They're matching the pricing of the Kickstarter -- pledging more got you early access, so they didn't want people to get the same early access for less just be

They're matching the pricing of the Kickstarter -- pledging more got you early access, so they didn't want people to get the same early access for less just because the game is on Steam now. Once the game is actually ready, and not in Alpha, the pricing will become sane. It's the opposite of the e.g. Minecraft model where alpha was cheap.