The quick and overwhelming success of V Rising has been a bit shocking. After a modestly advertised pre-launch period, the vampire survival game rushed onto Steam and immediately made its way to the top 10 most played list, where it still resides at the time of this writing. V Rising has had great momentum right out of the gate and is now looking to keep it going. In a May 30 blog post, developer Stunlock Studios outlined what the near future holds for V Rising as it continues the early access trek toward an eventual 1.0 release.
The dev team states that their energy is currently mainly focused on server stability, improving balance, fixing bugs, and delivering quality of life features. In other words, the studio will look to strengthen V Rising’s foundation before delivering more content. While there will most likely be a trickle of content arriving during the early access period, Stunlock is saving the bulk of it for the game’s full release. That would include more items, weapons, and abilities, more V Bloods and challenges, new ways to customize castles, and most importantly: more lands to explore and pillage.
It will be interesting to see where V Rising lands in the near future. With the momentum of over a million players powering its titular rise, it’s clear it will be a real competitor to established survival games in the PC ecosystem that don’t match its top-down gameplay or dark fantasy setting.
One important takeaway from Stunlock’s post is that the studio will not release regular minute patches, but instead focus on large and meaningful updates deployed less frequently. The studio has not given out a date for the first such update. This type of cadence indicates that V Rising will remain in early access for a while, shaping into its final form over a number of iterations.
