Kongregate Acquisition

On December 6th, 2019, the surviv.io Developers announced the acquisition of the game by game publisher Kongregate.

## Questions and Answers

In that same announcement, the devs also decided to do a Q&A in the #survivio channel on the Discord server. Justin went ahead and answered many questions that the community had about the future of the game, which are summarized here.

What will happen to the surviv.io site?
I'm not sure about the site question, I'm fairly certain you'll always be able to go to surviv.io and play. (The same seems to apply to Proxy Sites too)
What are the future plans with the roadmap?
The roadmap is still being worked on, but based on what I've heard and seen so far, they are going to be pretty aggressive on the feature schedule
What will happen to the lore?
I will do everything in my power to ensure lore remains relevant.
Are either of you going to work on surviv.io in the future?
The game is now completely in Kongregate’s good hands. We’d never rule out helping with the game in some way in the future, but as of right now, we have no plans to. We’ve spent months with the Kongregate team advising, consulting, and smoothly transitioning the game to their development, art, and community teams and are confident they have it handled.
Will there be more updates?
Yeah, more frequent and with more content ... again, just a guess from what I've heard
What will happen to the mobile versions of the game?
I believe mobile will get a bunch of nice upgrades, they have devs who actually worked on mobile games
instead of Nick and I who didn't really know what to do on mobile
Will Kongregate ruin the game?
Kongreate did ruin the game. Now it's shutting down (2023)! Their goal is to kill the game.
Will the Discord server ever be deleted?
No, the server will not and never will be deleted
Will they add fan-made stuff to the game?
I can't say for sure about fan stuff, I hope they add more than Nick and I did. The fan stuff is crazy good. I'll definitely be recommending they look at all the concepts/suggestions
Will they deal with cheaters/hackers?
I'll only address this once, but they are aware of cheaters and will be dealing with them aggressively.
Will you and Nick move on to making other games?
Nick and I have no solid plans post-surviv, we are still focused on this game 100%.
Will you keep using community translators for the game?
I think they're still going to lean on community translators for now
Will player counts go up?
I'm pretty sure player counts are going to go up, that seems like a given
Will you increase the max amount of players per game?
Hmm, player counts would have to go up quite a bit to increase max players, but it's possible
Will there be microtransactions added to the game?
I honestly don't know.
Will you guys keep developing the game?
Nick and I are doing all development for now until they (Kongregate) are ready
What will happen to custom/private games?
Custom/privates are 100% still on the schedule
What will happen to the surviv.io social media?
Kongregate will at some point assume control of all the social media stuff.
Will we lose all stats?
Stats will not be lost
What will happen to the current Discord mods?
Mod team will remain the same, I think our mod team is great and I'd hate to see any of them go.
What are you guys doing next?
Number one: taking a break! We’ve been working almost nonstop on surviv.io for over 2 years, and we’re looking forward to recharging our batteries. We’re both interested in working on another game in the future, but nothing is set in stone right now.
## Trivia

* Ever since the announcement of the acquisition, there has been a substantial amount of backlash from the Surviv.io fanbase. While some people were at first in full support of the acquisition, an overwhelming majority of community members are now strongly against it. Many of the users that oppose the acquisition argue that Kongregate is "killing" Surviv.io, making the game look "childish" and adding content that doesn't fit the game. These viewpoints contradict what Justin said in the Discord Q&A above, where Justin states that Kongregate's goal "is to grow the game, not kill it".
	+ There have been many acts of protest against the Kongregate Acquisition. A lot of surviv.io players have refused to play the game altogether, while others have taken to social media to complain about Kongregate. There have been movements that would address these fan complaints on the official Surviv.io Discord server, but as of now, no such movement has actually yielded any results, with Kong remaining mostly secretive about their plans for the game and community feedback being largely ignored.
	+ Kongregate, simply dubbed "Kong" by many members, has released no statement on this backlash and are seemingly unaware of the anger that they are causing.
	+ As mentioned above, Microtransactions have been added to the game by Kongregate, in the form of purchasable Golden Potatoes.
	+ Additionally, Surviv.io has not seen any new updates since the 2.3.0 update, released in August 2022. Updates released after the acquisition have also come out much less often and less consistently.
	+ Finally, on February 13th, 2023, Kongregate released a message, which states that Surviv.io will no longer be updated, and that it will soon shut down, effectively killing Surviv.io.
* During a livestream, Justin says that he and Nick wanted to buy surviv back from Kongregate at some point after the acquisition, but Kongregate denied this request.