Don't Starve Together is a great experience, according to Klei

May 9, 2014 00:33 GMT  ·  By

Klei Entertainment has confirmed that Don't Starve, its stylized survival game, will get a multiplayer mode called Don't Starve Together for free this summer, despite saying on several occasions that it will not make such a thing.

Don't Starve released quite some time ago first on the PC and then on the PS4 platform, delivering an intense yet quirky survival experience in which players had to keep their sanity and their bellies full inside a tough procedurally-generated environment.

The game has just received its Reign of Giants DLC, and now Klei Entertainment has confirmed that it's bringing a multiplayer mode called Don't Starve Together as a free patch on PC.

The independent developer offered an extensive FAQ on its website, motivating the decision to add multiplayer after spending a lot of time saying that it would not do such a thing.

"We promised we would make Don’t Starve the best single player game that we could. To us, this meant using the resources that we had allocated to Don’t Starve and keeping them focused on delivering on that promise. We were not willing to sacrifice our goals for the game to work on a multiplayer version. This was the point we tried to get across in our original decision," the studio said.

However, seeing as how multiplayer became a heated topic in the community, the studio began to explore such an idea and even got some new employees to develop a prototype and see how everything handles when more players are added.

"Over the past few months, we’ve quietly smuggled in some new people onto our team who immediately said 'Heck yeah, this can be a thing!' and actually threw together a proof of concept. After a couple months and an office-wide session of multiplayer Don’t Starve, we were convinced it was worth exploring and bringing it to our community."

The Don't Starve Together mode will support around 2 to 4 players at the same time, according to Klei, but depending on the feedback from users, the number might increase. Games can be made public or private, depending on a player's preference, and the whole mode is offered as a free update for all current owners on PC.

Klei is currently focusing on the PC version of Don't Starve and will release the multiplayer as an alpha and beta prototype first, to gather feedback from players.

Once the online mode is launched on PC, it might appear on PS4 at a later time.