Midnight Society delay second DEADROP snapshot test to ease “crunch”

Midnight Society has delayed their second snapshot test for DEADROP by two weeks until September 20. Studio head Robert Bowling told players they were behind schedule, but didn’t want to “crunch” employees and release a rushed product.

Dr Disrespect’s studio Midnight Society have been hard at work on their debut title DEADROP. While information was scarce for some time, the developers have been teasing it out via snapshots every few weeks.

The first DEADROP snapshot test went live on July 29, with players getting a taste of the game’s “core player movement and weapon systems.”

However, the second planned snapshot test for September 9 has been delayed after it became clear to Midnight Society they wouldn’t meet the deadline without “crunching” the team. It has been pushed back to September 20 as a result.

“The second snapshot introduces some massive new gameplay systems that are foundations to the core of DEADROP’s experience. We can’t wait to get it into the hands of our Variants and play it together, but waiting is exactly what we must do,” studio head Robert Bowling said.

“After discussing the work remaining to get the second snapshot out the door to the quality bar that we demand for our community it was clear it would only be possible if the team worked far beyond normal working hours.

“That is not the type of studio Midnight Society is. We will not ship a broken experience simply to hit a deadline and we won’t burn out our team in order to get it to the quality we demand. Therefore, we have decided to delay the release of the second snapshot until September 20.”

The extra time will allow for Midnight Society to not rush through development and ultimately give players a better experience when they jump in for the game’s second test. 

Bowling added on Twitter “while we will always aim for a build delivery every six weeks, we are not a big publisher and are not afraid to delay snapshot drops if it means maintaining a healthy work culture and delivering a high-quality build to our community.”

Details on what exactly will be included in the September 20 snapshot for DEADROP are not yet public, but given how early on it is and the talk surrounding it, it’ll likely be core to the vertical extraction shooter experience.