Battletech backer beta delayed by “unfortunate events”

Citing the Lemony Snicket clause of “a series of unfortunate events”, Harebrained Schemes have opted to delay the backer beta for their Battletech title. That news comes from a Kickstarter update post, in which the studio’s producer, Chris Klimecky, explains the situation.

‘Routine development hurdles’ sums it up fairly well. First, systems in their development infrastructure required an update, but that itself resulted in more problems. According to the post, “[the] infrastructure upgrade process caused several issues including delays in getting new versions of the game built. This consumed time from our Lead Engineer, our Test Lead, and myself.” That meant Harebrained couldn’t test their builds-in-progress for a few weeks, and cost them some time.

In addition, a needed update for Unity (the engine Battletech will be running on) caused further delays. “While the upgrade succeeded in improving the game’s performance, the changes in Unity broke a lot more of our systems than anticipated,” Klimecky says.

Ultimately, the 15 March target date for the backer beta released slipped further away: “We decided it was best to stop the crunch and focus on finishing the infrastructure and editor work before reviewing our quality level and reassessing the target date for the Backer Beta.”

A new date will be announced for the Battletech backer beta as soon as Harebrained Schemes feel confident about hitting said date. Meanwhile, the final release date for the project is now in the “Late Summer / Fall” window.