He is a dev of this game who posts in other threads on this forum about it. AFAIK no, he did not "delete" any post in this thread, because he has, as of yet, never commented in this thread in the first place.

But people are addressing him anyway because they know he reads posts about this game.

To elaborate on what ARD has written, F4LL0UT is a long-time (10+ years) active GOG forum member and he is also the lead designer of Showgunners.

None taken and sorry for responding so late, I had to talk to some people first and figure out what the heck even happened.

I honestly get everyone's frustration and/or ridicule here and this whole topic of paid skins has caused me personally a lot of shame and possibly given me an ulcer. Luckily my boss has allowed me to share the story behind those paid skins.

While we were approaching the release, the publisher discussed options with us for promoting the game in this brave new world of viral marketing and whatnot. One of those ideas were Twitch Drops. For those who don't know what those are: you receive in-game rewards for watching Twitch streams of a game.

Personally I instantly opposed this for several reasons. 1. In my opinion it was not a good fit for the game we had made. I mean, it's a pretty linear narrative-driven singleplayer tactical RPG where we opted for recognizable and carefully developed character designs instead of visual customization. But more importantly: 2. I loathe exclusive in-game content and FOMO-inducing practices for ethical reasons, especially in singleplayer games. It also seemed obvious to me that it would only unnecessarily anger or at least alienate the kind of players we were making the game for. However, it was agreed that the content would be released for everyone at a later date (and I'm sure it didn't cross anyone's mind at the time to release it as paid DLC). I was still very reluctant but it sounded okayish all things considered - in the end everyone would just be getting some potentially cool bonus stuff down the road.

To be clear: I wasn't a decision-maker in this but I was there to provide my opinion, help choosing the best option for our game and come up with a way to make it work. I wasn't there for most of what followed, though.

Fast forward to the release day: it turned out that there's a Steam policy that nobody involved knew about - all game content for Steam games must also be acquirable through Steam itself. What this meant: all those Twitch Drop skins immediately had to be released as individual DLCs. It was also decided that, out of fairness towards those who had just gotten those skins by watching many hours of Twitch streams, the skins could not just be released for free. That's how those skins suddenly turned into a whole set of paid mini DLCs released on Steam just after launch.

The only "good" thing we could quickly achieve was to at least ensure parity between all platforms which is how those skins also ended up getting released as a bunch of paid DLCs on GOG so soon. Not great, obviously, but it did seem like the best available option for the moment.

So yeah, that's how we ended up here. We spent several years pouring our hearts into developing a premium quality tactical game and now I find myself explaining a DLC policy that came out of nowhere and just misrepresents the game and the studio.

We are currently discussing how to handle things going forward.

Cheers.

I asked the powers that be and they said no. Yes, I've already reported that there's no upgrade option for owners of the base game for some reason. This one seems to simply have been an oversight and should be addressed, though I don't know when.

Thank you for the detailed reply. As someone who had worked for decades in R&D positions in the high-tech industry, this kind of fiasco is immediately recognisable. I honestly feel for you.

If I may so bold, the situation can still be saved by incorporating all the skins for free into the game and refunding everybody who had bought the DLCs (likely a small number). Yes, it may alienate the Twitch collectors, but are they more numerous than those you're alienating by selling the DLCs?

I'm pretty sure it's not your decision, though.

Good luck.

P.S. Why can't I find these DLCs on steam?

"Fast forward to the release day: it turned out that there's a Steam policy that nobody involved knew about - all game content for Steam games must also be acquirable through Steam itself."
Not so unknown to me and I am neither dev nor publisher.

Other than CDPR, Valve definitly does not accept to be threated as second class ^^

But this certainly explains a few things.

You can see them here.

The store stuff on Steam is actually being managed by the higher powers and nobody at the studio seems to be 100% sure right now why it was set up this way but I like to think the DLC's limited visibility confirms the story from my previous post.

Speaking of monopolistic practices....

On the one hand, I suppose it's there so that Steam customers don't get shafted, but on the other, Valve being able to dictate what devs can or can't do on this kind of micro-level is pretty absurd. No store front should have that kind of power over a marketplace. And the blind sheep that is the average gamer will keep lapping it up. *le sigh*

While I agree that Steam has too much power generally, in this specific case I am very glad that Steam can and does dictate this. I miss the days when we were sold full games. I should not be sold 90% or 99.8% of the game and then be expected to reclaim the missing piece by watching some stupid time-exclusive stream or miss out on that content forever. Pre-order bonuses that don't get converted to regular DLCs are bad enough, no need to invent more predatory practices.

MTX are bad for splitting the game into multiple pieces and selling them separately, but they are still better than limited promotions that expire, fir a single player game no less. If I can't acquire the whole game, I may just not get it at all. Thankfully, Steam's sensible mandate prevented that.

To me, all content released for any game can only add up to 100%. It will never go above 100%. Nothing is a "bonus", or an "expansion". Everything is content that was cut and sold separately in my mind, regardless of what the publisher or developer claims. Do not underestimate my FOMO.

I personally don't care about cosmetic DLCs and simply ignore them. If I want show some extra support to the developers, I buy other content (when available), like artbooks, comics or soundtracks or proper content DLCs.

The only thing that stops me from buying a game I like and can afford is the lack of a proper DRM-Free version. And by this I mean a truly DRM-Free version, one that allows me to download the installers directly from the developer's site, GOG, itch or similar (not some weird oxymoron like "DRM-Free on Steam").

By the way, I just finished Showgunners recently and really liked the game. Short but solid and very polished in every aspect. Great work, Good Shepherd / Artificer!

Valve uses the Power of it's quasi Monopoly to dictate. Never would have thought that ;).
CDPR doesn't have that Power.