Stated in the product description but also clarified by a developer, in buying this version of the game you get all future content for the game for free, plus some other stuff.
(And the retail price will be 50$ )
EDIT: Plus it seems to be a very early version of the game (Pre-alpha?), buying it in this stage would be either to support the developers or wanting the bonuses that this early "founder edition" has.
(Or because you have money to spend and want the game as early as possible.)
Price will probably scale down as they hit alpha, beta and other milestones or at least I'm hoping it will although of course as it does so the various perks for purchasing the game early will also be removed gradually.
EDIT: I'm undecided on this business though, one one hand you pay to get a product way before release and usually with other perks but on the other you are paying (In this case.) nearly the double of what the retail price will be for being a tester to a currently pretty early pre-alpha build of the game with limited content and other issues.
I can see both sides though I'm not really decided on what is "right" if there's such a term for this.
(Of course it'll also differ from studio to studio, some are interested primarily in the extra money this brings and others try to balance it against say Kickstarter pledges or other stuff.)
EDIT: That and I tend to be over-optimistic and casually accepting of nearly everything....
The thing is in these days, track record of studios really doesn't guarantee anything anymore. I'm actually disgusted with these prices. It's a gamble after all like every pre-order, no matter if you include everything after release.
I'm just disliking the trend in the industry, every year seems like we are growing further and further away from what it used to be or should have been.
Implemented Starports (which are likely to be renamed). Ships are no longer built on planets, but from Starports in space. You must determine how much of your production a planet spends on its infrastructure, and how much it contributes to Starports it supports. Starports can be unanchored and moved across the map, but they cannot produce ships while moving and they suffer a production penalty the farther away they get from the planet that sponsors them. Be sure to protect your Starports; they are ripe targets for attack.
Starbases can now mine resources.
Added Durantium and Elerium as resources.
Enabled Medium and Large maps in Galaxy Settings.
Enabled Spiral, Globular, Clustered and Scattered Galaxy Types in Galaxy Settings.
Enabled settings for Star Frequency, Planet Frequency, Habitable Planet Frequency, Asteroid Frequency, Nebulae Frequency, Resource Frequency and Anomaly Frequency.
Starting Military AI is in, the AI will fleet up and begin to hunt you down.
New Hard point system for making it easier to build ships.
New Planet Generation System.
New system for automatically generating ships (so you have more designs available based on the techs you have access to).
Fixes
Memory usage dropped significantly.
Fixed an issue with the Idealogy Screen no unlocking points properly.
Fixed an issue with symmetry in the ship Designer.
Fixed crashes.
Fixed numerous little issues.
Fixed lots of little multiplayer issues.
Significant performance improvements.
Balance
New tech tree.
Improvements rebalanced.
Weapons rebalanced.
Anomolly exploration results rebalanced.
(pretty much everything rebalanced)
UI
New Planet Screen.
New Ship Yard Screen.
Enabled the full Tech Tree Screen.
Added Resources tab on the main screen.
Updated the Government Screen to include the Manufacturing Slider.
Updated Strategic Icons and implemented the new Nebula and dust cloud icons.
Made changes to darken the background nebulas.
Implemented Economy lines (graphical lines in the game world to visualize the moving of resources).
Added visual effects when ships fight (not the full battle screen, but something while we wait).
Galactic Civilizations III Beta Now Available
14 August - Yarlen
We’ve officially launched the beta! Bells are ringing, birds are singing, and it’s a beautiful day to dig up the archives of a forgotten race’s reality TV shows and use them to placate a restive populace that for some reason doesn’t see the value in mandatory six-month stints working the factories of the nearest forgeworld.
See beta gameplay in action here:
YouTube™ Video: Galactic Civilizations III Beta Gameplay
Views: 1,528
There's all this space out there in Galactic Civilizations III, but it's hardly empty. www.galciv3.com
To all of our Founders, thank you so much for your early support. Elite Founders, your feedback and bug reporting has been invaluable in getting Galactic Civilizations III ready for a wider audience. Fire up your Steam client, and it should patch your install to the beta automatically.
To anyone waiting for Galactic Civilizations III to be regular price before diving in, you’ll have to wait a little longer. Sadly, the game is $44.99 during the beta rather than its regular $49.99 price. We beg your forgiveness.
The Galactic Civilizations III beta includes:
Race-specific tech trees – Each race discovers the secrets of creation in its own way. Look out for Drengin invasions a whole age before anyone else can pull one off.
Ideology rework – Get an entire invasion fleet for free, take control of all planets inside your sphere of influence, and more!
Huge hulls – For when you absolutely, positively, have to kill every last filthy alien in the quadrant.
New colonization events – Thirty more events will challenge your ideology whenever you bring the light of civilization to a new world.
Terraforming – Maximize your adjacency bonuses by filling in gaps on your colonies with SCIENCE!
Map features – Durantium, Elerium, and Antimatter are now on the map, waiting to be harvested by your starbases. Watch out for black holes!
So much more – reworked planet traits, shipyard queues, automatic improvement upgrading, tons of new art, vastly improved rendering (ships are so shiny now!), the list goes on.
Read the full patch notes here[forums.galciv3.com].
Not a Founder? No problem! The Founders program has concluded, but you can purchase Galactic Civilizations III for $5 off the regular price during the beta directly from Steam.
Follow the development of Galactic Civilizations III throughout the beta, ask the team your questions live, and get sneak peeks of upcoming builds every Friday on the official Stardock Twitch channel[www.twitch.tv].
Probably when they entered beta, which also means current pre-orders won't get free access to the DLC or expansions, but it's quite a change from the previous 99$ or what it was.
(Support with new content and such seems to be planned to continue until 2020 according to some forum post but I don't know if that's completely accurate.)
Idiot. Beta does not always mean feature complete.
According to the International Standards Organization, yes it does. Not feature complete means it's not a beta, and the term was used to mislead/for marketing purposes.
I can never be free, because the shackles I wear can't be touched or be seen.
i9-9900k, MSI MPG-Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon, 32GB DDR4 @ 3000, eVGA GTX 1080 DT, Samsung 970 EVO Plus nVME 1TB
Link? I just searched ISO.org and didn't see anything re: beta software.
Although not a legitimate source, wikipedia does say "Some software is kept in perpetual beta—where new features and functionality are continually added to the software without establishing a firm "final" release." Other definitions I found often state design changes often occur.
Following your comment, Elite Dangerous beta shouldn't even be called that where not all of the content is even in it.
anyone else having more fun with Gal Civ II like I am ..? Never played it when it came out, the ulitimate edition isn't bad Using everything I can throw at it from the CCC (edge detect, and supersampling) it looks almost just as good.. Plays a lot better Having fun with it
2600k, GigaByte R9 290x, 8 gis of ram on Windows 7 X64
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