Outriders may not be a live service, but devs won't "abandon it after launch"
If there’s one thing Outriders studio People Can Fly wants you to know about its upcoming co-op shooter, it’s that it’s trying to be a “full package” at launch and not a live service that’s continually updated at an additional cost.
Despite incorporating many elements of the looter-shooter sub-genre of RPGs, Outriders won’t feature microtransactions, and outside of the demo releasing on February 25, isn’t free-to-play.
However, with many other titles continually expanding across multiple patches, People Can Fly’s commitment to distancing itself from the live service buzzword has led some people to question whether anything new will be added to Outriders post-launch.
“We don’t mean by ‘this is not a live service game’, that we’ll abandon the game immediately after launch,” Bartosz Kmita, game director on Outriders, explained to VG247.
“Even if the game isn’t super successful, we still have plans to make some adjustments to the balance and some other things. But if the game is more successful and people like it, we’re more than happy to create more adventures - it’s up to how players react to the game and how they feel overall about the game.”
Outriders is the first new IP from People Can Fly in roughly a decade, after the studio parted ways with Epic Games and became independent in 2015. It represents years of development work and a significant investment for the company.
“It’s the definitive flagship for us: People Can Fly,” Kmita added. “I can’t say [the same] about Square Enix, but they gave us a lot of support and had faith in the product - which started as a much smaller game.
“We see that faith in how much this has grown in the last couple of years. It’s a very important game for all of us and we hope that people will enjoy it.”
Outriders is slated for release on Xbox One and Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and PC via Steam, EGS and Stadia on April 1, after being delayed from 2020.
People Can Fly say that Outriders is an RPG at heart, and won’t have a standard shooter’s “stupid story” - find out how in our interview, here.
Although it’s a co-op focused game, Outriders won’t feature dedicated servers.