Is the dev team behind Lancer Tactics planning on a Steam release? (Since I feel like you guys are going to blow-up even more once this gets over at Steam).
Mecha RPG adapted from Lancer tabletop · By
The current plan is:
1. Finish the core game and fulfill our Kickstarter obligations (by Q1 next year)
2. Make a checklist of features required for a strong Steam release (e.g. controller & workshop support, localization, community management). Put up a Steam page and start collecting wishlists.
3. Possibly find finishing funding & implement the remaining steam-required features.
4. Release & profit (???)
I'd much rather go through our "early access" phase here on itch rather than Steam because things can get so volatile over there. The current community manager is just me and I don't want to have to wrangle Steam Gamers(tm) while also doing dev.
I’m of two minds. It feels bad to give Steam a 30% cut while itch.io is getting %15 even though I love itch more, so I’ve considered marking the Steam price higher to cover the difference (ie if the final game was $20 here, it’d be something like $25 on Steam because that last $5 is all just Steam Tax).
However, the way Steam keeps people from doing precisely that is with the carrot of letting devs give out Steam keys with purchases on other platforms — but only if it’s not less expensive on the other platforms.
So my choice will be:
I know most devs pick #2, but I’m salty about it lol. I’d welcome your thoughts as a game-buyer as to which world you’d want to live in between those two.
Well obviously it's ultimately your decision as a developer, personally I prefer to have my games over steam for ease of use/access (and I hope Lancer Tactics will be published there, because proper mod/workshop support could extend the game's longevity tenfold).
I am itching (pun somewhat intended) to play the game, but at the same time I'd rather wait out for the Steam release and buy it there directly unless there is an official statement about itch.io purchases being transferable.
Also, do consider that even with the Steam price at parity, if the purchase is transferable you can still encourage people to buy on itch.io to get the larger cut of the pie.
Can't wait for a steam release, mainlt because my country economics are so poor that 20 dollars are considerbale money for me. like, can of coke costs 50 of my local currency, and this game is 2000 of my local currency. I can buy like 40 cans of coke for a price of this game, 60 dollar AAA titles cost 2000 on steam. Steam has regional prices and 20 dollar games go for about 600-700, 3x cheaper than in straight dollars.
I really like Lancer but I'm stuck as GM because there's no other Lancer GMs on Discord servers I frequent. I want to be a player not a GM, but at the bright side I can easily find players in a hour or less.
So your game will let me finally play against an AI GM, it can't be compared to a flesh GM but still much better than being stuck in GM hell. Also it definetly would feel nice to just play the game without bothering about remembering all the rules and spending time on dice rolls
Thank you for raising this issue! I hadn’t realized itch.io doesn’t do regional pricing. I’ll look into options — looks like some other devs make permanent honor-system coupons available. I can’t promise that we’ll do it anytime soon, but once we hit Steam I’ll put effort into trying to make a similar option available here.