At the beginning of July, Elite: Dangerous studio Frontier Developments started trying to assuage player complaints about infrequent communication with the start of monthly development reports as well as weekly calendars and the Supercruise News livestreams. However, while the game’s Twitter account has been generally active, Supercruise News streams have not been back for a month, the weekly calendars halted in December, and the last monthly update post was in October.
Naturally, this led to some concern among players, but a message from the game’s lead community manager confirms that communications aren’t being halted, just adjusted.
“The whole team [is] excited to share all of the upcoming content for this year including new updates, content expansions and the next major phase in the ongoing narrative following the Azimuth Saga finale. Beyond this, we also look forward to sharing our new streaming format when the series returns as a weekly show. Changes will include new segments, year-round Twitch Drop campaigns and studio-quality production once we move back into the office.”
For the time being, the devs have “several questions that must be answered internally to inform this communication plan,” so communications are still going to be a bit haphazard for an unspecified length of time. That said, more comms are on the way.
This lack of noise from FDev has put an already rattled playerbase on edge: The Odyssey expansion’s messy PC release has seen its console launch halted while the devs work on improving the PC version. This has ultimately resulted in a “disappointing” reception and a net financial loss half-year over half-year. As a result, many of the reactions to this adjusting communication plan are still unfavorable.
