Darkest Dungeon 2 devs never want to monetize massive expansions – “it might be stupid or it might be great”

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Red Hook Studios’ Darkest Dungeon 2 is just about to receive a new free content expansion in the form of Kingdoms. An all-new mode similar to a board game, Kingdoms is a free addition that has you traveling across the game’s gothic world to capture inns and expand your, well, Kingdom while attempting to take on quests against a constantly ticking timer.

In a rountable interview, VideoGamer asked Red Hook Studios’ co-founder Chris Bourassa why such a massive expansion was free whereas character DLC—such as the return of the Abomination class in the new Inhuman Bondage content—is a paid experience. The answer is simple: the team wants every player to be able to experience as much new content as possible.

Darkest Dungeon 2 devs “might be stupid”

Speaking to press, Bourassa explained that character DLCs are a way for fans to support Red Hook if they enjoy new content additions. However, the release of massive content drops, even after early access has finished, will always be free whether players want to dabble in the game or play thousands of hours.

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“We have the DLCs. We hope that if you support, you know, if you want to support the game as a player, then, you know, hopefully they’ll buy Binding Blade and they’ll buy inhuman bondage,” Bourassa explained. “This is kind of a key thing. Like, we have never monetized ‘the game’ in Darkest Dungeon. Like, people who have played 1000 hours or 20 hours – they paid the same amount. That’s something just that was important to us. And we just we want to err on the side of providing a ton of value to people.”

For Kingdoms, the team simply thought it would be “crazy [to] throw this thing in for free”. While the team realises that its, on paper, a “stupid business decision”, the release of massive free content drops allows the team to properly experiment with new forms of gameplay as fans aren’t paying for this experimentation.


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For Darkest Dungeon 2, the new Kingdoms mode launches with three maps for players to experience, essentially three whole board game campaigns, and there’s more to come. While the content is free, it’s far from small, and the team plans to continue supporting the mode with new additions for as long as they want to.

“The way Tyler and I conceptualize new products is like what gets us excited, what we think would be fun to play, and what we think would be fun and challenging to work on,” Bourassa said. “So, you know, we started talking about what if you know what if we had this persistent map?”

“We have never monetized ‘the game’ in Darkest Dungeon. Like, people who have played 1000 hours or 20 hours – they paid the same amount.

Chris Bourassa

With a step back and excitement for the new vision of Darkest Dungeon 2, multiple maps became an instant idea, allowing the game to change over and over again for players with thousands of combinations of events and quests. Now that release is just around the corner, the team is “really proud” of what they’ve accomplished. “I don’t know any other game that remixes itself,” Bourassa said. “I think it’s just a cool thing to be able to say that we did.”

While the team admits taking on such a massive project was a “risky proposition” they had become experts at making monsters, environments and more for the base game. With that in mind, it was not only an interesting challenge to create something new and unique, but also something fun, and every player deserves to experience that same fun.

For more VideoGamer Interviews, read our latest chat with Elder Scrolls co-creator Ted Peterson or listen to our podcast interview with Halo’s iconic multiplayer announcer Jeff Steitzer.

About the Author

Lewis White

Lewis White is a veteran games journalist with a decade of experience writing news, reviews, features and investigative pieces about game development with a focus on Halo and Xbox.

Darkest Dungeon 2

  • Platform(s): PC
  • Genre(s): RPG, Strategy