Great news and congratulations to the team on making it to this significant milestone!

I check the forum once a day to see if there's a new thread with a link to the Steam publishing. I'm looking forward to that happening and if it happens within the month I'll take that as a wonderful surprise and take delight in the ability of the dev team to make that goal. I know that there could be delays in the Steam approval. Heck there could be delays in other stuff associated with the launch process and rolling out and standing up the backend servers and services needed to support hundreds of folks playing the Town Square module. I expect unforeseen delays but each step is a step closer to the launch, and each time a time estimate is correct, or a deadline is met, my faith in the dev team increases.

Good question. Perhaps RELEASED, PUBLISHED, AVAILABLE ?

I have no idea how the dev team is handling this, but it's not uncommon in large organizations to have some staff assigned to developing new things, and other staff assigned to QA. In smaller groups instead of dedicated roles the staff divides their time between the two functions based on priority. If I had to make a guess, I would bet that a lot of time is being spent on testing a release candidate for the initial publication via Steam, and they have prioritized fixing the bugs they discover as well as those reported by the folks who were invited to play a pre-release build and report issues they saw. It's understandable that there would be a major bug squash push associated with the lead up to publishing. I'm impatient as well and have been trying to keep myself busy thinking about possible RP scenarios and character creation options in the meantime.

I just checked and the IdentityRPG Twitch channel, and past streams and clips are still working. (at least for me)

I followed the instructions and found the key for my account. I entered it into Steam and made sure I was set to participate in BETAs. So far nothing has downloaded, and it's my understanding that is exactly how it should be at this point in time. After seeing the recent Town Square module streams, my faith in the dev team has been boosted. I do think the game will see release at some point. I'm less confident about the time estimates given simply because there's not a track record of accuracy there. The info about the TS mod publishing and later being approved on Steam is a chance to rebuild my confidence in the time estimation skills of the team if things follow what was posted.

There was a demo and interview scheduled with a Twitch streamer @DasMehdi last Wednesday but issues with a development build of the game caused it to be rescheduled for this week. There were tweets about this, so if you aren't following their Twitter account, you might want to add as another source of updates in addition to these forums.

I would love a glimpse of actual gameplay next week . I do not expect perfection. In fact I expect some things to break, to not look good, and to not function smoothly or as expected. To expect otherwise would not be appropriate for a pre-Alpha release. I will not assume that just because something matches the expectations I listed above, that everything will be that way, or that it will always be that way. My opinions will be tempered by the current state of the game's development. I hope that the demonstration show cases what is working and what will soon be available for the early access users to play, and not some cool things that are either a long way off, or still under consideration for inclusion in the game.

Past history suggests that any estimations of when things will be done will not be correct. Even the most ardent supporters of the development team can't deny that there has been a lack of accuracy in forecasting the completion dates of tasks. Therefore what I think about the news is that it is wishful thinking and that I will believe it when I see it. I will be very happy to see it. Don't confuse criticism for one aspect of Identity RPG's development (the forecasting of completion dates) for a more broad criticism. Like so many other things in life, it's not an "all or nothing" situation.

Some video of a dev using the Town Square module as it exists today would go a long way in addressing concerns about the status of the game. I like what I heard in the last twitch stream but you know what they say, "seeing is believing" .

Hi everyone, edwired here with my introduction. I'm really looking forward to the launch of the first module and later the game. I find that multi-player online role playing games are what I really like to play, and also watch the most. I play games, and usually stream my game play on Twitch a couple hours a week, but I watch streams even more than that. It's easy to multitask while watching, versus playing. It's my hope that some of the excellent role players I've seen in other games will find their way to Identity, and also that other folks, like myself can improve our RP skills while using them here. I've not decided in detail what my character's back story will be, but I can say that I will be one of the players who isn't a typical cop or criminal type. I'd like to find a job/career type of role in one of the business or industries in game, and spend my time on the fringes of armed conflict, instead of in the middle of it.

It's my earnest hope that Role Playing will be mandatory, and failure to RP will result in 1st time warnings, education for all, and penalties for those who break the rules multiple times. There are some servers with engaged mods and admins who are able to pretty quickly address complaints and take action. There's time to take a look around at what works and use that as a starting point here.