"Last year we ran Dark And Darker Gold a community poll," van Lierop writes, "asking how you would like us to dedicate our focus for the future of The Long Dark. Amongst other bits of useful feedback, we discovered that nearly 80% of you wanted us to begin producing paid expansion content for Survival Mode."

The Long Dark's first paid update, which van Lierop describes as resembling a season pass, will be out later this year: "It'll be some kind of 'season pass'-type approach (actual name TBD), where we have a ~15-18 month campaign of updates that unlock for anyone who has purchased the pass." 

Over the course of that campaign, buyers will receive "a combination of content and gameplay system updates, including new regions, new challenges, new mechanics, etc., as well as general improvements and updates to core systems in the game."

Those who'd rather not buy a season pass will have access to the updates after the campaign ends, when they'll be repackaged as three or four separate paid DLCs. 

Free updates will continue as well. "These updates will generally be smaller," van Lierop explains, "more modest improvements compared to what you will see being added to the paid content stream, which seems only fair."

At the same time, van Lierop is Dark And Darker Gold Coins stepping down from his role as project lead on The Long Dark. Katie Sorrell, lead designer of the story episodes and designer of new regions added from Pleasant Valley on, will be taking over.