Don't Starve Together won't be starved for updates this year
Pig out on another year of updates
Among a very strong stable of games, Don't Starve Together is easily Klei Entertainment's most popular. Turns out that adding friends was the secret spice the cartoon survival sandbox needed. Today, Klei announced their roadmap for supporting the game this year, and they've got a lot planned out. While they're going to be toning down the frequency of wild and wacky special events, they're going to be expanding its world and overhauling older characters, and those upgrades will be free for all. There will be new characters coming in 2019 as paid DLC too.
Klei's stated reason for moving away from events (such as the Forge arena battles) is because they were so time-consuming to produce and expensive to run, server-wise. Still, they brought players back in a big way. Despite launching in April 2016 (and being spun off a 2013 game), Don't Starve Together's busiest month ever was November 2018, according to Steam Charts. Instead of pouring all their effort into stuff people only see once a year, Klei are going to be expanding the world and adding more variety. New biomes with weird inhabitants are due every couple months, starting mid-April.
Refreshed characters will be coming in March, starting with Winona, and with additional revamps coming once a month, give or take. They're hoping to make every character feel distinct, and to delve a little deeper into their backstories. Alongside each revamp, they'll be selling new premium skins for the characters getting upgraded. While they've yet to unveil any, the upcoming characters (which Klei are up-front about being their source of funding for further support) will likely cost around $7 (£5.36) each. That could change, but they'll definitely be premium items.
Beyond the new stuff, revised characters and all those lovely bits, they've got a few minor quality of life improvements on the way, along with new skins to be earned from watching Twitch streamers running the game. Just this week they're also planning on rolling out a major new update named Year Of The Pig King. As for what that'll entail, Klei have been pointedly vague about that, but the old single player Don't Starve did recently get a pig-themed expansion. Either way, there's no sign that Don't Starve Together is slowing down any time soon.
You can find Don't Starve Together here on Steam for £11/€15/$15. You can read Klei's full roadmap here.