In the update, Crate noted, “Alpha released several months later than expected and now August is upon us, which was our original KS estimated release but we’re still a long way from completion. We’ve gotten behind our original estimates for a variety of reasons and not just because delays are the popular thing to do.”
One of the reasons for the delay is that the developer made Act I way too big, as they realized during the alpha testing from Kickstarter backers.
”We said in the past that we were shooting for about a 15 hour finished game and a 2-3 hour play-through for the alpha area but many people are taking 10-15 hours to clear the alpha. The upside is that you’ll be getting a larger game but, of course, that also adds time onto development,” noted Crate.
In addition, the hiring process was snagged by real-life, as some devs who worked on TitanQuest backed out. ”As I’d mentioned during the Kickstarter, my intention was to hire on a couple friends from Iron Lore who had significant experience from their work on Titan Quest. For years they had contributed to Grim Dawn as they were able and the plan had always been for them to come on fulltime as soon as we could pay wages,” the developer explained, “However, over the years, they also had children, took on car loans and mortgages, and earned raises that made it more difficult for me to provide adequate wages out of the KS funds. When we reached our funding goal and the time came for them to sign on, they started looking at their financial situations found they were no longer in a place where they could afford the risk of joining a small startup and taking reduced salaries.”
Having Kickstarter backers playing the alpha test also slowed the process down as they submitted tons of bug reports and stuff.
”Finally, the release of alpha itself has slowed us down more than we had expected. Once the game was out and thousands of people were playing it, we felt compelled to respond quickly to feedback and bug reports. I think the quality of the game has improved significantly as a result and we’ve gotten in some much requested features,” Crate stated.
That, and technical issues such as animation have made the RPG a bigger job than expected. But Crate Entertainment promises to slog it through and release Grim Dawn nice and bug-free.