If you didn’t catch the announcement on our Ghost Ship Publishing: On The Horizon live stream, here’s the big news:

Ghost Ship Games is working on a whole new game! It’s called Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2605790/Deep_Rock_Galactic_Rogue_Core/

We’re really excited about this.
At the same time, we understand that your first thought might be, “Dang, we’re never gonna see Season 5, are we?”

Totally understandable. We’ve been a little quiet about Deep Rock Galactic development for a while. So we figured it’s a good time to update the roadmap, talk about how we’re balancing our projects at Ghost Ship Games, and how we’ll communicate all that moving forward.

Let’s get straight to it: we’ve got good news and less-than-good news.

Good news: Season 5 is coming. Season 6 will happen after that.
Less-than-good news: These seasons aren’t coming as soon as any of us want. Right now, we’re expecting to have Season 5 out in June 2024.

The reason for this delay is, as you probably guessed, Rogue Core. We’ll talk more about that below (scroll down to the FAQ section). But let’s look at the roadmap first, and then we can cover the details after.

If you’re familiar with previous Deep Rock Galactic roadmaps, you’ll notice that the ‘maintenance updates’ are new for this one. These are going to be patches which primarily focus on tweaks and bug fixes. They’re not adding shiny new content, but they are making sure the game stays in good working order.

Maintenance updates may include things like:

• Bug fixes of every size and flavor
• Weapon balance changes
• Nerfs and/or buffs to enemies
• Typo corrections
• Optimizations to improve game performance

You shouldn’t expect big juicy bundles of new content from these. We’ll save that for the coming Seasons, though they might feel far in the future right now. Until then, we promise we’re not going to neglect the game, or let it fall into disrepair. These maintenance updates aim to keep Deep Rock Galactic in good health, until we’re ready to keep working on new content.

Especially since it’ll be a while until we get more significant in-game content in Deep Rock Galactic, we want to double down on our communications, and to share more about what we’re working on.

We’re taking an open development approach with Rogue Core, where we launch as Early Access and provide plenty of behind-the-scenes peeks along the way. We’ve brought on a full-time writer (hi, it’s me Aaron, the guy writing this) to help us tell more stories that connect you with what we’re up to, and how we approach game development. This applies to Deep Rock Galactic, too.

That means we’ll be sharing a lot more about Season 5 development than we have with previous Seasons, so you’ll be able to follow along as it takes shape.

In the future, you can expect more:

• Developer diaries and sneak peeks
• Interviews with GSG crewmates
• Long reads about big ideas in game development
• A re-launch of the GSG Newsletter
• Glimpses into daily life in the GSG studios
• Other fun stuff that we’re still figuring out

You’ll find all that coming up here on the Steam blog, as well as the blog page for Rogue Core.

Why can’t you just work on both games at once?
In a perfect world, we’d continue full steam ahead on Deep Rock Galactic while developing Rogue Core at the same time. But we’ve only got so many helping hands on board, and only so many hours in the day.

Instead of trying to do a little bit of work on each game every day, we’d rather block out bigger chunks of time where we give one project our full attention. This might not be the fastest path, but we think it’s what will allow us to give you the best games we can possibly make.

What if you all just worked harder to make this stuff faster?
We don’t believe in crunching here. We want to work at a pace that ensures our whole team is happy and healthy, and where everyone has the time and space to have fun with their work. If we cranked it to 11 and went into mega-overdrive to rush all this out, we’d lose a lot of goofy ideas, cool hats and fun details along the way. To us, that’s the stuff that makes a game great. We’d rather take our time, so we can be sure we’re making something we’re really proud of.

Do you have a specific plan for each maintenance update?
Not yet. We’ve put them into the calendar so that we can block out time to give Deep Rock Galactic a good amount of time and energy. We’ll figure out exactly what to focus on as each update approaches, and we’ll keep you posted on that when the time comes.

Are you taking so long because you’re still trying to figure out a use for Error Cubes?
Maybe.

We continue to be blown away by the support and enthusiasm of this community, and all the creativity, curiosity and connections that Deep Rock Galactic has sparked. It’s what motivates us to make these games, and to keep them alive.

If you’re feeling disappointed about Season 5 not coming sooner, we totally get it. We’d like it to come sooner too. But we really think that Rogue Core is worth our time and focus, even if that means a delay for new content in Deep Rock Galactic. We hope you’ll trust us on this.

We can’t wait to expand the Deep Rock universe, and we promise you’ll be hearing a lot more about what’s going on with that in the coming months.

You heard it here first: fun times ahead.

Rock and Stone forever and always.

With so much love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew