Loyal Subjects, and New Friends, Firstly: Thank you for supporting King Arthur's Gold through the years! We never could have dreamed that our little indie game would make it this far, and are totally blown away!
Secondly, the actual news: To celebrate its 8th birthday - Wednesday the 17th of April - KAG is becoming available on steam at no cost! The price should vanish around 12 noon PST, some of the team will be available around then to monitor things. KAG has enjoyed an active community and continued development for the last 8 years, and we are hopeful that turning F2P will ensure another healthy 8 years to come! Here's the rundown on how Free To Play will work:

• After it turns F2P it will be entirely funded by Patreon contributors and player customization DLCs on Steam! Check out KAG on Patreon here
• The game is developed in collaboration with the community, through open source game code contributions and bounties! View development on github here
• Fixes, new features, and official maps are added through democratic voting! This is run via the Official Discord, join here
• Funds are put towards keeping the game running - including the account system, hosting the official servers, providing support, and paying open source bounties. Depending on the level of support, we'll prioritise some things over others, and will endeavour to be as transparent as possible if that is necessary.

For Returning Players: Players who owned the game before the F2P date will keep all their customisation options, will be golden in the scoreboard, and will get some surprise perks as well. We encourage returning players to consider supporting KAG on patreon. There are some great perks including unique custom heads and special armour sets - and supporting us there helps keep the game sustainable into the future. However, as a further thank you for your support, all returning players also get the in-game equivalent of tier 1 support for life! For New Players F2P is about accessibility - we want free players to be able to enjoy the full spectrum of KAG gameplay. The fast paced action of TDM, the tragedy and triumph of an hour long CTF match, and even the deeply complex role play mods and 3d total conversions. That means full access to all mechanics of the game, including all gamemodes and mods. The only limitation for free players is customisation - and free players will be able to unlock the full customisation options with DLC purchases or patreon support. All players are also still able to set their gender and clantag without restriction. We hope you'll give the game a look, and take part in our community. All aboard!
To reiterate: as of this launch, the game will be solely supported by patreon and DLC purchases. DLC purchases are currently only available through Steam, a platform which has been hugely important to KAG over the years. That said, we expect patreon to be the major source of ongoing funding, and would really appreciate all players who want to see a sustainable KAG in the future to give the patreon a look.
We look forward to welcoming everyone who hasn't had a chance to play KAG yet into the community - and hope to see some old friends back on the battlefield as well! Lots of love, from all of us at THD.