It looks like Tempest Rising accidentally launched early on Steam for everyone, despite withholding advanced access as a Deluxe Edition pre-order bonus

Tempest Rising is a base-building RTS about humanity’s desperate fight to survive after someone pushed the big red button and started a nuclear war. Now it looks like another button that shouldn’t have been pushed has been pushed: Tempest Rising released on Steam yesterday, which seems to have happened a full week before it was supposed to.

An early unlock period was planned to start yesterday, but it was meant to be reserved for those willing to drop some extra cash on the Deluxe Edition pre-order.

Players have been taking to the Steam community forums and scratching their heads, because both editions are available for immediate purchase, not pre-purchase, and the store page states that the game fully released on April 17. The release date was meant to be April 24.

If it was, in fact, an accident and not a burst of capricious whimsy, this does put developer Slipgate Ironworks in a bit of a pickle. Anyone who pre-ordered the special edition specifically for advanced access has lost the bragging rights and theoretical extra hours of gameplay they paid for, but it would counteract the momentum of this spur-of-the-moment release to revoke access to standard edition players. After all, they seem to be liking the game, which currently sits at a Very Positive user rating on Steam.

We liked it a lot, too, awarding Tempest Rising an 85% in our review.

The official launch announcement on the game’s Steam page is still under the illusion that Deluxe Edition players are the only ones with access, and I couldn’t find a response to the issue on Slipgate’s socials.

The store page description of the two editions says that pre-ordering either gets you early access to the game, contradicting the post linked above. And that doesn’t make much sense: If preordering any edition gets you early access, that’s just launching the game.

We’ve reached out to a studio rep for comment and will update this story if we hear back.

Whatever solution is agreed upon, whether it’s to reward Deluxe Edition buyers with an extra goodie or just sit back and not sweat it, I hope it doesn’t involve cutting players off from the game after they’ve installed and gotten into it. The last thing this genre needs is a game turning away players.

If you want to jump in while the going is good, Tempest Rising is available on Steam.