Greetings!
If you're reading this, you now have a free copy of Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation. If you already upgraded to Escalation, you now have a free season pass to Escalation DLC.
So what's the deal?
Once upon a time...
Ashes of the Singularity came out early last year it has done very well.
During the beta process there were a number of highly requested features that people wanted in the game. These features were:
-
Strategic Zoom (ala Sins of a Solar Empire, Supreme Commander, GalCiv, etc.)
-
Upgradeable defenses (turrets that could be upgraded to more powerful versions)
-
More units in general, particularly specialized units.
We liked the ideas but rejected having them in the base game.
It was our belief that these features would alienate the wider PC gaming audience by making the game too complex and because Ashes of the Singularity already had very high hardware requirements, we were very concerned that the game would be able to meet its modest sales goals.
When the game came out and sold much much better than we had anticipated, we decided that we would make a stand-alone expansion of the game that would target more advanced RTS players and include those features and a lot more.
In November, we released Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation to universally positive reviews. The lowest score it received was 75 and the user ratings as I write this are classified as "Very Positive". We also provided a $20 upgrade path for those who wanted to go get the expansion.
However, many of our customers were not happy.
First, many people who bought Ashes of the Singularity paid $49.99. Thus, even a $20 discount to get "the game they wanted in the first place" seemed unfair to them.
Second, and more seriously, it split the community.
After Escalation was released, it became increasingly obvious that our plans to merge the communities while having two versions of the game was untenable. Even if we solved the multiplayer community fragmentation, what about modding? What about community discussions on strategy and tactics? What about future expansions?
As many of you know, Stardock is one of the oldest independent game studios in the industry. We know how important it is to make sure our customers are happy. Listening to what your customers say may have short-term consequences (in this case, millions of dollars) but in the long-term listening creates a happy, loyal customer base.
Hence, I have decided to merge Ashes of the Singularity and Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation into a single product: Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation.
The base game will be discontinued. You can still play it and we will still support it. But we won't be selling it anymore. Everyone who had Ashes of the Singularity now has Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation as well. And anyone who already upgraded to Escalation from Ashes now has an automatic season pass to the DLC for Escalation.
By merging the products, we add over a hundred thousand people into the Escalation multiplayer pool, modding community, forums and allows us to focus all our attention on Escalation.
If you have any questions, you can contact me directly on Twitter @draginol or on our forums at www.ashesofthesingularity.com.
Cheers and good luck!
-Brad
FAQ
Q: Why didn't you just have the features in Escalation in the base game?
A: Because at the time of release, 40% or so of the Steam user base couldn't even run the base game. Anything that made the game more of a "niche" seemed to be risky.
Q: Why do you think Ashes sold so much better than you expected?
A: Most of our demographic data comes from Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations and those indicate most strategy game players tend to have more modest PC setups. However, power gamers, for lack of a better term, tend to have higher end PCs than expected and Ashes appeals to power gamers more so than our other titles.
Q: What made you decide Escalation was the future and not the base game?
A: The player stats. Despite having a much smaller base (it just came out recently) Escalation has more people playing it. From a long-term point of view, an engaged user base is critical.
Q: You spoke about modding, what is your modding goal with Ashes?
A: Ashes of the Singularity was the first game to utilize Oxide's new, state-of-the-art engine, Nitrous. It was the first DirectX 12 game and soon will be the first game to support both Vulkan and DirectX 12 simultaneously. Thus, in many respects, Ashes was designed to be a platform. Our goal is for someone to be able to mod Ashes into virtually any type of game.
Q: What is the next expansion pack going to focus on?
A: Naval units.
Q: What does a season pass mean?
A: It means all new DLC we release for the game this year will automatically be added to that player's account.
Q: What types of DLC are you working on?
A: We're working on Episode 3 which is a new campaign along with new maps, scenarios and game modes.
Q: What updates are in the works?
A: We have replays almost ready, a new class of units: Juggernauts (similar to Titans from Sins of a Solar Empire), a mod manager, more single player AI updates, mass-multiplayer performance and stability improvements, and much more.
Q: What types of changes can we expect in the future of this game?
A: Lots of new types of units including organics, the aforementioned naval units, tracked, walking, more flying units, etc.
Q: Right now, the units hover, why is that?
A: We had concerns regarding the CPU requirements for path finding tens of thousands of units. Hover units have the advantage of being able to duck above or below other units. As we get more data on the hardware our players have, we will be able to introduce other types of locomotion. Plus, hover units look super cool. 
Q: With the merging of Escalation, who is the target market?
A: People who are familiar with real-time strategy games. We do plan to provide simplified rule options for newcomers (useful for LAN parties and such).
