In the early days — when it was just a handful of us working on the early access release of Astroneer and eventually bringing it to 1.0 — we always felt that people would recognize us as Astroneer. We put all our branding efforts into that identity, hoping it could become something known across the world. Back then, it felt right for System Era to simply be known by association. That approach brought us a lot of success, and we’re incredibly proud of the work that got us here.

But today, we’ve grown — and have grown up.

We feel more complete as a group of creators, and this rebrand reflects that. As I write this, we’re a team of over 60 individuals who are proud of the studio and culture we’ve built. We no longer see ourselves as just “the people who made Astroneer.” We’re System Era: passionate creators who do more than make games. We design our own merchandise. We write books. We make music. We produce and film videos. And we do it all with empathy, curiosity, and care for each other and the things we love.

When it came time to set goals for this rebrand, I gave our team one core directive: the logos, colours, and designs should step aside — creating space for the many mediums we use to express ourselves and what makes System Era…us. The new identity calls back to our original design but is simple enough to let everything around it shine. It respects our maker’s mindset and pursuit of playfulness.

Going forward, we don’t want to be known for just our logo or mission statement. We want to be known for what we make — the things we share that reflect who we are. We take pride in being more than a video game developer. System Era is a place for problem-solvers, doers, tinkerers, artists, makers, explorers, voices, and throw-things-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks-ers.

As this rebrand rolls out, I want to thank everyone who’s been part of System Era’s journey. Over the past 10+ years, so many of you — friends, fans, content creators — have supported us in ways that words can’t fully capture. Your stories, passion, and belief in Astroneer and the folks who created it have meant the world . And to the incredible team at System Era: thank you for being unapologetically yourselves and helping shape who we are today.

Our next chapter isn’t just written — it’s welded, stitched, coded, filmed, and felt.

Adam Bromell
Co-founder and Creative Director at System Era

Today, we get to make one of the most exciting announcements in System Era’s history: We’re joining Devolver Digital as a first party studio! This is an amazing milestone for both System Era and for Devolver, and is going to enable us to focus on delivering the best quality experiences to the most people, with System Era’s unique style.

Few people know this, but System Era and Devolver have a history that spans nearly to the dawn of the company, when Devolver very nearly became the publisher for Astroneer, over 8 years ago. Despite taking separate roads then, we remained admirers of Devolver as both our companies grew. Now, Devolver has become a standard bearer in the industry for indie development. They’ve proven, time and time again, that they care not only about publishing the best quality experiences, but about putting the radical ideas of the amazing, creative developers they support at the forefront of their business. It’s the shared culture between System Era and Devolver that made this a natural match for us.

System Era the company, the brand, and the team, is not going anywhere. We’ll keep going on as before, only stronger! What about Astroneer, will we keep working on it? Of course! Most of our team has already been working on something new and exciting, but now we’ll have even greater capacity to support Astroneer and its amazing community who have stuck with us for so long. We have a whole roadmap for 2024 updates we’ve embarked on, we can’t wait to share more.

When we started System Era, our goal was to build a game unlike any we had seen before. We wanted to build a company we ourselves would love to work for. We succeeded beyond our hopes. But we have new ambitions, and making the kinds of games we want to make was going to require new partnerships of one kind or another that would each change System Era, for better or worse. This partnership, working in-house with Devolver, lets us focus on what we love, the way we love to do it. We don’t shed independence lightly. But with Devolver, we don’t think System Era is losing independence, we think it’s finding a home among a like-minded confederation of talented people, under a banner that is synonymous with the indie ethos, and we can’t wait to continue our journey, together.

Thanks and love to every single person who has supported us along the way. The best is yet to come.

— Brendan, Adam, & the Team at System Era

Hey! Joe here, the Comms and Marketing Lead for SES. If you know anything about us, you might know that in the endless pursuit of being open and transparent, we probably share too much about development: (enjoy this 10 minute vlog about ~*relevance*~ technology)

In the spirit of continuing that pursuit, our opening salvo on Medium is this blog post, one where we reveal all sorts of juicy numbers gathered after 5 years of live development of Astroneer.

Some context: Astroneer launched as an Early Access title on Steam and Xbox in December 2016, quickly selling over 600 thousand units in its first month. Just over two years later we felt comfortable launching it into a 1.0 product, promising our community that we would continue to support it as long as it was reasonable with free content. Three years on, Astroneer has been purchased nearly 4 million times, played by over 8 million people (thanks GamePass!) and it’s growth continues to surprise us: Astroneer launched on Nintendo Switch in January and sold over 220 thousand units across all platforms in that same month.

Enough talk, here is the infographic in all it’s typographical glory: (lets meet at the bottom for some more words)

….there is a lot to digest there, and I wanted to add some context to some of it to help clarify some of the juicier bits.

Player numbers

Early on we decided that the strategy for continued development was going to be centered on adding new content to the game for free while bringing in new audiences. While that worked really well, we also got the opportunity to join Xbox’s Game Pass program, which has put our game in front of a LOT of new people. So while Astroneer’s revenue comes largely from Steam, our overall player numbers skew heavily towards Xbox. Not sure how much else I can share here but hoping to expand more on this later.

“Wow thats a lot of revenue!”

Yeah! We are so so damn lucky to have the success we have had since our initial big launch in late 2016. There aren’t any money piles to swim through, Astroneer’s success gave the original 5 person team the means to to build System Era into a 40 person powerhouse filled with an extremely talented bunch of game developers. It means we can offer this beautiful group of nerds competitive salaries, top tier benefits, and profit sharing while they continue to create rad experiences for our players. Additionally, it means the company has plenty of runway to keep doing cool stuff without feeling pressured by short term money concerns. Most of you reading this already know, but our net profit number is much lower, factoring in the cut taken by platforms, taxes, and other business costs.

What about Nintendo Switch sales data?

Digital has been available for just under two months and physical launched on Feb 18th so we aren’t ready to talk about that yet, but know we have been extremely pleased with how Astroneer has sold on Switch. We peaked in the top 5 globally on the eshop best seller list so interpret that how you will. ;)

Ok that is all I have for now! We will likely expand on lots of the things included in this dataset in future blog posts but for now ask any questions about anything intriguing in the comments and I will jump in. I wrote an article for gamedeveloper.com where I share some takeaways from running the live game from the Marketing and Comms perspective, so if that sounds interesting to you, go give it a gander.

You can also DM me on twitter @staymighty or shoot me an email @ joe (at) systemera.net.

cheers!

-jt

(ps. shout out to ustwo games for being the pioneers of this kind of transparency, I have always wanted to share data like this after being inspired by them ❤)