And i hate it when people keep on downplaying the effort FDev put in to making this game accessible with so much free content.
Excellent, thank you for sharing that with me. Now if I might be so bold, perhaps you'd be best off directing that towards people who are doing what you hate instead of towards those who aren't.
FD's funding model is based on a split of paid for expansions (including pre-payments from KS backers and LEP owners) along with microtransactions (paid for cosmetics)
The microtransactions side does mean that things aren't being provided absolutely free (even though it can be free to an individual). Let's disregard that though. If we do so, it's pretty simple:
- Horizons season - paid
- Beyond season - free
- Beyond -> Odyssey interim period releases (inc FC's**) - free
- Odyssey release - paid
(I call out FC's specifically as 'huge, executive control, ships' was one of the ED milestones from the early days, and would, from that context, have been expected to be a paid DLC, but wasn't.)
The Horizons seasons being paid for doesn't downplay any of the stuff that was free. It's just a statement of fact.
From Annual Report 2015:
"Elite Dangerous: Horizons is a season of major gameplay expansions for Elite Dangerous, beginning with Planetary Landings on 1:1 scale worlds across the Elite Dangerous galaxy."
" At the Gamescom show we announced Elite Dangerous: Horizons, a new paid-for season of expansions for the game, to a positive critical reception."
From Annual Report 2016:
"Elite Dangerous: Horizons is a paid-for seasons pass of expansions to extend the Elite Dangerous game"
"The first expansion in the Horizons season, Planetary Landings, was released on PC in December 2015, and the second, The Engineers, in May 2016. The Engineers was released six weeks later than originally planned, in order to give additional development time to focus on the quality of the release."
From Annual Report 2017:
"The Horizons season of expansions
Each expansion offers new headline gameplay features plus a large number of quality of life and other tweaks, fixes and improvements, and there is an accompanying ‘1.x’ update to the base game.
The release of 2.4 ‘The Return’ will complete the Horizons season of expansions. Horizons will continue to be sold as a substantial expansion product with all content available at the time of purchase."
The details of the revenue deferral from the sales of Horizons can also be found in various annual reports.