Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor sees players venturing to Hoxxes and mining materials while upgrading weapons and taking on waves of dangerous alien bugs. The caves are procedurally generated, and upon clearing a wave, you rush to a Drop Pod to progress further. As the expedition ventures further into the planet, missions become tougher.

Early access launched with four classes, 40 weapons to choose from, 20 different types of enemies and three biomes alongside a progression system. Along with celebrating the sales milestone, Funday announced that its first content update is due next week and adds a new biome that is “sure to challenge even the greybeards among you.” Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

Year-over-year sales continue to rise, with 2,567,251 units sold in 2023. The average Steam player has spent 46 hours and one minute on the title, while 800,715 players have clocked over 100 hours. Daily active users hit 150,300, up from 113,700 in 2022, while monthly active users hit 1,018,230. As for in-game stats, fall damage is the biggest player killer, followed by the Glyphid Grunt and friendly fire.

Aside from supporting Deep Rock Galactic, Ghost Ship Games is publishing two new titles in the franchise. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a survival title similar to Vampire Survivors, while Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core is a roguelite co-op shooter. The former enters early access in Q1 2024, while the latter has yet to be dated.

Much like Deep Rock Galactic, Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core will be a co-op first-person shooter. However, in stark difference to its predecessor, Rogue Core will feature a roguelike game structure. Players will start out missions with only a few pieces of equipment, and progressing through runs will allow them to get new upgrades, equipment and abilities.

The Steam store page for Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core is live right now, offering a little more detail about the game aside from the teaser. Among other things, the store page features a “living roadmap”, which indicates that the game will be getting a closed alpha launch in Q1 2024, while the Early Access release for the title will happen in November 2024.

If you’ve played a reverse bullet hell or survivor-like shooter, the gameplay loop is simple: Kill enemies, get upgrades, and kill even more enemies. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor offers a variety of weapons with procedural cave generation and waves of foes. However, there’s mining and completing objectives allows for even tougher encounters until you extract tons of rewards.

The initial early access release will have four playable characters, over 30 weapons and ten enemy types, three to five biomes, one to three bosses and several mission types. There will also be perks, artifacts and upgrades. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is expected to be in early access for six to 12 months, but that could change based on player feedback. It may also see a price increase with the full version based on the content added.

While Ghost Ship Publishing hasn’t made any official announcements for its future releases, the company has stated that it is currently working with a number of studios on releasing a slate of games over the year.

According to a statement by CEO Soren Lundgaard, becoming a publisher was the next step in the studio’s evolution, and it is a way for the studio to give back to the gaming industry. The publisher hopes to help developers across the globe, and especially the Danish gaming scene.

For its releases as a publisher, Ghost Ship Publishing will use the design of Deep Rock Galactic as the blueprint to help publish games. The publisher hopes to help studios in establishing a solid business, as well as helping them with funding and marketing expertise.

“Becoming a publisher is a way for us to give a bit back to the industry, and to help lift up both the Danish gaming scene and other small developers like ourselves across the globe,” said Ghost Ship Games CEO Soren Lundgaard. “Our goal is to assist fellow developers with funding and marketing expertise, while also helping them establish a solid business. Founding a publishing brand is a passion project for us, and we are very excited to make this a reality.”

“Starting a publishing company is a natural next step for Ghost Ship,” added Ghost Ship Games CCO Mikkel Martin Pedersen. “We love games and the success of Deep Rock Galactic has now enabled us to help other developers create theirs. We can’t wait to get started.”

Ghost Ship Publishing will announce the first games released under its new label on March 2 as part of the fifth anniversary stream for Deep Rock Galactic.

As part of the celebration, Deep Rock Galactic will be getting a new Year 5 Anniversary event, which includes Space Rig decorations as rewards, and more botched Longbeard Freight deliveries. More details are set to be revealed closer to the start of the event, which is slated for March 2, until March 16.

The game is also getting a playable version of the original early access release of Deep Rock Galactic from five years ago for players who might be feeling nostalgic about the original 2018 release.

And finally, Deep Rock Galactic is getting a new Support 2 Upgrade DLC, set for release on March 2. The DLC will feature cosmetic items, including a new set of weapon frameworks, as well as paintjobs and VIP treatment at the in-game Abyss Bar, complete with an exclusive beer available for the whole team.

Deep Rock Galactic is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

In terms of user engagement on Steam, the average user spent 42 hours and 45 minutes playing the game. Players have collectively logged 25,691 years since launch in 2018, with 506,929 players racking up over 100 hours. When Deep Rock Galactic was available with PlayStation Plus in January 2022, 9.5 million players claimed it.

Over 750,000 players also joined through Xbox last year (though how many were through Game Pass is unknown). Other interesting stats include fall damage being the number one cause of death, followed by Glyphid Grunts and friendly fire.

Deep Rock Galactic is currently in the middle of Season 3, which added a chance for Meteor Showers to occur during missions. Seasons last about six months, so Season 4 should land in April. Stay tuned in the meantime.

Previously available for PC and Xbox platforms, Deep Rock Galactic is a co-op first person shooter that sees space Dwarves venturing to hostile planets and excavating materials. Areas are procedurally generated and rife with deadly monsters, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. PlayStation players will have access to the full game along with Season 1 and its free Battle Pass (Season 2 arrives in March/April 2022).

DiRT 5 is Codemasters’ most recent entry in the franchise and features 10 locations from around the world with more than 70 routes, numerous vehicle types and four-player split-screen support. Persona 5 Strikers is a spin-off of Atlus’s acclaimed RPG with the Phantom Thieves venturing to and liberating mysterious Jails in Japan. It offers action RPG-esque, Musou elements but is still a compelling story.

Check out Deep Rock Galactic’s PS4/PS5 launch trailer below to see the game in action.

Apparently, the PS Plus free games for January 2022 will include DiRT 5, the latest entry in Codemasters’ racing series. There’s also Deep Rock Galactic, the co-op mining FPS, which recently shifted to a seasonal model for post-launch content, and will be seeing its PlayStation launch in January. Finally, there’s Persona 5 Strikers, last year’s direct action RPG follow-up to the acclaimed 2017 JRPG Persona 5.

When compared to PS Plus offerings for previous months, Sony seems to be starting the next year on a high note, with all three games being stellar hits of their own genres.

Of course, the elephant in the room is Project Spartacus, which will reportedly be combining PS Now and PS Plus to compete against Game Pass– we’re definitely excited to hear more about that in a more official capacity, so here’s hoping.

In an announcement post on Steam, the developer has revealed the release window for the next Season to be March or April of 2022. In addition to this, Ghost Ship Games has also confirmed that the upcoming Season will be less ambitious than the first, and as such will have a rapid development cycle as opposed to the 7-month long development cycle of Season 1. That said, you can still expect it to be pretty packed.

“We expect Season 02 to go live sometime between March and April 2022 – first on Steam, and then a few weeks later for both Xbox and PlayStation,” the developer wrote. “Season 01 exceeded all our expectations and catapulted the player numbers into space. But it was also a very big update, taking almost 7 months to produce and prepare. Season 02 will be a bit less ambitious and will come out faster. Not to say, that won’t still be an impressive update with all the bells and whistles, of course!”

Deep Rock Galactic has sold over 3 million units, and is available to download right now on PC and Xbox platforms. The game will be coming to PlayStation platforms as well in January 2022, although it will not have cross-platform play support at launch.