What would you do?
In March of last year, Descendent Studios launched its Kickstarter for Descent: Underground with the expectation of launching the game in March of this year. In order to receive a copy of the game, you would have had to have pledged at least $25. The campaign was a success and the developer ended up raising more than $600,000.
Yesterday, the Early Access game was available for less than the price of a cup of coffee.
The game was part of the Monday Bundle at Indiegala.com. For just $2, you could get Descent: Underground as well as five other titles. Unsurprisingly, this has not gone over well with some of the people who backed the game. A Steam Discussion thread was launched early yesterday mentioning the sale with people both upset and defending the developer’s choice to include this game in a bundle.
That thread was eventually closed when the developer responded, saying the bundle was for charity. However, it’s not entirely clear if this is true. In a second Steam thread on this issue, the developer posted a snippet from Indiegala’s Wikipedia page that says, “Just like in Humble Bundle, buyers can set the revenue split between the developers, charities and organizers.”
This appears to be outdated information. I purchased the bundle for myself for the bare minimum and was never asked if I wanted to split the revenue between anyone. There also doesn’t seem to be any information on the Indiegala website mentioning the charitable contributions that come from its bundles. As far as I can tell, the money is either split between the developers and Indiegala, or it all goes to Indiegala.
While Descendent Studios does maintain that it believed this bundle would go to support charity (and also it did not know the bundle would be this cheap), this isn’t the first time this game has come under fire from those who helped make it happen. Back in November, Descent: Underground was selling for up to 70% off during Steam’s Black Friday sales event, all while still being an Early Access game. As a comparison, Rust, which has been in Early Access for more than two years now, has only been discounted up to 50% and that was just in this last Steam sale.
Did I mention this game was supposed to retail for $50?
I have reached out to Descendent Studios for the word on the story as well as Indiegala about the website’s charitable contributions. I will update this post if and when either of them respond.
