"It's not going anywhere if people still want to play it." As Grounded 2 gets ready to launch, Obsidian promises it's not the end of the road for the original game

Obsidian has expressed a strong interest for game preservation to Eurogamer while talking about whether Grounded 2 will usurp and replace Grounded 1 when it arrives in early access at the end of July.

Speaking in an interview, executive producer Marcus Morgan told me: “We actually have this strong passion to ensure our games can stand the test of time and keep updating through history.” He pointed to the surprise patch Obsidian released for 10-year-old isometric role-playing game Pillars of Eternity, earlier this year, as proof. “There’s a strong desire on our side to make sure that our games are preserved,” he said.

“Now, are we going to be doing content and these story expansions to Grounded 1?” he added. “No, that’s the continuation of Grounded 2. But even as recently as April we released our [update] 1.4.7 to Grounded 1, so there’s a maintenance and a desire that that game will always exist. So we’ll keep that up; it’s not going anywhere if people still want to play Grounded 1 as well.

“But we are, in terms of where we’re moving the story, where we’re expanding things: if you want more Grounded, we’ll be more into Grounded 2 versus Grounded 1. We’re pushing things forward with Grounded 2.”

Morgan’s comments reference a bigger problem games face where if their servers are taken offline, they effectively cease to exist. EA recently announced it would switch the Anthem servers off, for example, and when that happens, no one will be able to play the game. Anthem will, for all intents and purposes, disappear.