After a year without any updates, Keen Software House has pushed sandbox engineering sim Medieval Engineers out of Steam Early Access.
Fans are less than impressed, with recent reviews being aggregated as "overwhelmingly negative." According to Steam stats, only 19% of the 199 reviews left in the last 30 days have been positive.
The blog post from Keen Software House, posted on March 17, explains the reasoning behind the team's decision to leave Early Access.
Apparently, Keen Software House has decided to restructure the team and focus on moving its previous game, Space Engineers, out of Early Access. They also want to prioritize Space Engineers' Xbox One port, and pool all resources into "continual support and upgrades for Space Engineers."
"With the release on March 17, we reduced the price to $9.99, or your regional Steam equivalent," the statement concludes. "Over the coming weeks, everyone who owns the base version of Medieval Engineers will receive the Deluxe version, for free."
There is, however, one more update to come, which will "address some critical game bugs," and "stabilize the game and get it to a more playable state."
"This release fixes a problem with grids disappearing from the world, as well as several game crashes you experienced during gameplay."
Regardless of the update, fans are still disappointed in Keen Software House's decision to abandon Medieval Engineers in favour of Space Engineers.
One Steam review from earlier today reads, "Game is abandoned, empty and dead, the developers are a disgrace. Do not give them money." Another player writes, "It could have been great, but is now abandonware. Don't waste your money. Claiming it to be complete is a blatant lie. It should be pulled from the store."
The majority of reviews are much longer. The general consensus appears to be that the game has been completely abandoned, and that the reason people stuck around for so long was because they had faith in its eventual completion. It's a case of wasted potential, according to players, and their advice is almost unanimously, "don't buy this game."
Keen, however, considers Medieval Engineers a finished product.
"I feel that the Medieval Engineers fulfilled all the plans we had at the beginning," says Rosa. "I understand that some players may feel that the game has a greater, unrealized, potential. For us, Medieval Engineers is a successful project which helped to shape our games and our team."
