The Repopulation is indeed on track to resume early access later this month as planned.
“Servers will be opening up to all current players on the 12th of this month,” Idea Fabrik COO Sarrene’ Grant told forumgoers this afternoon.
“All backers and current players of The Repopulation can enter the game starting at midnight EST on Sunday. Downloads are open, as some of you already know. Your game account login will be exactly the same. Nothing has changed there. We wanted to make sure that everyone that bought and supported the game had the same access as before. If you forgot your password you can use the link provided on the launcher to reset your password. If you have any problems logging in please feel free to post that up. A ticket system will be in place after the transfer is complete. We will be turning The Repopulation sales on at Steam between the 19th and the 26th of this month depending on how the servers hold up to the Alpha testing.”
The Repopulation, first Kickstarted in 2012, was crippled at the end of 2015 by a nasty public contract dispute between its original development team, Above & Beyond, and Idea Fabrik, which leased the Hero Engine. The Repopulation has been offline ever since. Though A&B spent 2016 working on survival sandbox Fragmented with the intent of getting Repop back online, early this year the studio announced it had sold the game to Idea Fabrik instead, a move that, we were told, was in the best interests of the game and the playerbase. Idea Fabrik has previously stated it will re-release the alpha, then progress to a beta and then launch as development continues, favoring a business model that is more microtrans than pay-to-win.