Why is the game not on Steam?
We are fully aware that Steam will offer a lot of additional exposure and likely a large increase in sales. There's several reasons we are not going to Steam in the near future, and the opinions also vary greatly within the Team of Anego Studios, but here's Tyrons take:

• I see Steams 30% revenue cut as unreasonably high and selling on Steam means we either can't sell the game on our site at a lower price or we can't provide users with a steam key upon purchase.
• I don't agree with Steams rather restrictive refund policy nor their restrictions on concurrent play on the same Steam account.
• We're doing fine financially. More money is unlikely to accelerate development at this point. I highly value being a small, nimble and highly effective team of developers.
• Our full vision for the game is still far from being implemented. If we go on Steam, we would like to release a mostly complete version of Vintage Story
• Personally, I'm a big fan of going our own way by building our own infrastructure, as evident by our existing account system, mod database and online store.
• Fast growth carries several risks on its own. Despite not being on Steam we have experienced consistent growth for the past 7 years.

That being said, we do agree that it would be wise to release it on Steam eventually. We do appreciate Steams ability to reach a large audience as well as offering country specific pricing.

Does Vintage Story ever go on sale / be in a bundle / offer a %-off coupon?
We offer a Family Pack which gives 4 game accounts at a significant discount compared with buying them individually. We also sometimes give out use- and time-limited coupons to influencers with a target audience from low-income countries, such as Russia or Brazil. Beyond that there are currently no plans to sell the game temporarily or permanently at a lower price. Discounts on bulk purchases (20+ accounts) are a possibility, please contact us if you are interested.

How finished/playable is this game?
We consider Vintage Story to still be in early access, not due to its lack of stability and performance, but because our full vision is far from implemented. The game is fully playable and offers rich and varied gameplay from the Stone Age through to the Steel Age, including a number of story elements. The game is being developed with a carefully planned release cycle to always offer very stable gameplay. As for its completion - we cannot really put a time on it because we see no reason not to keep adding new content for many years to come. That being said, going through the main challenges alone should easily offer at least 100 hours of engaging gameplay.

Is this game actively developed?
Yes, we build and release a major update roughly every 5 to 9 months, and we have been doing so for the past 7 years with no plans of stopping. We are sufficiently funded to keep developing the game for many years to come.

Are there any plans to ever bring VS to mobile or consoles?
Unlikely that we can realisticly bring the full VS experience to mobile, but we do hope get the game on consoles some day. The game does currently run on a Steam Deck - with a bit of configuration required, check the forum for setup details.

I love what you guys are doing, how can I contribute?
We are always very much appreciative of players that want to go beyond just buying the game. Here are some things that are always helpful to us:

• Leave a review of the game so others can judge better if its for them.
• Find a bug as listed on the Bug bounty program! We pay a little for it too.
• Help us track, narrow down and consolidate all bug reports that we receive on Discord, the forums and Github. Ideally, all bug reports eventually end up in a well formatted form on our issue tracker on Github.
• Be an active community member! Participate in the discussions on our Discord server or our forums. Help out new players. Join a multiplayer server 
• Spread the word so other know about the game, but please still respect other communities and their rules. Try avoid spamming the same message repeatedly.
• Become a modder! Adding new content to the game keeps players engaged. Modding Vintage Story may be easier than you think.
• Contribute to our wiki. There are many guides and pages still in need of being written. Please request edit access for the wiki on our Discord channel in #wiki or on the forums. 
• Translate the game or the wiki to your language.
• Build fancy stuff, show it around or create and upload Lets play videos of the game to increase our visibility. Also we, the devs, always enjoy watching how others experience the Vintage Story, which also provides us with valuable feedback to further improve the experience.
   

Why did you add Feature X instead of Y? Feature Z is annoying, why don't you remove it? Why is my Feedback not being listened to?
We are serving a very large player base, each with their own unique vision of how the game should be like. Particularly with survival sandbox games, the vision of players can vary greatly. This is why we offer immense customization options right from within the game as well as invested a lot of time&effort into making the game moddable for those cases where we cannot offer easy customization. Many of the changes we do inevitably will please one portion of our players and displease another portion. There is also our own strong vision of how the game should be and play like - if we were to ignore that, we would very quickly loose motivation to continue developing. In short, it is not possible for us to accomodate everyone's wishes. That being said we do try our best to listen to the needs and wishes of our community!

Can I make a video or stream of Vintage Story and/or monetize such content?
Yes, certainly. Record away! For special enquiries feel free to contact us.  We much appreciate if you drop us a link of the video / stream on Discord in the #videos-and-streams channel so that we can watch it too! You are also free to use any of our game assets (including music), as long as it is for Vintage Story related content.

Can I monetize Vintage Story game servers?
It depends. We are highly concerned that server monetization derails into Slot machine / Pay2Win mechanics, so anything that would go in this direction will likely be highly discouraged by us. We do not have a clear consensus on this topic, but here's how we feel about some of the monetization mechanics

• Purely donation based: Sure, go for it
• Subscription based: Paying a recurring fee to get access to a game server is fine by us
• Digital goods
  • Purely aesthetic goods: Thinkable.  (Please contact us with a plan of your goals)
  • Game mechanic altering goods: No, we highly discourage that, especially anything that gives the player any sort of advantage over other players
• Ad-Funded: Fine for ads outside the game, thinkable when inside the game (Please contact us with a plan of your goals in that case)

Can I create VS Themed merch?
Yes, as long as it is unmistakenly apparant that it is unofficial merch. You may also not use it to advertise non VS related content. So for example you are free to use VS Art to print a T-Shirt of your Vintage Story Community if it also has a large logo / banner of your community on it. You may not use our Art to advertise unrelated products and communities. All merch that you produce must be clearly identifiable as unofficial.

Is there a demo I can try?
Not currently. There is a free classic version of the game, but it does not represent the games current state. We do have a generous refund policy, however.

I'm trying to buy the game with a credit card, but it was declined. What to do?
In all of these cases so far this is the issuing bank declining the transaction. Please contact your bank about it.

Payment on your site fails / Client area site doesn't load / The password reset doesn't work / I cannot log in / Installing the game fails
Disable your antivirus program, the false positive detection rates on these are insane. If that helped, feel free to write us the detection name, antivirus product name and version via support ticket and we'll report it as false positive. If that doesn't work, feel free to ask on the forums, our Discord server or through support ticket.
For password resets and login issues in particular, make sure you're using this page for resets. We use two separate account systems between the forums and the game client. Oftentimes players will reset their forum account password on accident when trying to reset their game account password.

I would like a refund.
Please write us a support ticket in that case. See also our refund policy.