The first piece of promotional art for Frostpunk 2, a survival city-builder game announced last week, shows a shirtless man kneeling in the snow, the word “liar” painted in black tar across his chest. This week, Frostpunk 2‘s developers said that some sort of sketchy situation regarding pre-orders for the game popped on the website Kinguin. Hooray for metaphors!
Read More: Frostpunk Is Getting A Sequel Called…Frostpunk 2
Frostpunk 2 is 11 Bit Studios’ follow-up to 2018’s Frostpunk, a relentlessly unforgiving city-building sim. Set in an alternate history in which the world freezes over at the end of the 19th century (yes, the Industrial Revolution did its thing real quick in that timeline), the first game tasked you with keeping a small population of survivors alive for as long as possible. It demanded meticulous resource management and tough decision-making, where nearly every choice you made typically came at the expense of something, or someone, else. 11 Bit Studios hasn’t shown anything beyond a cinematic trailer for the sequel, but says that Frostpunk 2 will feature a political bent that wasn’t present in the first game.
For fans of the original, Frostpunk 2 sounds cool. You also can’t officially buy it right now. (On Steam and the Epic Games Store, there are options to wishlist, however.)
As of this writing, there’s a page on Kinguin that purports to offer pre-orders for the game, sold via the retailer g2play.net (five stars! 1.7 million ratings!). It’s currently available for $US37.50 ($52). But 11 Bit Studios said in a tweet that the listing is from a “SHITTY SCAMMER,” while noting that, “we don’t know the price of our game yet, [and] we don’t have any keys.”
ANNOUNCEMENT!
We don’t know the price of our game yet, we don’t have any keys. Some SHITTY SCAMMER sells Frostpunk 2 on pre-order under umbrella of another CROOK Kinguin?!
Re-tweet & let’s make some noise to stop it. Media folks?@gameinformer @pcgamer @eurogamer @gamestar_de pic.twitter.com/sx7uX6sciq— Frostpunk ❄ (@frostpunkgame) August 19, 2021
Frostpunk 2 does not currently even have a release date.
Some observers point out that this is a common “grey market” practice, where third-party sellers put up pre-order keys for upcoming games on the market — despite not having keys available at that very moment — and then end up actually fulfilling the request when the game does eventually come up.
Again, the developer itself does not know the price of the game.
Kotaku pinged both 11 Bit Studios and Kinguin for clarification but did not hear back in time for press.
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