The long-awaited 1.0 launch of the massive scale, ultra realistic strategy game Warno has brought its brand of incredibly detailed war games to a full release on Steam. Following in the footsteps of Arma and War Thunder, Warno is a much more intense and immersive approach to the genre than the likes of Command and Conquer, and it’s been met so far with a very positive review score on the Valve platform. A mix-up with the game’s new deluxe edition, however, has seen developer Eugen Systems deliver a make-good in the form of free gifts for existing players.
Arriving on Thursday May 30, a week after the official 1.0 launch, the Warno Gold edition bundles in the base game, a set of digital guides packed with background lore, gameplay tips, unit details, and other designer notes, and four future DLC releases for the war strategy game. It’s already running into issues, however. “This deluxe bundle of ours is turning into a bigger headache than we expected,” Eugen Systems writes in a new emergency developer blog.
“We originally envisioned having Gold launch before the game’s official release out of early access,” it writes. “This didn’t happen; we encountered difficulties getting the Gold Steam pages approved and validated. Added to this, there were a lot of ‘under-the-hood’ mechanics to do with Steam pricing and discounts that threw a wrench into our release plan.”
“The bundle’s pricing and actual discount for our dedicated community were not what we had foreseen,” Eugen Systems explains. “Warno Gold doesn’t carry nearly as much of a discount for early access owners as we would have liked. The discount to get Gold does not live up to a special discount previously proposed to early access owners, which, in reality, fell far too short of what we had envisioned. As the Eugen team, we apologize for this mistake.”
Eugen says it cannot add an additional discount for early access owners on top of the current discount or expansion pass as “Steam doesn’t work that way.” Instead, all Warno early access owners (which includes anyone who bought the game after the official launch on Thursday May 23 but prior to the launch of the Gold edition on Thursday May 30) will be given two free gifts.
The first is the aforementioned digital guides bundle included with the Gold edition. “These guides are pretty kick-ass,” Eugen says, “and we think this goes part way towards righting the ship, but we understand that this gift might not be for everyone.” The second addition is two new divisions that will be added for free to the early access pack. This bundle is free for early access owners, but is priced at $9.99 / £8.99 for any players buying the game from now on who wish to purchase it separately.
The early access bundle, which already includes five divisions, will be getting these two additional divisions at a “future, still-to-be-determined date,” Eugen explains, as they have yet to be created. The team estimates that it will arrive after the first DLC, Nemesis: Airborne Assault, which is currently scheduled to launch in the third quarter of 2024.
“Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience,” the team concludes. “We hope that we have put things right, with gifts of a combined value of $20 / £18 for those caught in the Warno Gold snafu.”
If you can’t get enough digital conflict in your day, be sure to check out the best war games in 2024 for even more options worth your attention. Alternatively, exercise the thrill of real-time command with the best RTS games on PC right now.
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