Arkhunters, the big day is almost here, April 18 is just around the corner.

To help manage your expectations and give you insight into what’s coming, we’ve put together a briefing from HQ, addressing some of the major questions we’ve received. This will give you a better understanding of what we’re trying to build, the upcoming plans, and some behind-the-scenes info to help you see the full picture.

In the past few months, we’ve been diving deep into what we have in our hands. Defiance is a 10-year-old game that was originally built by Trion and later acquired by Gamigo, but it’s been out of operation for over three years now. It also had it’s own backend service (“Glyph”). This brings its own set of challenges; there’s a lot of lost knowledge, and we’re dealing with significant technical debt.

On top of that, we’re getting acquainted with the development tools. From what we’ve explored so far, they do work to some extent, but there’s very little documentation or knowledge about how to use them, so we’re relying on our own exploration to figure things out.

It’s also important to note that Fawkes isn’t a AAA studio, nor do we have investors backing us. We have bootstrapped from day one and we’ll continue to do so. As a small studio, we’re passionate about making things happen with what we have, and we’re ready to put in the hard work. But while we’re committed, please don’t expect miracles overnight.

For context, over the past two years, we released over 200 updates across all of our games.

This is a completely unknown journey for us, reviving a game that was closed years ago is rare in the industry. We’re not sure exactly what to expect, but the response so far has exceeded our expectations. Only time will tell, we’re excited about the future.

Game Availability

We are committed to the long-term availability of Defiance.

We are a small company without external financial pressure or support, we love what we do. We aim to bring back the game we all love, and we believe that providing a fun, engaging experience will lead to success. We don’t need to maximize profit at all costs, we are in this for the long haul, and worst case scenario, we will work with the community to see what else we need to include in the store.

Content Updates

The game already has years of development behind it and thousands of hours of content; from leveling-up your EGO doing pursuits or arkfalls, to customize your character with thousands of different weapons, chips and EGO builds combinations which ensures that players have something to do for the years to come, even if we don’t touch the game at all, but;

Using the above mentioned tools and our skeleton team, we believe we will be able to make general small updates like touching some balance, drops or even maybe create some half-new Arkfalls, weapons or vehicles. We are confident we can achieve something interesting with some creativity.

The game, for its initial phase, will run with a skeleton crew capable of maintaning the service operative, addressing major fires, and slowly work in small scale adjustments using the previously mentioned tools, obviously linked and aligned with the learning curve and response from those tools; while we have a decent understanding of them at this point, we don’t know if something else is hidden under the carpet.

If we reach a minimal financial success allowing us to increase the team’s size, rest assured that our priority number one would be to provide fresh content. We already have some ideas that we would love to share with the community moving forward; from expanding the story line, to completely new Arkfalls or even new map zones.

Store & Monetization

We’re in this for the long haul, not for a quick profit. We believe Defiance is an incredible game, and we’ve heard from the community that one of the main pain points has been the store and monetization system. Based on our early interactions with players, we’ve decided to simplify things. We’ve removed the most controversial items from the store and will work gradually with the community to bring items back – not just in the store, but integrated into the game itself. There will be no gameplay-affecting items locked behind paywalls. Defiance will remain Free-to-Play, and we don’t plan to change that model.

We’ve faced similar situations with our other MMOs, and now, nearly everything is achievable in-game.

Moving forward, we plan to monetize Defiance through cosmetic items (such as outfits and vehicles), convenience items (like inventory and character expansions), progression tools (such as experience boosts), seasonal sales, and the well-known Patron system (which combines convenience and progression). If our team grows in the future, we aim to expand on these options and continue enhancing the game in these directions.

3rd-party Platforms (Steam, consoles, etc.)

You can expect Defiance to be available on Steam in the coming months. We’re actively working towards making this happen, though we don’t have an exact date yet. Rest assured, we’re committed to bringing it to Steam, and we’ll keep you updated on our progress.

As for console support, that’s something we’ll pursue after establishing a solid PC version. Once we have a stable and well-supported PC release, we’ll be better equipped to handle the potential user base from consoles. Console release will depend on the financial success of the PC version, and it’s part of our medium- to long-term plans.

Community Driven & Communication

Reviving a closed game is a rare and exciting challenge for us as developers and as a company. We’re committed to being transparent and communicative with you every step of the way. One of our core strengths as a studio is our ability to engage directly with the community, and you’ll see that reflected in Defiance as well. Our developers, including programmers, will continue interacting with players on our channels. You can always expect direct, honest communication from us as we move forward.

1️⃣ Financial Stability

As a small studio, our goal is to find a profitable venture, and that will be our focus until we achieve that milestone. For better or for worse, we don’t have the financial backing to run an unprofitable venture for an extended period. While we don’t face major financial burdens or external pressure, we do have unavoidable expenses to cover, especially with our initial skeleton crew.

Our aim is to work closely with the community to find a good balance between monetization and ensuring that we can reach that crucial starting point of profitability. Based on the results from our stress tests, we’re confident this won’t be a major hurdle. However, it’s important to us that we remain transparent and build a relationship of trust and respect with our players. We love our games, and we love our communities – that’s the foundation of everything we do.

2️⃣ Small Changes and Technical Stability

Leveraging the game tools and our skeleton crew, we’ll begin addressing some of the existing pain points within Defiance. This will range from slight balance tweaks and weapon adjustments to modifying drops or making small changes to the current content. Our goal is to tackle some of the game’s remaining pain points while also increasing our profit margins in a fair and balanced manner so we can reinvest them into the game. The specifics of these updates will be entirely driven by what the tools allow us to do – we’ll focus on “what can be done” within the scope of what we have available.

At the same time, we’ll continue refining game and server stability. Our ultimate aim is to achieve 100% uptime outside of scheduled maintenance or external factors, similar to the stability we maintain with all our other games.

It’s important to remind everyone that we’re reviving a game that has undergone many drastic changes over the years – from losing its original development team during the transition from Trion to Gamigo, to its eventual closure losing precious knowledge on the way. There is a lot of technical exploration on our end to fully understand every corner of the game as we continue making improvements.

3️⃣ Technical Debt and Shard-System

When financial resources allow, we plan to invest in specific technological support to tackle some of the inherited technical debt that is currently preventing certain internal systems from functioning as intended and would allow us to the expand the player-base.

One of our key focuses will be optimizing the sharding system. While it’s great for part of the server stability, it’s limiting the MMO experience we want to provide, particularly in terms of increasing the number of players per shard.

Along with these optimizations, we will make adjustments to balance world entities and metadata to ensure the experience remains smooth and enjoyable as we scale the player base.

4️⃣ 2013 and 2050 merge

It’s no secret that our goal is to bring the best elements from both versions of Defiance into one unified experience. A key step in this is transitioning to a 64-bit client for Defiance 2013, which will significantly enhance client performance. This is a must-have upgrade for us.

We will also collaborate with the community to identify which features from Defiance 2050 should be incorporated into the 2013 version. We’ve come to understand that attempting to implement the full 2050 version isn’t feasible nor liked, but we’ll be bringing over the best aspects from both worlds. Ultimately, we’ll focus on running a single, unified game that delivers the best of both experiences.

5️⃣ Fresh Content Production

Once we’ve addressed the basics and secured the necessary support, our goal is to work closely with the community to produce new content. We have plenty of ideas lined up and are eager to get your feedback on them, such as:

• New Arkfalls, both for special events and as permanent additions
• Fresh systems, like a Hellbug pet
• New monsters with increased difficulty, mechanics, and rewarding drops
• Expanding the story progression, along with new zones and maps

In the long term, we don’t see many limitations. We’ll collaborate with the community to outline the technical boundaries, while continuing to generate and explore new ideas. Ultimately, we’re open to creating any content that aligns with the game and enhances the experience.

As a reminder, it’s in our foundation and practices to be clear and direct with our players. Our focus is on growing Defiance from its roots, alongside the community. Our investment and the speed at which we produce new content will be directly tied to our ability to reinvest into the game. We are fully committed to the long-term availability of Defiance, making small adjustments using the existing content and tools available. However, we are not currently committed to addressing the necessary technical debt or producing entirely new content beyond some small-size efforts using old content.

If you have any questions or want to share your thoughts, don’t hesitate to join our Discord. We have daily conversations with the community and love hearing your feedback.

Sincerely,

Fawkes’ Team