Another excellent example of this working is Factorio.

The original game doesn’t cost a fortune, it’s made by a small extremely dedicated team. They polished it so hard the shine made everything else look like vanta black. Playing Factorio ruins other games because the depth and quality of everything else is so poor in comparison.

The game came out in like 2013 early access. Full release completed in 2020. A decade after initial launch, they are going to offer a DLC, that will cost money.

Absolutely happy to pay for a DLC for that perfection.

Agreed. If CA charged a few bucks for the 1.6 update, I’d have bought it without hesitation. Same with 1.5.

The best example right now is Factorio. There’s a new expansion coming out in October. It isn’t free, but it adds basically an entire new game on top of an already excellent and fully fleshed out game. I’m gonna buy it the day it goes on sale without question and without waiting for reviews.

Then there’s crap like Starfield where they added 1 mission for $7.

Slay the Spire is current $8.50. Starbound is $4.50 (both are on sale rn for future readers) if you’re looking for a space game.

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I’ve purchased Stardew Valley on 3 different platforms. I’ve never done something stupid like that with any other game. And idc because it’s only like $15 and he seems like a good guy. You take care of us, we take care of you.

Yeah, agreed, a good DLC is awesome. The example that comes to mind for me is From Soft. Top notch content, delivered well after the release of top notch games, at a fair price, which expand on the level and boss design and improve it every time, while stepping up the difficulty for those who loved and fully completed the base content.

I wish every game I ever loved would get DLC like that.

I have bought it twice, possibly on sale both times but still. I’d never heard of it, and I’d never played any style of game like that, but Nintendo advertised it to me when it launched on the Switch and I eventually bought it. Later my family started taking the Switch more and I eventually bought it again in Steam. No regrets! Happy to support good games from small developers that don’t break the bank!

I would rather buy it again or have the update/dlc released after some sort of community milestone in buying and giving away copies.

I really like the fact that its all one complete game and also every gaming person should have a copy, regardless if they can personally afford it.

Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with paid DLC that’s done because the dev loves the game and wants to make more of it.

I sail the high seas from time to time, and I think I’ve bought Stardew 3 times now. It is an incredible game loop, and I will support the dev however I can.

But I have absolutely no problem with that whatsoever. Dude wrote a good, solid, complete game, sold it for a fair price, and made bank. That is the business model I want software to be sold under, and I’m thrilled to see it working for him.

The Apes always pay their debts.

What about the Bored Ape?

Yeah but concerned ape added about half a game’s content with that new island. Nobody would’ve blinked if they charged for it.

This. It all boils down to value for money. 5 dollars for a skin cosmetic is bullshit. 5 dollars or more for DLC with meaningful content is okay.

Elden Ring’s DLC is pretty atypical though, even as far as DLCs are concerned. Comparing it to past FromSoftware DLCs for Dark Souls, Shadow of the Erd Tree is like the size of all of the Dark Souls DLCs combined.

Expecting every DLC to match Shadow of the Erd Tree is setting yourself up for disappointment. Would it be nice? Of course, but it would be unrealistic to expect every DLC to match it.

Yeah easy for him to say, he’s a one-man operation, so he gets ALL the profit to himself. Probably millions of dollars at this point… he’s set for life. He doesn’t really need DLC money. But other devs probably do.

The cross-platform saves probably wouldn’t be that hard from a technical perspective. The game is written using MonoGame and likely doesn’t have that many changes to the core of the game for ports. From what I know about MonoGame (which is admittedly only a little, so I may be wrong!!) the engine abstracts pretty much everything.

I think the stumbling blocks are outside factors. Games often don’t update on different platforms at the very same time because console vendors take longer to vet updates. A game save from an updated PC version synced to a console version without the update could break it. Also setting up and maintaining the server infrastructure for syncing is its own can of worms. Certainly doable but it would pretty much require him to outsource that and he may simply not want that.

Exactly. A good content DLC should be similar to buying a new game, but cheaper for both the devs and players.

Sure. He made many millions of dollars within the first couple years of releasing it. That’s why he can pretty much do whatever he wants, including continuing to work on the game without charging additional money for it. And of course, it keeps selling more copies, and will for many years to come, so he has tons of money continuing to flood in.

He certainly seems like a pretty grounded guy, and it’s nice that he tries to be cool about stuff, including not gouging the player base for more money. Being an individual has huge advantages compared to being a corporation, in some ways. A corporation would pretty much be obligated to maximize profit. He can just be pleased that he brings joy to millions of players, and has already made a fortune.

Yeah. He deserves his success, and I’m happy to hear he’s doing good things for his customers… But this kind of reads like a slight on all the developers who release DLC for profit. The vast majority of companies don’t succeed this well on any game.

So I’m glad he’s said this, but I also don’t think poorly of devs who release for-profit DLC, either.

Charging for updates isn’t intrinsically bad. A good expansion pack at a fair price can be a good deal for both the players and the devs. But there is a modern trend of games trying to squeeze players for every dollar they can get; and when content is deliberately held back in the hopes of selling it for a bit more money later, it starts to become a bit perverse. The game itself can become an advertisement for selling more bits of the game in the future - and it just devalues the experience.

In the specific case of Stardew Valley, the game is a major hit - and it continues to sell well. So even though existing players are getting the new content for free, the developer is still going to get paid. Obviously he could get a lot more if he charged for it, but he has decided he doesn’t need that. He’d rather just make the game as good as he can make it.

Here’s a personal story of mine, about a different game: Several years ago I was selected to be a beta tester for a major game franchise. I was a very well known member of that community, know for making custom balance patches and bugfixes - and so they wanted me to test their new release. I was pretty excited to be a part of that. But when I got my first beta copy, I didn’t really play it much because the game barely worked. It crashed very frequently, and so my feedback was basically just “it crashes when I do this”. I figured it wasn’t worth trying to give balance ideas when the game was in that state. Anyway… time went on, and things didn’t improve much. There were some graphics changes and a bit of UI work… but it was still super unstable. The release date was getting pretty close. But before it was even possible to do a full playthrough without constant reloads to dodge game-ending bugs, there was detailed plans posted on the beta forums talking about the first 4 DLC packs that would be released after the game launched.

I stopped taking AAA games seriously after that. I was totally disillusioned. They were launching their AAA game in non-functional state, with the hope of fixing the worst bugs in a day 1 patch. Very little useful playtesting was done, and so the features of the game were a bit slap-dash, but yet somehow they were dividing up content for as many DLCs packs as possible. They didn’t even have a functional game and yet they were talking about how to sell more stuff. It was a real eye-opening experience for me; and it really colours the way I see other games that launch in a buggy state, where pretty much the only thing that works is the in-game store.

So yeah, I can appreciate the view that maybe charging for updates is a slippy slope that Concerned Ape doesn’t want to step onto; even if he does have very solid footing for if he wanted to tread that ground a bit.

I agree. Good expansions are usually worth the money.

I don’t know so much about Terraria because I don’t really play it but Minecraft makes most of its money through merchandise. The game is more vehicle to sell green plushies and funko pops than it is to make money itself.