Midnight Society co-founder Guy Beahm, better known as mustache-and-wraparounds streamer Dr Disrespect, announced today that the studio is slowing the pace of Deadrop “snapshot” build releases in favor of slower but more substantial updates through 2023.
“This ain’t year one anymore,” the good doctor said in today’s video. “A shift has occurred, and the expansion has begun. In 2023, it’s all about expanding on that foundation.
“Every snapshot will introduce significant new features and iterations to the game. But with expansion comes larger features and systems. This requires longer development cycles—that means snapshots will be less frequent, but much larger in scope. We’ll be spending nearly three months of development time on every new release. And with every drop comes major advancements in gameplay and expansion of the tower.”
The tower is the big building in which Deadrop takes place: a massive building turned self-governing city-state that sucks toxins from the heavily-polluted atmosphere of this alt-history Earth and refines it into “space dust,” a powerful and addictive narcotic that it then sells to the rest of the world. It sounds a bit like the Peach Tree tower in the vastly underrated film Dredd but on a much larger scale, and in the absence of a powerful figure like Ma-Ma to keep things under control, various factions fight for control of Deadrop’s towers and the resources they offer.
The latest build of Deadrop, “snapshot 5,” will introduce the first sector in the tower, called Cold Storage, along with armor and helmets that will enable players to display their facial cosmetics, consumable healing items, and “tactical throwables” like smoke grenades. There are now six “fully completed” weapons to play with, which can be customized with 13 attachments.
It also sounds like Deadrop will be expanding its player base in the relatively near future. Currently, testers are made up of people who shelled out $50 for a “founder’s access pass” NFT, known in Deadrop parlance as “variants.” The initial batch of 10,000 passes sold out and no more have been issued, but Dr Disrespect said in the video that “after this, everything changes, and there will be more than just variants dropping in.”