AirMech Officially Launches, After Six Years In Early Access

We joke about games being in "early access" or "open beta" for so long that they might as well call themselves launched. Sometimes, we even forget that have been around forever aren't actually launched. Such was the case with Carbon Games' AirMech Strike (formerly known as just "AirMech"), which entered open beta on Chrome Feb. 15, 2012 and fully launched on Steam ... today, March 30, 2018.

Carbon's James Green posted a lengthy announcement on the game's Steam page, the original goal was to "simply to make a good game, and we figure the money stuff will just work out." Free-to-play was still a fairly new thing back in 2012, and Green admits that "we had no idea what we were doing." As more PvE content was added, the PvP population dwindled and it "ended up killing revenue for the game."

Thus, we have AirMech Strike, the game that released today, which Green describes as going "back to AirMech's PvP roots--in a way, AirMech 2.0." The team cut out huge chunks of the game and shifted those into AirMech Wastelands, a paid game in early access. In short, AirMech Strike is the PvP version of AirMech, while AirMech Wasteland is its PvE counterpart.

In closing, Green thanked long-time players for their support, saying that half of the game's funding has come from players and that

"AirMech has never been in danger of being shut down--to me the danger is always that we can't put enough developers on it to make it as great as I'd like it to be. Revenue from AirMech will continue to be invested back into AirMech--and there is no limit to what I would like to improve or expand with sufficient revenue."

Kudos to old GameBreaker friend Mike B (no, not Mike "Magicman" Byrne, the "other" Mike B) for the tip!