ve decided to continue that tradition and launch the game into Steam early access.

When will the game go into Early Access?  

We have a date set in early October to release Star Traders to Steam early access. Following our studio’s process, the game was always planned to launch to Steam first, and then after we would complete the mobile port and UX modifications to better support smaller screens. If you would like to change your reward to receive a Steam key instead of a copy of the game on another platform, please just reach out to us. For those players on mobile, you’ll get the game as soon as the mobile port can be completed and launched. Realistically considering the holidays, that will be sometime in 2018.

Why Early Access?  

We plan to use early access as a platform to continue the two-way communication and feedback loop with a larger player community. The alpha has allowed us to work with hundreds of Captains playing the game, and early access will give us access to thousands of new data points to test the limits of the game’s balance, and we will use this input to further fine tune the political, character, and combat simulators. We know can be reservations about early access games, but we’re focused on releasing a well-built, solid and polished game experience right out of the gate.

What will be the state of the game at Early Access launch?  

Star Traders will be majority feature complete when we launch to early access. As a sandbox game, there is already an immense depth of exciting and fun ways for your Captain and crew to find their way in the big world. We are not plan to add many major new features after early access launch. The early access period instead will allow us to perfect balance the game’s ship and crew combat, improve the map generation, and further study and improve the economic and political simulation and the role that contact’s play within the larger galaxy. As we progress through the early access phase, different sections of the game’s story will also become available for play. That said, plans often change :P

Approximately how long will the game be in Early Access?  

Oh how many times we’ve regretted an ETA. We don’t know at this time, promising dates would be irresponsible. We expect it to be a number of months which can be counted on two hands (that is, 10 or less).

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?  

The game will offered at standard price during the Early Access period and we don’t anticipate its price to change after it transitions to full launch.

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