Rockfish Launches Final Everspace 2 Expansion and Emphasises Importance of Federal Funding

Hamburg-based Rockfish Games is bringing the Everspace 2 saga to a close with the second DLC, Wrath of the Ancients. At the same time, CEO and co-founder Michael Schade emphasised the importance of federal funding for games for independent companies like Rockfish and for the entire German games industry.

Rockfish Games has released the second expansion for the space looter-shooter RPG Everspace 2, titled Wrath of the Ancients, on PC and consoles. This concludes this chapter of the Everspace 2 series. "From beginning to end, Everspace 2 has been a project nearly seven and a half years in development—this time has been filled with exciting announcements, growing a fantastic community, and time spent with an amazing team. This expansion embodies all the expertise gained, lessons learned, and many of the exciting ideas developed during this time," said Rockfish Games CEO and Co-Founder, Michael Schade. "I am both happy and sad to say Wrath of the Ancients is our final expansion for Everspace 2 as we set our sights on the horizons of a new project. From our initial Kickstarter, to our win at the Deutscher Computerspielpreis for Best German Game, to this release of Wrath of the Ancients, I couldn't be prouder of the team and the work we’ve done. Everyone here at the studio is excited for the future, and I can't wait to share what's to come."

Both DLCs Everspace 2: Wrath of the Ancients and Everspace 2: Titans were made possible through partial grant funding of around €1.65 million from Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK). "As a recipient studio of a grant from the BMWK for this project, I strongly feel this program helps pave the way for studios like ours to stay independent while showcasing German technical expertise and creativity on the world stage," said Michael Schade. "Through these grants, business leaders like myself are able to create jobs for developers and designers attracted to the industry. We are able to foster young talent, develop intermediate developers into senior team leaders, and create opportunities for creative minds of all kinds. In a time where our industry is struggling, grant programs like these help German studios stay competitive and allow established and new studios to flourish."

One month before the release of Wrath of the Ancients, Rockfish Games changed the prices of the DLCs. The team posted on Steam to state that no content had been cut: "In our Everspace 2: Wrath of the Ancients release date reveal post, we shared our upcoming expansion was going to be priced at $29.99. Recently, the team got together to have a chat to reassess, and we’ve decided to lower the price of Everspace 2: Wrath of the Ancients to $24.99 / €24.99 / £19.99 / ¥2970 (other regional pricing will be in line with Steam guidelines). With this in mind, we have also recently lowered the price of Everspace 2: Titans from $14.99 USD to $11.99 USD, giving all those space pilots who haven’t yet played it more bang for fewer bucks."

Everspace 2: Wrath of the Ancients adds over ten hours of new post-game and side-quest storylines to the base game (according to Rockfish), taking place after the events of Everspace 2. It also introduces four new star systems to explore, complete with new quests, enemies, gear and challenges - and the new playable Okkar spaceship, the Wraith, enables new play styles. To coincide with the release of the DLC, Everspace 2 will receive a free update with quality-of-life features, bug fixes and support for Nvidia DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation and AMD FSR 4. Alongside the launch of Wrath of the Ancients, Rockfish Games released a Galactic Edition for Xbox and PlayStation, collecting the main game and all its expansions into one package. They also released new digital soundtrack and artbook DLCs for PC, collecting music and art created for Titans and Wrath of the Ancients.

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