Dear Engineers,
With great reluctance we announce today that Plasma is going on an indefinite development hiatus.
It has been an incredible 6 year journey, Plasma being the longest and most ambitious project we ever worked on.
We are very proud of what our small team has achieved, and most importantly we are extremely thankful to our community for the support, time, energy, and passion that so many of you dedicated to the game. The community shared over 2300 Devices and 140 Worlds on the Workshop, amazing!
The past year has been a wild ride for us. We released our reveal trailer almost exactly a year ago, and we were blown away by the reception, with half a million views! And we were stoked to see the demo of Plasma being one of the most played demos of the Steam Next Fest we participated in.
This wild ride however, and the 6 years of immense dedication, have been very taxing on us. On our personal lives and energy but particularly on our budget. The sad reality is that the game is simply not financially viable with way more money going out compared to what’s coming in.
So what happens now?
As of now we stop working on any new content, features, or bug fixes for Plasma, with the possible exception of a minor update to tie any loose ends.
We will also exit Early Access and halve the price of the game. We hope this will give more people the opportunity to enjoy the game in its current form.
Beyond that, we don’t know exactly what the future holds for Plasma. We hope that Plasma will eventually find a larger audience, and if that were to happen it is possible that we would resume work on the game in some form. Other options are also being considered to keep the project going - from open-sourcing the game to finding a publisher or selling development rights to someone else who will continue work on it.
We want to thank our community, all of our engineers, for playing, building, sharing and engaging with us. Your creativity and skills have blown us all away, every week since the demo days with all of the devices and worlds that were shared on the workshop. We hope you will continue to be as creative and hone your engineering skills in Plasma!
Thank you all!
Marco, Patrick, Javier, Joi, Michele, Merlo, Joe
Questions & Answers
Why is this happening?
When we first started full-time development on Plasma, in September 2017, we had anticipated a 2-3 year development cycle and had budgeted accordingly, with the firm intent of self-funding and self-publishing.
We are now 6 years into full-time development and have spent over $750k (USD), all self-funded by revenue generated by our previous games.
As of writing, Plasma has sold 11,288 units (with a refund rate of 14.8%) for a rough revenue of $86k - that means we are currently sitting on a loss of over $650k.
Our monthly expenses to keep development going are $11k, but for the month of July 2023 we sold 728 units for a revenue of $6300 - so each month we operate we keep losing money.
As you can see from the numbers above, it has become totally unsustainable for us to keep development going from a financial standpoint, and it has been like this for a while.
We hoped releasing into Early Access would have at least allowed us to operate with some safety margin, but that hasn’t happened and is unlikely to happen for quite some time - the financial risk is just too great for us as a small independent business with young families to support.
Why not just… ?
We’ve thought about a lot of solutions - publishers, investors, 6 more months, Kickstarter, open sourcing it, etc. And we honestly can’t say what will happen in the future. What can be said with certainty is that currently the game is not financially viable and our small team needs some time to recharge.
What does “Development Hiatus” actually mean?
It effectively means we’re not going to do any more development on Plasma for the time being. We don’t want to use the words “Stop” or “Quit” as we honestly don’t know what will happen to it. We hope that development will resume one happy day but for now we need to take a break and re-evaluate our priorities and work-life balance.
Will the game still be playable on Steam?
Yes, absolutely, the game will remain on Steam in its current state with a reduced price tag.
What will happen to the Discord server?
We will keep the Discord server running and some of us will still be there to chat and see what the community is doing. We will also do an update to the game to fix out the Discord links to work indefinitely. So if you are new to the community come join us at https://discord.com/invite/plasmasandbox
