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Chunky DLCs and Price Increases
🕑 Added 2024-09-05 08:00:04 +0000 UTCThis week we’d like to broach a matter for the sake of transparency. Reality in the context of global gaming industry trends has set in, and the result is hard times for everyone. We are no exception and, since we have an insatiable desire for creating quality DLCs, this has left us in a rather precarious situation.
Financially, our DLCs need to break even for it to make sense for us to produce them. Indie game development is a passion, that’s true, but it’s also a business that needs to sustain itself and the developers. To that end, we have decided to increase the price of our Sunfire and Moonshadow expansion (SaM), along with the Season Pass, which will of course only affect future purchases.
A Little Background
We were halfway through the development of SaM when we knew that its scope had grown far beyond what we had originally planned. We were, however, happy with the path it had taken, and wanted to keep a consistent quality throughout as well as enough “bang for your buck”.
Player feedback has vindicated its length and quality, with some saying that the expansion’s breadth encompassed hundreds of hours of additional gameplay. We are happy for it to have had so much good feedback, but there remains an issue.
Sales
Our revenue predictions were spot-on, but due to the increased scope of the expansion, our costs were far higher than expected. With inflation ravaging our studio much like it has most of the world’s economy, the expansion was very expensive for us indeed. This is why we will be increasing its price.
Old Acquaintances
This DLC took longer than we expected, but by this point, we had already learned our lessons from the previous expansion. Again, we put in a great deal of extra time and added many additional features, as it would seem we cannot help ourselves. Thus, we set a realistic price – one that we intend to keep the same. Unfortunately, however, sales on this DLC were not as high as we would have hoped.
The Future
Our next big release will be our upcoming region DLC, which – like all the others – has already been enriched by a large scope and a wealth of ideas. Again, it seems that this is just what we do. The number of art assets, NPCs, questlines, and stories in the Riven Realms is growing larger by the day, and we want to do our best to bring you as much added value as possible.
To help pay for all this, we will be selling this third DLC at a slightly higher price.
Lastly, we are considering adding some cosmetics for sale to those who may be interested; these would be alternative sets of clothing for Companions and would be marketed as supporter content. If you would be interested in these sorts of additions, please let us know – as always we are eager to hear from you. You can join our Discord and interact with us directly if you so wish.
Conclusions
And so, to summarize:
The price of Sunfire and Moonshadow will go up to $19.99
Old Acquaintances will stay at $8.99
The Season Pass’s price will increase to $34.99
The price of the third DLC (in the works and included in the Season Pass) is yet to be determined, but it will better reflect our production costs
We are considering putting Companion cosmetics on sale and would appreciate your feedback about this idea
Of course, the decision to increase some prices did not come about easily and we understand that this is not good news. However, we also believe in transparency and sometimes unfortunate things happen, too – but there’s a silver lining: we will have one more sale before these new costs come into effect. So, if you haven’t grabbed what you’re interested in yet, now might be the time to do so! That’s a wrap for this week, so we’ll say goodbye for now and wish you luck out there, as we always do. Stay safe, stay vigilant, and conquer the wasteland!
– The Lost Pilgrims Team
