Tempest Rising accidentally available to Standard Edition buyers today
Today was supposed to be the day that Deluxe Edition buyers gained Advanced Access to the new RTS, Tempest Rising. But some players are gaining access anyway.
According to a handful of players on Steam, there might have been a major mistake in the Deluxe Edition launch of the new real-time strategy game, Command & Conquer was meant to launch today through Advanced Access to players who purchased or pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition, while Standard Edition players would have to wait another week. But it seems like something went wrong, and suddenly everyone has access, both Standard and Deluxe.
Tempest Rising accidentally available to Standard Edition buyers ahead of release
Developer Slipgate Ironworks has been working on Tempest Rising for a few years, and development has not been smooth. Between reports of layoffs from parent company Embracer and delays of the game’s third faction, the RTS could have used a smooth launch. At the time of writing, the developer shared a post on the Discussions page, though notably, not addressing that players who claim to have only bought the Standard Edition are playing now. The post explains that the Standard Edition vanishing from the Steam page was not something the team decided to do, calling it a “storefront technical issue.” It will be interesting to hear an update on this, either way, if it was something to do with the developer or with Steam, it has implications for the value of Deluxe Editions everywhere.
This mistake was quickly noticed by players who purchased the Standard Edition of Tempest Rising and found they were able to and play, despite this week being reserved for anyone who bought the Deluxe Edition. In a thread on the game’s Discussion page, ShadowLL simply asked the other players: “Are we gonna say it to them?” wondering out loud if the players should alert the developers to the issue. ShadowLL added a response clarifying, “I was talking about the fact that players with [standard] edition go their access to the game along with deluxe… They removed [standard] from the store as a temp. solution, but right now it looks like it is messed up because store page says it is already released…”
Another , Arctic Spark, shared their surprise as well, saying: “Was surprised to see the game already available, and when I saw the price I thought it had been raised,” referring to the fact that now only the Deluxe Edition is available on Steam. The original poster speculated about what the team could do to solve this. It would not be a great move to revoke access to the Standard Edition players who have already started playing. For now, it seems they will stick with keeping the game available, but removing the Standard Edition as an option. We will have to wait to see what happens next.
At the time of writing, SteamDB shows well over three thousand players in-game. Reviews are also starting to come in, with thirty-six players already leaving a review. The reviews are 91% positive, so that is a good sign. Many players are confident that the developer will not revoke privileges to anyone that has gained access today. Given that the mistake was somewhere on Steam or the developer’s end, revoking access would be an easy way to upset players. But if Deluxe Edition buyers are upset enough, questioning the value of their purchase, it could cause a problem.
This does call into question the general practice of Deluxe Editions and Advanced Access, where players who pay more can play a game early. The recent launch of comparing themselves to “glorified beta testers.” Given situations like this and what happened today with Tempest Rising, all consumers should think twice before buying their next Deluxe Edition or Advanced Access . You may not always get what you pay for.
