First Strike News

Hello First Strike Community

Last Friday, we asked what the community thought about the idea of taking part in a crowdfunding campaign to get Multiplayer to Steam as a DLC on a quicker schedule.

Carrying out a Kickstarter campaign, even a smaller one, would be a time investment and organizational effort from our side that would take attention away from our other work, so we wanted to get a better feeling first of what the players currently think and want.

In our survey, there was a strong moral support for the idea, but only a minority percentage were willing to participate in the Kickstarter campaign. This put us in a situation of knowing that the players want multiplayer but we would be unable to fund the necessary budget to ensure a quick release of multiplayer.

Based on this feedback, we have decided not to do a Kickstarter campaign for the multiplayer and deactivate the pre-launch page on Kickstarter.

To the people who still want multiplayer on PC, who expressed their interest and who said that they would support a crowdfunding campaign: Thank you so much for your support! For now, our programmer apprentice Andi can continue working on porting the First Strike multiplayer. But without a Kickstarter, a quicker release of an alpha version is not possible, and we might need to pull Andi from the project to focus on other work which helps us pay the bills. This would delay the multiplayer DLC for an uncertain time, that's why we can't announce a clear release date yet.

Part of the Blindflug team continues to work on updates for the First Strike mobile version, while other team members are setting things up for a new game project. We will have more news about that in the near future.

Thank you for your feedback and for participating in the survey!

You will hear from us again soon!

Moritz, CEO

Hello First Strike fans

I want to give you an update about our plans about First Strike multiplayer on PC and our Kickstarter.

We know that multiplayer is something that many of you PC First Strike fans have wanted and we wish to evolve the Steam game as well.

Now we have someone in the team who we can assign to focus on this task, Andi, one of our programmers who is doing an apprenticeship.

And with a bit more financing, we could give you the multiplayer very soon as an alpha version. The user interface in that version would be based on the mobile version because optimizing that for PC takes more work and time, but this alpha version would already allow you to play multiplayer with friends on PC.

To give you this early version, we would do a mini-Kickstarter in March. The money of that campaign would help us cover Andi's salary for his work on First Strike. Everyone who backs the Kickstarter would get a Steam code for the multiplayer DLC and access to the beta branch at the end of March. Everyone else who didn't participate in the Kickstarter would need to wait until the finished DLC is publicly available later this year.

If the Kickstarter is not a success, Andi would still work on the port, but it would take longer and it wouldn't be the priority if other projects come up that need his attention.

Here we have to give you some important context: First Strike on PC is not a huge game. It does not earn our company much money and we can’t cover the costs of bigger updates for that platform on our own. That's why we have to work on other projects, that's why the mobile version got the big updates first. And that’s why we chose the path of doing a fundraising campaign, so we could make it possible with the help from the community who really wants the multiplayer on PC.

What we would need from you in order to get things going are two things:

• Tell us here in the comments on Steam what you think. Would you back a mini-Kickstarter for the First Strike multiplayer DLC?
  
• Take part in this survey!
• Follow the Kickstarter campaign! Click “Notify me on launch" on the Kickstarter page

Show us your support and when we see that enough people want to make multiplayer on PC possible, we can launch our Kickstarter. If not, we will not do the Kickstarter.

Please let me know here on Steam what your thoughts are, and hopefully, we can achieve this goal together!

Kindest regards

Moritz Zumbühl,

CEO of Blindflug Studios

Dear First Strike fans

As you may know, a few weeks ago, we had started a Kickstarter to give First Strike on PC a big update with multiplayer and new content.

Unfortunately, the Kickstarter campaign has not received the anticipated support and after much deliberation, we have opted to cancel the project before the scheduled date.

But that doesn’t mean everything is over. We still believe it’s possible to bring multiplayer to Steam. This Kickstarter campaign was our very first experience using the platform and we have gained invaluable feedback, experience and knowledge in the past few weeks. Accordingly, we have already started planning a new Kickstarter campaign with a more concise goal adjusted to your feedback.

The new Kickstarter will contain:

• A clear focus on just multiplayer for PC as a DLC expansion.
• Everyone who backs the project on Kickstarter with 5 EUR (5 USD) or more will get a Steam key code for the multiplayer DLC as a reward. No subscription, no Nuclear Club needed.
  

But before we launch, we need to know that enough people are truly interested.

Do you want multiplayer on PC? Would you support this new Kickstarter?
Then go to the Kickstarter page and click “Notify me on launch” to follow the project:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blindflugstudios/first-strike-steam

As soon as we think the project has enough support, we will launch the campaign.

This is your chance to show us how many of you really want a multiplayer DLC expansion. We hope we can make it possible with your support.

The Blindflug Studios team

Dear First Strike Fans,

Over the course of the Kickstarter, many of you have voiced your opinions on the rewards and the benefits. All the feedback we have received as been extremely helpful! Thus, we have decided to create a new pledge which will hopefully suit the PC users a lot more!

The new pledge is called the Multiplayer For Life DLC. This pledge will grant you infinite access to multiplayer on PC and will NOT require a monthly subscription!

The addition of this reward comes after PC users expressing that their needs were not met in this Kickstarter project. Hopefully, with this new pledge, we could find the right reward to please the PC community!

So, we wish to thank everyone for giving us their feedback! Creating content that is tailored to your demands is what we aim for, which means creating a Kickstarter which you want to support is just as important to us.

In summary, if you choose to support this limited-time pledge on Kickstarter, you will receive access to Multiplayer for free for life! No monthly subscription will be needed!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Please let us know if this new Pledge suits you more.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blindflugstudios/first-strike



Thank you all so much for all of your support and feedback!


Kindest of regards,

Blindflug Studio Team

Some of you may be wondering why we choose to do a Kickstarter and why do we need your help for this.

Our community manager Ben explains it here in this video and gives you an overview of the situation:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Be it with a small pledge or a bigger one that gets you extra rewards - all of it helps to make the expansion of First Strike on PC possible.



Thank you so much!

- The Blindflug Studios team