Community now in charge of Natural Selection 2

[MightyJordan]

 

Well here?s a thing. Unknown Worlds is (mostly) moving on from excellent humans vs aliens multiplayer FPS Natural Selection 2. It?s a relatively small team, and Subnautica isn?t going to build itself. NS2, however, will. Sort of. A community dev team has been given UW?s official blessing, so expect to be gorging yourself on their creations soon.

 

The new community dev team outlined how and why things are changing in an announcement post:

?Unknown Worlds Entertainment is a small team, currently their time and resources are going into exciting new projects. However, because they love NS2 so much, they have entrusted their very valuable IP in the hands of the NS2 community, who will nurture and cherish it in order to continue to evolve NS2, as it always has. This win-win scenario will allow Unknown Worlds to focus on their next project and we get to potentially continue to create new patches for NS2.?

 

?Now with Unknown World?s blessing, we as a community can forge patch 266. We can hopefully start to incorporate the best the community has to offer, such as bug fixes and popular features?with many more ideas for the future!?

 

The team is made up of 14 community members led by ?WasabiOne? and ?Obraxis.? They plan to make development a lot more transparent as time progresses, and the community From Whenst They Came will of course be a big part of the process. Details on patch 266 will begin to emerge in the coming days.

 

I?d be at least little bit worried if any other game did this, but Natural Selection 2 has always been, in large part, sculpted by its community. Unknown Worlds has shown that it knows how to work with its primordial alien ooze of modders and community devs before, so I imagine it?s picked the cream of the crop for this effort. Here?s hoping fans? faith has not been misplaced.

Source / Original announcement

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Read this a few weeks ago on Reddit. It's sugar coated bad news but to be fair, they were hit with some pretty bad luck close to the launch. They had huge chargebacks when CD keys were paid for with stolen CCs.

 

The game has had a lot of support in the 2 years since then in free updates outside of DLC too which was awesome for such a small team/studio. If you're going to abandon a game, this is probably the "best" way to do it.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

First community patch has been released:

 

Build 266 Now Live on Steam!

Posted by wasabi 2 days ago

 

 

Natural Selection 2 Build 266 is now live on Steam! Today?s release is the culmination of weeks of hard work by the new NS2 CDT ? Community Development Team. A patch that has been developed entirely by the NS2 community ? we are very proud and humbled to release it to you all. While it might be short in scope and stature, we hope you?ll find that your experience is now a little more refined.

 

This patch was created by the community, for the community and with Unknown World?s blessing. They have taken a gamble on us, but our shared passion for the Natural Selection franchise is what got us here today. Things like bug fixes and popular features have gone into this patch, but we have many more plans for the future!

 

You can also join us LIVE on twitch.tv/naturalselection2 on Saturday, June 7th at 12PDT, 3EDT or 21CEST for another round of CLOGCAST Q&A. We would love to hear what you think of 266 and will also talk about potential things to come in 267.

 

Changelog

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Read this a few weeks ago on Reddit. It's sugar coated bad news but to be fair, they were hit with some pretty bad luck close to the launch. They had huge chargebacks when CD keys were paid for with stolen CCs.

 

The game has had a lot of support in the 2 years since then in free updates outside of DLC too which was awesome for such a small team/studio. If you're going to abandon a game, this is probably the "best" way to do it.

Damn. I didn't know that. They don't have the resources to update NS2 while working on something new. When I first learned about how small the development team was, I kinda imagined that this would happen eventually. I'm really glad they've handed their IP over to the community. Most developers would simply let their game die.

[DarkyDan]

Excellent game, and very pretty.  Glad I bought into the Beta.  Just wish a few more of my mates had joined in.

[Argi]

Yeah, it's still my main game that I play. :)  I love it.  Lots of neat new stuff coming out each update.