Before Valve saved the day, they made a classic game free to celebrate the release of a remake, accidentally did it early, and nearly gave away the new one.

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Before Valve saved the day, they made a classic game free to celebrate the release of a remake, accidentally did it early, and nearly gave away the new one.
[This roguelike game from 2013 is a personal favorite of mine, combining the brutal goodness expected of the genre with the engaging puzzle-slash-city-building lawyer. It's a game that I enjoyed in short bursts but immersed myself in for countless evenings: I've been eagerly awaiting the release of "Desktop Dungeons: Rewind," an overhauled version of this game.

With the release of Rewind, developer QCF Design made the generous decision to make the original game completely free for a limited time (opens in new tab).

Unfortunately, someone hit the wrong button and the original Desktop Dungeons was free with a 100% discount before Rewind was released. It instantly shot to the top of Steam's New & Trending category. This put QCF in a bit of a bind. Because theoretically, people could now claim both the original and the remake for free. Oops!

"Sorry for the confusion," QCF said in a statement (opens in new tab). 'We are trying to sort this out. Desktop Dungeons was supposed to be free when Desktop Dungeons launched: but the timing got confused."

"We have no idea what will happen if we claim Desktop Dungeons for free and how we will resolve this until we hear back from Valve. I don't know."

"I have no idea what will happen.

So the developers tried to do good and do the right thing for the long-standing community, but failed a bit. On top of that, people started complaining about paying for the original version, Rewind did not show up in their accounts, and others focused on finding ways to manipulate Steam's database to get Rewind for free.

This is still going on, but thankfully for QCF, Valve stepped in and helped. QCF posted a few hours ago, "If you claim Desktop Dungeons is free, you won't get Desktop Dungeon: Valve contacted me."

Sheesh! In other words, if you want it, you can buy Desktop Dungeons Rewind (opens in new tab), which I hope will be resolved in the next few days as Valve retroactively fixes the issue. This is a rather perfect example of a well-meaning developer trying to make a generous gesture and getting his wires tangled. All's well that ends well... Yes.

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