Swimsanity! has arrived with a splash this week, and many gamers are relieved to hear that current DLC and upgrade plans will not leave the online community behind paywalls. Given other recent games such as Battlefield V, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Rocket Arena received harsh criticism for charging for the game, and then charging for additional content, this feels like a wave of good news. While good news, this doesn’t exactly mean that all DLC and upgrades will be free, but, there is a chance.
Decoy Games, in an interview with TechRaptor, made it very clear that their anticipated support for the game would not cease upon release. Instead, the team has already laid plans that include free updates, as well as DLC. These come from ideas that were cut in the development phases. Most reassuring is the team’s commitment to using caution when rolling out these updates, with a keen focus not to split the online community by requiring DLC to participate in online matchups.
It is not clear exactly what these updates and DLC will include, though existing commentary from Decoy Games has fueled a significant amount of speculation. According to the interview with TechRaptor, co-founder Ahmed Abdullah stated, “Really there is a treasure [trove] of ideas and game modes that we want to add to the game…”. Ahmed’s brother, Khalil added to this excitement by sharing, “There have definitely been some pretty cool co-operative and versus game modes that we cut out. Game modes, weapons, unleashes, and power-ups that we ended up throwing out. Honestly, if we added all our ideas into the game at launch, it would probably be twice to three times the size it is right now.”
Most gamers in the modern era expect games to be supported, at least for a limited amount of time post-release to ensure high functionality. For multiplayer-focused games like Swimsanity!, it seems even more necessary to provide free updates and support as long as players are playing the game (eg: Minecraft). Knowing the developers have not only planned for support and updates into the future allows players to feel confident to give the game a chance. Also knowing there is enough creative force behind the game to expand it by double or triple furthers the odds of the game being a success.
Will Decoy Games’ approach work? Thus far, it seems like a very reasonable approach, and draws upon similar expansions like Splatoon 2’s Octo Expansion, which lets players with the expansion appear in multiplayer with unique weapons and features, however, they remain in the same multiplayer format as all players without the expansion. It also makes clear that there may actually be paywalls for DLC, in addition to free updates, which seems like a fair compromise.
Source: TechRaptor
NEXT: EPOS GSX 300 External Sound Card Review - I Know What You’re Thinking, And You Definitely Need This
