Line of Defense went into early access last week and while the idea was that players would need to purchase one of the game’s founder’s packs to gain access, a mistake in the game’s Steam listing caused the title to be made available for free to anyone, buyer or not. The mistake was fixed by Valve, but not before several thousand players had managed to start the client download. Since the players had not purchased the game, however, they were still unable to access the servers and were thus unable to play. Several of those players then took to Steam’s review system to show their anger.
In a news piece on the Line of Defense website, Derek Smart responded to complaints, noting that while the game will eventually be free to play, the current box price is to weed out players simply looking for something new and free to toy around with.
We know that a lot of you are excited about the game; but the whole purpose of pricing this Early Access tiers this way is so that we can attract a specific dedicated crowd during the next three to four months of testing. It is a very large and involved open-world game. We’re a small indie team. For those reasons and aside from the fact that we do not have the resources, we simply don’t want to be distracted by large numbers of players who – for the most part – won’t contribute any meaningful feedback to the game.
Line of Defense is currently in early access on a heavily staggered release system.
(Source: Line of Defense)