Corepunk has temporarily closed its pre-orders after overwhelming demand. This comes after the team released a roadmap through Early Access.
When they opened in July, pre-orders granted skins, access to Alpha Four, Early Access, and the full release and full first season of gameplay, Light Bless the King. The team was actually concerned that they wouldn't have enough testers for Alpha 4 to test at scale. Well, the demand was far greater than Artificial Core expected. They said:
“To be frank, after all the technical and gameplay failures we've experienced, our biggest fear was having empty servers during the test, without the chance to test the game properly. But you, our community, had a different idea—you showed us the immense potential of our shared ideas and their implementation. Corepunk receives incredible support from you every day”
So, while closing preorders might seem counterintuitive, especially for an indie game headed for Early Access, it does make sense from an infrastructure perspective. Yet, the decision doesn’t seem taken lightly, and their response does come with lots of gratitude. “It has also been a great joy to see the game's ability to maintain a stable online presence, even in an absurd situation where the servers were crashing every hour for a week,” the statement continues.
A roadmap update released on Friday details what they're working on now. They delayed the next wipe to September 16th and now have closed pre-orders to focus on a few things. Some of what they're focused on are server stability combat responsiveness and tactile feedback, quest improvements, open world content and a brand new location, and a new biome. They're also actively working on battlegrounds, PVE instances, and a full loot, high risk, high reward PVP instance.
Corepunk sales will reopen on or right before the start of Early Access, which is currently set for November 26th. However, pre-order bonuses and skins will remain exclusive to those who pre-ordered before sales were halted.
