Secret Mode has explained why no DLC for Star Wars: Galactic Racer has been announced yet, while Zero Company’s success has not saved its developer from layoffs.
Given how much of a hit Star Wars: Galactic Racer has been (so much so that Lucasfilm plans to keep being ‘flexible’ about which studios it partners with on future games), you would think developer Fuse Games and publisher Secret Mode would already have DLC in the pipeline. Ahead of launch, creative director Kieran Crimmins mentioned the team will do ‘some sort of DLC’ and Fuse Games CEO Matt Webster reiterated that after the game came out.
Why DLC hasn’t been announced
A month later, though, and fans have been getting so antsy about the lack of DLC news that Secret Mode has had to explain why the team still hasn’t announced anything.
‘We’ve mentioned it in a lot of our announcements regarding hotfixes and the quality-of-life update, but the developers are continuing to work on the game,’ reads a post by a Secret Mode admin from the official Galactic Racer Discord server (as spotted by fan site Bespin Bulletin). ‘The reason why we don’t telegraph a lot of these updates is because we don’t want to overpromise, so we want to ensure any changes are locked in before we talk about them.’
Between this and Crimmins’ vague allusion to DLC, it very much sounds like while Fuse Games and Secret Mode might have some ideas for substantial post-launch updates, they’ve yet to commit to anything. This is a smart approach since it means they can take into account the fan response from players and get a better idea of what sort of DLC they’d want to see. For example, nobody could’ve predicted the viral sensation that is rival racer Biddy Blas, so now Fuse Games knows it’s worth keeping him around for any future DLC and maybe even giving him an expanded role.
Listening to the community
These comments also line up with what Fuse Games CEO Matt Webster said shortly after the game’s launch, when he was questioned on DLC plans in an interview with The Game Business.
‘We are going to learn more in the next 72 hours than we ever will have done throughout the development of this game,’ said Webster. ‘Modern games and modern gamers expect there to be extensions and enhancements or something and we hope to be able to do things like that for this game. But the true thing is we need to do that in concert with the community and we don’t have all the answers.
‘So, we need to see, we need to reflect, we need to watch, we need to hear, we need to listen, we need to participate together with players and that will help inform some of the ideas that we’ve got and it will help determine where we go next and when.’
While that means that Galactic Racer DLC isn’t imminent it should hopefully mean it’s worth the wait when it does arrive.
Zero Company developer layoffs
Things aren’t as rosy for the other Star Wars hit this year: strategy game Zero Company. After news broke that most of developer Bit Reactor had been furloughed (as in put on unpaid leave), signs pointed to Zero Company being successful enough for the studio to start rehiring staff.
Publisher EA even proudly confirmed the game had sold one million copies, and a subsequent patch added new difficult modifiers alongside a litany of bug fixes, which boded well for potential DLC updates. Unfortunately, multiple Bit Reactor employees have posted to LinkedIn to say they’ve been let go from the studio. It’s unclear if any of the affected employees had been brought back after being furloughed or simply weren’t asked to return to their roles, with senior environment artist Ryan Lopez only saying they were let go ‘after a three month furlough.’
Galactic Racer doesn’t have official sales figures, but Webster told VGC that things were looking ‘healthy’ in its first couple of weeks.
