If you’ve been watching our coverage of Palia over the last few articles, you’ll know we’ve had to keep pointing out an inconvenient fact: Palia is still in open beta. It has never launched out of open beta. It is free-to-play with an expensive cash shop, but it’s still beta. But you’d never know that from the game’s press releases, website, Steam page, Epic Games page, or Nintendo Switch page; its beta state is simply not mentioned there, which is particularly deceptive as the game just launched on Steam – with no flag for early access and no mention of beta in the press releases, which led to plenty of mainstream reporting that also didn’t mention it.
Players haven’t let Singularity 6 get away with it, either; Palia’s “mixed” Steam reviews are riddled with warnings that the game is still in beta without disclosure (though the bulk also ding it for greedy cosmetic prices and grind and “cozy sim MMO” moniker). Yesterday, the cozy game’s Discord was awash in player discussion on the beta and why S6 had neglected to tell new Steam players about the game’s pre-launch test status in spite of the fact that the “early access” tag is most definitely a thing on Steam; some players were calling S6’s conduct “misinformation” while other fans defended it as no big deal.
Last night, S6 finally acknowledged the uproar, even as it elided every single detail (to the point of confusing more people) and admitted absolutely no fault. The problem is your confusion, not its deception, see.
“We are aware of the confusion around Palia’s status on Steam, and are listening to everyone’s concerns and commentary and understand the impact this is having. Please know that we are discussing this feedback and hope to clarify as soon as possible.”
This one’s pretty easy, so let us help! Palia’s “status on Steam” as well as on Switch and EGS is “open beta”; therefore, S6 should properly state that in the game’s description on those platforms and mark it under “early access” to ensure that people who download it have been made aware they’re joining an ongoing open beta and not a finished, launched mini MMO. The studio should do this not only because it’s the right thing to do and wants to be seen as an honest company but because it needs to set clear expectations for its players to avoid bad reviews. There, solved, and we won’t even charge ya.
