Rockfish’s Everspace 2 was announced at last month’s Gamescom Opening Night Live, perhaps to very little surprise. After all, the studio’s previous game did very well with its combat and rogue-lite mechanics which the sequel seems to expand on. Of course, despite launching next year on Steam Early Access, the question is: Will it become exclusive to the Epic Games Store at some point?

CEO Michael Schade addressed this while speaking to GamesIndustry.biz and stated that it came down to requiring the features that Steam provided. “Without Epic, Rockfish and Everspace wouldn’t exist, but it’s the same with Steam. Without Steam, we wouldn’t exist.

“In our case, it doesn’t make sense. We need [Steam] Early Access, the full feature set, the forums, the constant updating, the whole infrastructure. Valve has the best platform, by far, to roll out a game as an independent developer. It’s by far the best tools and the best communities. This is exactly what we need.”

Schade also noted that it wasn’t worth annoying the series’ most loyal fans who happen to be on Steam. “They have already said ‘Please don’t do it. We just don’t want it.’ You don’t even have to discuss whether this is reasonable or not. If they don’t want it, they don’t want it, and more than 100,000 people bought Everspace in [Steam] Early Access. They would be mad at us.” So though Rockfish could benefit from guaranteed cash by signing with the Epic Games Store, catering to its community and leveraging what already works is more important.

Everspace 2 will release for Steam Early Access in 2020 and will have a full launch in 2021. Along with tons and tons of ships, there will be special high-risk, high-reward areas to gather gear. You’ll also engage in trading though keeping an eye on demand is important.

Rockfish’s rogue-lite space sim Everspace is getting even bigger with the Encounters expansion. Releasing later this month for PC and on Xbox One in February 2018, Encounters brings quite a lot of new content to the table.

It introduces a new ship called the Colonial Sentinel, which is a medium class fighter with double the shield capacity of the base ship. You can also look forward to visiting the Okkar’s homeworld, encountering new characters, taking on new quests and battling new foes (total content will be somewhere around 10 hours). There’s some interesting new weapons to try out as well like the flamethrower, lightning gun and so on.

Probably the best new feature will be the factory space stations which can slightly repair and upgrade your ship in the middle of a run. You’ll also be able to convert resources. More details are still to be revealed but it looks like a nice quality of life change.

Everspace Encounters has yet to be priced so stay tuned for more information on the same.