And so it was on the 1385th day of development that a messenger of the Lord appeared to Crate Entertainment and said unto them, “You hath labored well and faithfully and now, at long last, thou shalt releaseth thy Grim Dawn Alpha upon the world, if it is good”. And so then did Crate know that alpha should be released, for the alpha seemed good. And thus they issued forth emails to the people of Humble Store and to the people of Valve saying unto them “Lo, I doth beseech you now to make good all preparations in accordance that Grim Dawn Alpha may be released with due haste!”
So yeah, it has been a long time coming but the release of Grim Dawn Alpha is nearly upon us! Let us rejoice in its coming and give thanks to the many supporters, both fans and volunteers, who made this possible.
We have labored hard these last few weeks to resolve critical issues so that your first experience in Grim Dawn is not overly marred by bugs and stability issues; though certainly there will still be some less common crashes, various oddities and numerous smaller issues. Please remember that this is an indie title developed by a tiny start-up studio with a fraction of the developers and funding of major ARPG productions. We are not really trying to compete with the big boys, at least not yet, and our small budget means we do not need to sell a large number of copies for this to be successful. There are some limitations on what we can achieve in terms of features and polish, but we have poured our hearts and years of our lives into creating Grim Dawn and feel that we have created an enjoyable experience for those interested.
I know what you are thinking now: “cut to the chase and give us the release date already”. We expect the Alpha download to go live tomorrow, May 15th. Short notice I know, but we were not screwing around when we said we planned to release it without further delay once we felt it was ready. We debated releasing next Monday to be safe but we know how eager you all are to get your hands on alpha and we are a fly by the seat of our pants kind of studio, so… here we go!
[b]***Your Grim Dawn Steam key can be claimed from your Grim Dawn download page through Humble Store regardless of when or where you purchased. To get to your download page, enter your email address used to purchase/back Grim Dawn here: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/keyresender
You’ll get an email with a link to your download page, and then you will be able to claim your Steam key.
If you have trouble retrieving your key or have changed email since the Kickstarter or your original puchase, you can contact Humble Store Support and they will help get you straighted out.
To obtain the build, simply retrieve your Steam alpha key from Humble Store and then add it to your game library on Steam using “Add a Game” in the lower left under the game list. From there, select “Activate a Product on Steam” and a box will appear that will let you enter your key. The game will then appear in your library and begin downloading. Once the download is complete, you can install and play.[/b]***
The initial alpha release will be distributed through Steam because that proved to be the easiest way to provide an exclusive alpha for backers and put out patches while we are still actively developing the game and fixing issues. Other download options may be rolled out later depending on how long alpha lasts / what we are able to manage. We realize that some people have a hatred of Steam and hope that it will not upset anyone excessively, but it was the fastest and best solution given the complexity of trying to set up our own authentication server due to the numerous different pre-Kickstarter / Kickstarter / post-Kickstarter reward tiers with different levels of access and numbers of keys, partnering with Humble Store to handle all the key distribution and not having given out keys that were uniquely tagged to each reward / game tier.
To be absolutely clear: there will still be a DRM-free, Steam-free final release for those who desire it, as we promised. However, if anyone just has an absolute aversion to Steam and does not want to participate, we will provide you with a full refund. To be fair though, we did say Alpha would be “exclusive” and did not say it would be DRM-free; but we also did not say it would be on Steam, as we had no idea at the time how we would actually release it. Up until recently, we were not even sure if we would be able to have the alpha on Steam for the people who wanted it, but it actually proved to be the easiest option for us when we started looking into it. So I apologize to any die-hard Steam haters. If this party is not for you, just email us at [email protected] with the subject “alpha refund” and we will make it so.
For the rest of you, we cannot wait to hear your feedback on the alpha and will be setting up new sections on our forums for people to post alpha discussions and to report bugs. Thank you all again for your patience and continued support! 
Additional Info:
Please note, there are two different types of keys, Grim Dawn installation keys, which will be used to install the final game if you do not activate it through Steam and then Steam alpha keys. Grim Dawn installation keys are longer and do not work on Steam. Here is an image of the two keys as they appear on a Humble Store page:
Upgrades:
It has been possible to purchase upgrades since July 12th, 2013 - see Upgrades now available! for directions.
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