Everspace 2 left Steam Early Access recently and is now available on PC, with new star system, activities and the campaign’s finale. Of course, there’s more to come, with the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions out this Summer and a free update later this year.
Rockfish Games is also working on a paid expansion planned to release in the second half of 2024. In a new Steam post, it confirmed that the Leviathan and the Dreadnought (teased in the previous concept art) are now part of the expansion instead of the update. Along with turning them into endgame activities, development costs also factor in.
“Both have been rough ideas at the beginning that turned out to be really hard to implement in a meaningful way, without having a proper storyline in place and also come with proper boss mechanics and/or worthwhile replayability. In other words, instead of adding just two very expensive set pieces to an already meaty base game, we rather turn them into iconic endgame activities in the paid expansion, that we’ll be working on for at least another year.
“It’s also the only way to make those part of the German government grant covering 40% of the development cost of the paid expansion as their rules say we must not have started with the development of what’s going to be part of the new product.” Not a bad compromise, but it does mean fans will have to wait longer to experience them.
Native Linux support is also sadly not coming due to “the broken and incomplete nature of the Vulkan implementation in Unreal Engine 4,” resulting in less efficient performance and crashes from RAM leaks with SSGI. The issues are unlikely to be fixed since Epic Games is focused on Unreal Engine 5.
Nevertheless, the developer is still working to optimize the experience on Linux. Backers who aren’t satisfied can request a full refund. As for other platforms, native support for Mac OS and optimization for the Steam Deck are coming next. Stay tuned for more updates and check out our review in the meantime.