Official Statement on DLC and the future of KSP

Hello everyone.

We've been following closely the ongoing debate about Expansion Packs and DLC on KSP, and after Felipe's previous explanation about the things that sparked the discussion, we've noticed that there are still a few areas that were left pending and that require an explanation:

Above all, is the admittedly quite grey area concerning what constitutes an update or an expansion to KSP and most importantly, what our promise of "all future updates for free" actually means.

We realize there is more than one way to interpret that. Regardless of whether 'updates' implies 'expansions' or not, it's quite obvious now that we need to rephrase that statement so everyone knows exactly what they're getting when they purchase the game.

However, it became clear to us that many might have already taken that statement to mean something else than we did when they bought the game, and so had a different notion of what it was they were getting with their initial purchase.

So given that this was a point of confusion, and that we believe that no matter what, a promise is a promise, we are including Expansions in what you can expect to get for free if you have already bought the game. Also, for those considering purchasing the game, we will maintain this promise for all purchases made until the end of this month (April, 2013).

We have to admit though, up until now, we hadn't considered Expansion Packs to be the same as updates to KSP. That was in large part because we really had no plans for actual expansions at all.

But as you can imagine, over the course of the 2 and a half years we've been developing KSP, we've come across many ideas that we thought were very cool, but didn't really fit the original scope of the game. Those would have led us astray from our vision of the complete game, not to mention that they could take many months, if not years, to implement.

Those ideas are massive undertakings, which is why we'd like to have them as optional additions, so we could have them without having to stretch the scope (and deadlines) for the main game.

So this is what we mean when we say Expansion Packs for KSP. We're not talking about small content bundles, we're talking about major game-changing sets of features, like Multiplayer, or Colonization. Things that add not just content, but new gameplay possibilities. Things that might not fit the initial concept very well, but we think are too cool to just cut off forever.

Please keep in mind though, that this isn't us announcing or promising any particular Expansion Packs yet. We're still quite a long way from that. Our one focus right now is to complete KSP, that is why career mode is the priority now. Once we get to what we can call a complete game, we'll see where we go next from there.

We hope that this clears away all of the confusion surrounding this topic, and also that no one is left with the impression that we would ever do anything to upset our players. We take pride in being very open and honest about what we do and how we do it, and we all felt very hurt at some of the accusations that were thrown at us these last few days.

Above all else, our goal is to make an outstanding game, and we sincerely hope everyone sees that we have nothing but the best intentions towards our work and our community. As always, we will be listening wholeheartedly to our community's feedback, concerns and ideas throughout this whole process and we will not slack off.

Here's a big thanks to everyone for all the continued support, and a heartfelt apology to all those who felt wronged in any way over this matter.

Sincerely,

-- The KSP Dev Team