Iron Harvest delayed on the Epic Games Store, preorder refunds are being offered

Iron Harvest, the alt-history RTS with the steam-driven battlemechs, launched today on Steam and, I'm happy to say, is quite good. The massive mechs can slow things to a crawl, as we said in our 82/100 review, but despite that it's "a spectacular and rock-solid" addition to the genre.

But while the Steam release appears to be business as usual, something odd and as-yet unexplained has happened to the planned Epic Games Store release:

There's no indication of a connection, but the reaction to the game on Steam is "mixed." User reviews seem largely positive about the game mechanically, but there's considerable criticism of missing features, such co-op support, leaderboards, ranked and quick play, and even basic stuff like Steam achievements and controller support, all of which are promised on the store page but still listed as "coming soon" in the game.

The Steam discussions group also features a number of threads complaining about the state of the game. In one, a developer linked to an Iron Harvest devblog entry that promises continued development including the addition of more multiplayer maps and game modes. But other posts suggest that some features may be a long way off: Controller support remains a work-in-progress, for instance, while Steam achievements "might" be coming, but "not for the foreseeable future." Developers also noted that the presence of in-game text indicating that it's still in beta testing is a mistake, and will be removed in the next patch.

Whatever the reason for the delay, Iron Harvest is now listed as "coming soon" on EGS, although the fact that Deep Silver is offering refunds on preorders makes me think that "soon" might be optimistic. I've reached out to Deep Silver and developer King Art Games for more information, and will update if I receive a reply.