Remember this issue? Well, Frontier have finally responded to a ~ 270 page long thread on their forums about the Steam key issue. Community Manager Edward Lewis wrote:

Hi everyone,

Some breaking news for you:

We’ll soon be offering Steam keys to anyone who bought Elite: Dangerous from the EliteDangerous.com store who would like a key, and to anyone who buys the game from our store in the future.

We always appreciate it when you buy direct from our store because it means we can put more into supporting and developing Elite: Dangerous, but we know a number of long-time players and backers like to play through Steam and we think it’s fair everyone has that option, not just new players.

Elite: Dangerous runs on Frontier’s servers, so we’ve been working with Valve to give you a way to seamlessly connect your Steam and existing Frontier accounts in a way that’s easy. It’s coming soon. From May 28 you’ll be able to generate a Steam key from your account page, and we’ll have full instructions right here on the forums closer to the time.

The team really has been working hard on this one, and we’re all super happy to finally have an answer for you. Thanks for bearing with us and thanks for playing, as always.

Edit: This applies to Kickstarter backers, too.

Ed

Good news everyone! 😀

So, the kickstarter campaign-funded Elite: Dangerous has been out for a little while now, and people are enjoying it (Metacritic giving it a 80/100). I for one really enjoy it, though I admit I should be playing it more.

Anyway, Frontier Developments, the company behind it made a serious U-Turn during the developments of the game, changing it from offline-enabled (as originally planned for the release) to requiring an always-on connection (though, they have made decent strides towards only requiring a very limited connection to be able to play the game.

Now, what many hoped would just be an April Fool’s joke, Frontier’s latest space sim made it onto Steam, despite David Braben’s original comment that he doesn’t see a reason for ever going there. Not only that, right now it not possible to activate your already purchased version of Elite: Dangerous on Steam.

Obviously, fans are pissed. Some of them have spent a decent amount of money on Kickstarter or in the Elite: Dangerous shop to fund the game, and having executive producer Michael Brookes tell people that there is no plan to give existing players Steam keys has just added fuel to the fire.

Being a friend of Steam, and a backer of a number of kickstarter campaigns, having one central location for my games, with the same friends list and same game tracking and achievements display is a very nice convenience, and as a backer of the game I’d like to state, for the record, that I’d feel very much entitled to a key, seeing that I helped fund the game, or at least at a very (very) high discount.

Edit: Looks like the complaints and requests are gaining traction:

Thanks for your tweets. We are looking at the possibility of providing #EliteDangerous Steam keys to existing players http://t.co/1E3u5ozcGQ

— Elite Dangerous (@EliteDangerous) April 2, 2015

Let’s hope for the best…