Dual Universe today etched a date on its pre-alpha launch: September 30th. “Access to this first playable version of Dual Universe will be limited to Kickstarter and crowdfunding backers that have pledged at Gold Founder level and above, prior September 7th,” says Novaquark’s press release today, which characterizes the sci-fi sandbox as a “highly anticipated disruptive MMO.” The forums further explain that the originally planned alpha is in fact not actually ready, hence the pre-alpha label.
“You probably noticed that we’re calling this first public access Pre-Alpha and not Alpha, as originally intended. Why? Because we are not quite ready yet to switch the game into Alpha, but we still wanted to honor our commitment to our backers. This first public glimpse of the game won’t feature a proper game loop as we originally wanted but, after postponing the release a few months ago, we felt like a new delay was not appropriate. We think any additional delays, even though the game is not in the true Alpha state we had anticipated, would not be in keeping with the spirit of our commitments to our community and backers.
“We decided it would be better to give you access to the game at an even earlier state than to delay again. That it would be better to give you a look at where we are, rather than wait again for where we had hoped to be at this stage.”
The game most recently made headlines for scooping up a cool $3.7 million in funding from private investors, which combined with Novaquark’s existing investment and crowdfunding now brings the game’s funding tally up to to $7.4 million.
Dual Universe will be on display at this year’s PAX West, so stay tuned for that event, during which we’ll be meeting with the team!
News from #Gamescom: Dual Universe Pre-Alpha will be accessible to Gold backers and above on Sept. 30th!
More here: https://t.co/kRi7PuLcCy pic.twitter.com/BpCJLfCFAp
— Dual Universe (@dualuniverse) August 23, 2017
