yea you only get like one big sale wave on steam I learned from watching a Video on Project Zomboid's development so if you release a game prematurely it can really hurt you in the long run even if your game has massive improvements, honestly doing it like this with the donations/free access and then sending it on the market when ready is probably the best way for a game like this to grow, but yea I would imagine a steam launch on ver 1.0