For the better part of a decade, French gaming developers Laurent Lechat and Boris Marmontel had their game Planet Centauri in early access on Steam. However, the game’s 1.0 launch arrived last year with a resounding thud, and Valve is accepting the blame for not notifying the 100,000-plus players who had wishlisted it on Steam.
In a recent post on Reddit (via Polygon), Lechat shared excerpts from an email sent out by Valve that explained why Planet Centauri’s launch failed to get much traction.
“We found a bug that impacted a very small number of game releases (less than 100 since 2015) where wishlist email notifications for the launch of a game were not sent,” wrote a Valve spokesperson. “Unfortunately, your game Planet Centauri was among those included. We intend for this feature to work for every game and we’re inviting you to a Daily Deal as a way to help make up for lost visibility from your launch day.”
Lechat explained at length how the dismal response to Planet Centauri disheartened himself and Marmontel. He also seemed wary about Valve’s offer before other users on Reddit urged them to accept the added visibility of a Daily Deal on Steam’s homepage.
Since Planet Centauri’s story has been making the rounds, there has been a small uptick of concurrent players to 105. That’s not a huge number, but some players have given the game a shot and shared largely positive reviews. Although some of the other reviews on Steam have noted that Planet Centauri has noticeable flaws and still feels like an early-access release.
Lechat and Marmontel are currently working on a new roguelike game that uses the engine they built for Planet Centauri. The duo said that they have a financial obligation to finish that game before they’ll be free to work on future patches for Planet Centauri.
