Atomic Society will be removed from sale at the end of this week.
It's been a long, wild ride but the time has come to shut down our little studio and move on to new pastures. Don't worry, everybody who owns the game will still be able to play it. It will remain in your Steam library forever. However, the game barely sells anything these days, and there are still several costs involved in running a business (accountants, etc) so we have to start winding things up, starting by removing the game from sale.
I guess it's an appropriate time to say goodbuye. 2024 marks 10 years since a friend and I (with the optimism of complete beginners) asked “why don't we make a game for fun?”
2014 was a boom period for wannabe developers with crazy dreams. Steam Greenlight (remember that?) had been running for 2 years, the indie market was opening up, and Unity had made it possible for beginners to test their luck, for better or worse. Our idea of a post-apocalyptic town building game was a brand new concept back then. When we revealed it in 2016 (via Kickstarter), no one had heard of Frostpunk, Endzone, or Surviving the Aftermath. That Kickstarter still failed, but luckily a random YouTuber made a video of our fledgling pre-alpha and suddenly thousands of players fell in love with the game's potential and were clamoring to play AS. After yet another 2 years of grueling work, we released the first ever Steam version in Early Access (one of the most stressful things I've ever done!) and it sold quite well, considering we were making things up as we went. For a year or two afterwards we even earned basic salaries from this passion project - not much but we did get the privilege of doing something we loved.
However, it was really hard living up to everybody's expectations. A fully 3D town building/social sim game was a huge concept for a tiny group of hobbyists working around their day jobs! We could just about handle it, but we were slow, and the games industry moves fast. Richer competitors came along. Also, after 7 years of work on top of regular jobs, “burnout” was becoming a thing too. But we pressed on for 3 years in Early Access, getting the game to the best state, and finally let it go for good back in 2021 (during a real life post-apocalyptic event of Covid).
Unfortunately a game only really gets one big launch, and Early Access had been it for us, so that final release didn't do much, but at least finished and I was done. I couldn't even look at Steam without having a weird panic attack after we released. Making and marketing a game had worn me down (several real life disasters didn't help either). You need a lot of business stamina to stick it out in indie dev, and a peaceful real life. After we launched, our American coder friend had to get a real job, our artist had to give up dev to look after their elderly parent, and main coder Nick started a new family. It was okay though as we had nothing more to add to the game, but life had called us all in new directions.
I'm still extremely proud that we managed to create a pretty big 3D game out of a dream, that we stuck with it even when the problems seemed insurmountable, and that Atomic Society is still something different and quirky in an industry that likes to play it safe. For someone's first ever shot at game dev, it's not bad!
Thanks to everyone who bought and enjoyed the game and supported tiny, no-budget indie devs like us. I hope you all enjoyed being crazy post apocalyptic dictators, setting wild laws that might not show up in other games, and that these old blogs have been inspirational for anyone who wants to make their own gaming dream. If you believe in your game, you've got to make it!
However, now it's time for us to head out into the post-apocalyptic “wasteland” and see what other adventures are out there.
Best wishes from the Far Road Games team:
Scott, Nick, Mariana and Adam