The hardest part of releasing a live service game is likely maintaining players post-launch. Finding a balance between delivering frequent content and ensuring that content is exciting and brings back players is a challenge many games never overcome. Grounded, Obsidian Entertainment's multiplayer open-yard survival game, is currently evaluating exactly that situation. Going forward, Obsidian says that it's going to be slowing down the pace of content updates for Grounded, dropping its previous monthly content pace.
In a lengthy post from the Grounded development team at Obsidian, the team announces that it has some big plans currently in development. However, due to the size and scope of some of these additions, the team needs some extra time. That's especially true since the Grounded team is relatively small compared to the teams for Obsidian's larger projects. As such, Grounded will be receiving updates less often, though only "slightly" less frequent. These updates will be suitably larger as a result.
Obsidian's Grounded team also frames its upcoming updates in an interesting way. It says that these larger updates will also be "more meaningful" and with "better content," as if the tighter schedule on previous content limited the team's opportunities. Regardless, the message implies that Obsidian sees something special arriving in the next update or updates coming to Grounded. To describe them as especially "meaningful" to the Grounded experience is an impressive level of confidence.
While Obsidian is going to be taking as much time as it needs for Grounded's upcoming updates, that doesn't mean that this new release schedule is set in stone. Obsidian adds that it's open to considering different cadences based on feedback from Grounded players. Grounded remains in Early Access, after all.
As part of today's announcement that Grounded content updates will be spread out more, Obsidian also announced certain changes coming in update 0.10.0. Features include new mirrored versions of certain building pieces, additional building pieces, more frequent giant food spawns, an expanded Photo Mode, and the addition of the ARC.R robot which wields a hefty arm cannon. Those features and plenty more are scheduled to arrive in Grounded at the end of June.
The heart of Obsidian's message remains that Grounded remains in active development as it moved further into Early Access towards its 1.0 release. That 1.0 release remains undefined, however. It's clear that Obsidian still has plenty of plans for further updates, whether they're arriving monthly or as makes sense. Expect more information on Grounded's future in the months to come.
Grounded is available now on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.