Hello everyone,
The Life by You team is here with a very important update to our release schedule. After taking a look at your feedback and the scope of the work we’d like to accomplish to provide you with a fantastic Early Access experience, we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone the release of our Early Access to March 5, 2024. You can watch a message from our GM Rod announcing the change here.
We understand that you all can’t wait to play Life by You, however we take the quality of our game incredibly seriously and we want to ensure that you all have a fun time playing it. This will allow us to add some more content, tune some gameplay features, and squash a ton more bugs. We will continue to update you all on our progress, and find some Q&A below!
When is the new Early Access release date?
Our new release date is March 5, 2024.
Will it still be Early Access, and why?
We will still be in an Early Access period. Our intention to come out of Early Access with a complete AAA game remains, and we want our full release to be informed by your feedback! In order to do that, we know we need ample time for you all to play the game, provide your feedback, then time for us to develop upon that feedback and iterate. We know that Early Access is going to be a very important development period for us, and we would be remiss if we did not take this opportunity to develop alongside our community! Even though Early Access will be a crucial time for the game’s development, updates to the game, such as bug fixes and additional content, will continue after Early Access as well.
We also understand that Early Access titles require a lot of patience from our community as we work on the game and fix bugs, which is why we will continue to have the special introductory price of 39.99 USD, which will be changing after the Early Access period concludes.
Why are you taking the extra development time?
We made this choice with many factors in mind. First and foremost, we take your feedback very seriously! We’ve seen the feedback you’ve provided on various aspects of the game, including visual improvements, content requests, and more and hope to be able to implement some of it during this time. Additionally, seeing the community’s support, telling us to take our time for a high quality game, has really bolstered our decision to take this extra time to develop. We are working on a few main things during this extra time: Visual Improvements: We’re working on improving animations, lighting, character models and more.
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Gameplay Tuning: We’re tuning gameplay features to provide a more robust game at Early Access.
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UI Style Overhaul: We're in the middle of a major UI style overhaul based on your feedback; check out a preview below!
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Mod Tools: We’re continuing to improve our mod tools and modding flow alongside modders in the community.
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Bug Fixing: While we will continue to work on bug fixing during Early Access, we want to provide you with a smoother Early Access experience.
Above all else, we want you to enjoy Life by You! We know that taking this extra time to resolve bugs, streamline and add usability features, and improve based on your feedback will give you all a much better Early Access experience come March 5.
Of course, It will still be an Early Access title, with changes being made, content being added, bugs fixed, and features adjusted – and we will still be taking all of your feedback during this time period! We just know that a better initial experience with Early Access will help that feedback loop and, hopefully, lead to an even better full Life by You launch.
We plan on working on several key things during these next few months, and plan on giving you more specific details as we continue to work on Life by You!
Some UI changes that are currently underway include repositioning menus and reskinning the UI to a lighter color scheme:
Find full resolution videos of the changes on our Instagram.
What does this mean if I’ve pre-ordered?
If you’ve already pre-ordered, you will automatically be refunded through Epic. Please reach out to Epic here if you are experiencing issues with the refund. If you’d still like the pre-order bonuses, you will need to pre-order ahead of our Early Access date of March 5, 2024. You will still receive the same pre-order bonus and Discord Access for the first 100,000 Early Access players if you pre-order once more.
We appreciate everyone who has taken the time to Pre-Order, Wishlist, and leave us questions and comments! We’ve added an extra bonus for everyone for the start of Early Access, the Nightclub Vibe pack. And, once again, a huge thank you to you all for your continued support!
The Nightclub Vibes Pack and some pieces included:
What does this mean for the Early Access Discord?
We still plan on opening our Early Access Discord for the first 100,000 Early Access and Pre-order players! We know that a lot of folks have been excited to provide their feedback, and we are really looking forward to receiving it, so we will open up the Discord later this year. Look out for invites to this via the email you pre-order with.
NOTE: We will have room for Steam users once the game is available on Steam. Steam does not allow for pre-orders on Early Access titles.
Can we expect to continue to receive development updates?
Absolutely! We plan to continue to show what we’re working on, show you the progress that we’re making, and invite your continued feedback and questions. We may take a week off of our Friday Features here or there, since we have a longer runway to launch, but we will continue to make more types of content. This will give us time to write out blogs, work on video content, and introduce more of the team ahead of our launch, so stay tuned for that!
What types of feedback can we expect to be incorporated in the coming months?
This period for us is about enhancing and perfecting our existing feature set and gameplay. Along with our UI style revamp, our focus will be on optimizing the current aspects of the game. We will continue to value community feedback on usability matters, content suggestions, and thoughts on the types of features we should prioritize next. We see this as an essential time for fine-tuning and evaluating what resonates best with you all! We are confident that Life by You will offer a gratifying and immersive Early Access experience starting March 5.
How does this impact localization for Early Access?
Originally Life by You aimed to support English, French, German, and Spanish at launch. We’re happy to be adding two new languages to the list: Italian and Brazilian Portuguese! We now aim to have all of the above languages available during the Early Access program.
What platforms will you be available on for Early Access?
Early Access will be available on the Epic Game Store and Steam.
Again, thank you all so much for your continued support leading up to our Early Access! We know you’re just as excited as we are about Life by You, and we can’t wait to bring you an even better Life by You experience.
