The new MMORPG Pax Dei has started Early Access on Steam and has received “mixed reviews” after three days: 56 percent are positive. One of the reviews for the 40-euro game is now causing a lot of discussion.
This is the situation with Pax Dei:
- The launch of the Early Access of Pax Dei on Steam took place on June 18 at 2 PM.
- The cheapest founder’s package that grants access is available for 40 euros. Prices go up to 100 euros.
- The Early Access is expected to run until June 2025. The game is still rough at the moment and is receiving a lot of criticism. Some buyers have already requested their money back.
In Pax Dei, building bases is considered a unique selling point:
Steam user writes review after 12 minutes in the game – It goes viral
This is the review: A review by the user “gisk” appeared on June 18 (via Steam), after the user spent only about twelve minutes in the game. The user acts in his assessment as if he is writing an email from the boss to the developers.
The review reads nastily, stating that the developers should only use free standard development tools and quickly throw something together, without story, dialogues, a class system, or NPCs. After all, they are creating a completely player-driven sandbox.
Everything should actually be standard, but a few streamers need to be paid to say that Pax Dei is the “best survival sandbox MMO” ever made. Except Lirik, who left the game after 20 minutes – he shouldn’t be paid. On the other hand, maybe he should be, to force him to say good things about the game.
Then the team should bring the game into Early Access and introduce a subscription model for 100 US dollars per month three months later. Those who do not pay would lose characters, items, and bases. This way, they could make double profit; if that doesn’t work, they could simply develop another Early Access game.
Developers respond initially defensively, then want to use review for marketing
How do the developers respond? The initial reaction was quite defensive (via archive.org). It was stated that the player probably hadn’t checked the Discord, where information about the game has been published for the past one and a half years. They take game development very seriously and love to receive feedback on how the game can be improved.
However, when the review went viral, the developers changed the text: They now congratulate the reviewer on his excellent writing style and say they hope that everyone who finds the text funny will check out Pax Dei. They now describe the advantages of the MMO.
This is how it’s being discussed: The streamer Lirik has found it hilarious, as have many other people on Steam.
The developers’ statements, especially that they quickly changed it to use it for marketing the game, are perceived as “cringe.”
The player wrote a negative review after just twelve minutes, but there are also people who express negative opinions about their game only after much longer periods of time: Player spends 7,900 hours in free-to-play MMORPG, writes devastating Steam review
