Stormgate, the multiplayer RTS that is the most well-known of StarCraft II‘s would-be spiritual successors, has announced that it will remove its early access tag on Steam with its next major update on August 5th. Frost Giant Studios is apparently considering this the game’s full launch, but it will be launching with most of its core features remaining unfinished. The map editor is available only in a partial version, co-op missions haven’t been updated in months and are still using earlier versions of the player factions, and the 3v3 Team Mayhem mode is not scheduled for public release until fall.

To help distinguish between what is and isn’t fully finished, the game’s menu will feature a new “Sigma Labs” section for in-development features, and that is where co-op missions and the map editor will reside come August, with the 12-mission Human Vanguard campaign and 1v1 PvP being the features considered “finished.”

Even those come with some caveats, though. The campaign will still not feature manual saves until a later patch, and there is no word on when or whether players can expect campaigns for the other two player factions, though the developers at Frost Giant Studios do promise the Vanguard campaign represents a complete story arc. Meanwhile 1v1 still has no specific timeline for finishing the roster of tier 3 units, and the Celestial faction is currently undergoing a major overhaul that will be only partially completed when the August 5th update arrives.

As for when the game’s core game modes will be finished, the announcement post gives an estimate of 2026, though that appears dependent on how successful the game is once it leaves early access.

Players have expressed skepticism over the game launching with its 0.6 patch rather than using the 1.0 label, so Frost Giant has responded by abandoning numbered patch designations entirely and is instead using only the build code names it has internally utilized from the beginning. The launch patch is code named Necrolyte, and a smaller follow-up patch has been dubbed “Necro-lit.”

Stormgate has been dogged by controversy since it first entered early access. Its art style and initial campaign missions were panned by early players, leading to significant visual updates and a total re-do of the campaign that was much better received. Frost Giant’s staff have flirted with using generative AI for the game’s story and been accused of astroturfing Steam reviews and exaggerating their StarCraft II and Blizzard pedigree. The studio has also weathered criticism for confusing messaging around studio funding and what crowdfunding packages included. For most of its lifetime, Stormgate‘s average concurrent player count has hovered around a hundred people or less. We’ll see if that number improves come August.