In an interview with UploadVR, Star Wars: Squadrons creative director Ian Frazier indicated that developer Motive Studios doesn’t intend to release any DLC for the game.
“Never say never, so to speak, but as far as our philosophy goes we’re not trying to treat the game as a live service,” Frazier says. “We don’t want to say, ‘It’s almost done!’ and then dribble out more of it over time, which to be honest is how most games work these days. So we’ve tried to treat it in kind of an old-school approach saying, ‘You’ve paid the $40, this is the game and it’s entirely self-contained. We’re not planning to add more content, this is the game, and we hope you understand the value proposition.’”
Later on, Frazier specifically shoots down the possibility of ground combat being added to Squadrons as the team “wanted to separate the game in that flavor from something like Battlefront.”
So far, reactions to this announcement have been somewhat mixed. On the one hand, you’ve got many gamers who are happy to hear that Squadrons won’t be flooded with post-release content. Not only are there many (some would say “too many”) games out there that offer live service options designed to support a game with content indefinitely, but EA’s history with post-launch DLC and other microtransactions isn’t exactly glowing. The idea of a major game released in a mostly completed state is more of a novelty than some feel it should be.
On the other hand, the argument against live service games and DLC typically focuses on the examples of those concepts executed poorly. Actually, notable single-player DLC expansions such as Blood Dragon and The Ballad of Gay Tony have arguably gone on to surpass their predecessor from a sheer content quality standpoint.
Considering that even generous reviews of Squadrons note that it feels like the game could use more of the things it does so well, this would actually be a case where we think the game’s fans would welcome a well-done single-player expansion that perhaps also features some new multiplayer modes. While it doesn’t seem like the team is ready to entirely rule out that possibility, it also doesn’t sound like that’s their focus at this time.
We should also point out that there’s a distinct possibility that the Squadrons team could be turning their attention to a sequel that is fully-developed with next-gen technology in mind. That’s really just speculation, but it’s not hard to see the potential of the series moving forward.