I'll pour out a hellish pint to this news.

When an "in development" game is removed from the store before the actual release, are buyers entitled to ask for a refund?

That's pretty cheap; I've bought games on sale that cost more.

No, because it will keep getting updates even though it's not on the store. Also, you knew it was in-dev when you bought it and accepted the risks. I'm sure everyone knows of in-dev games that never got finished, and nobody gets refunds.

Early access? Pass.

Oh what the fuck, the game's great. I've supported devs since the very first playable versions, but this breaks my heart. What a massive, massive disappointment.

Looking over the most recent patch notes, it seems the game will enter the alpha phase proper very soon. I suspect the developer will have frequent beta builds and infrequent stable builds and doesn't want to update the game on Gog all the time with beta builds but will keep updating the game here with the stable version. There's a thread on Steam about the delisting so I'll keep an eye on that - see if he responds.

...That doesn't change the fact that $17 is pretty cheap and that I've paid more than that for games on sale. So there isn't any "nope". You want it DRM-free, that's the price.

Of course it is, for me.
You are welcome to have a different opinion, but you cannot change my opinion and you are not entitled to do so.

It's nice that we talked about it...

and yes, I bought a lot of games for more than 17 bucks too, but not this one and not for an EA game that will be removed here.

I don’t buy in-dev games, that’s why I asked this question. As this is a good way to see if we are, or not, entitled to a complete product or if in-dev games are mostly a dishonest scheme.

If that's the case, I hope at the minimum the game returns when less frequent updates are required.

This hasn't stopped Caves of Qud from updating every weekend like clockwork. but I suppose not everyone has a build system spun up and ready to generate for them.

It hasn't received an update every weekend but it does get a metric sh...edload of updates. I've been archiving them whenever possible.

They're obviously not dishonest because you are told up-front what the deal is, namely that the games are in some state of being unfinished, that you should feel comfortable buying an unfinished game, and there are no guarantees other than the usual 30-day one. This info isn't hidden or anything. In general I don't buy in-dev games either, but I've made a few exceptions when I was interested in the early state and felt reasonably confident that they'd be finished eventually.

The simple fact that I ended up asking this question is a proof that no, the information is not so obvious. Until now I was expecting that getting the full game at some point was guaranteed, like what is done with other methods of pre-order.

Paying now for maybe getting the full product one day sounds so crazy that I would never have guessed this is what "in-dev" actually means.