A message from our founder and creative director:

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Posted Sept 23rd, 2024

Hello everyone,

We tend to not celebrate major milestones around THE LONG DARK because it inevitably brings up a lot of discussion around long development timelines, delays, etc etc. Totally understandable. But for the dev team's sake, and those of you in the community that have been fans for a long time, I feel that we can't just let this important date in TLD's history slip by.

Yesterday, September 22nd, 2024, was the ten-year anniversary of us launching TLD on Steam Early Access. There are a lot of stories of what happened before that day, and there have been a lot of stories since. But I can confidently say that, apart for meeting my wife and the births of my kids, September 22nd 2014 is one of the most important days of my life. It was the beginning of a 10+ year journey that would see us building and growing TLD, the team, and the community into something I feel is very special to all of us.

I won't take too much time dwelling on the past or bringing up anecdotes. I just mainly wanted to say thank you. We haven't always been perfect, *I* haven't always been perfect, we maybe haven't always seen eye-to-eye on every single feature, update, hotfix, etc. over the past ten years, and things haven't always been smooth, but the truth is that we wouldn't be here if not for you, the fans.

We work our hearts out because we love what we do, we love our game, and we mostly want to create memorable experiences that we feel proud of and that will hopefully stick with you for your entire lives. Without players, we'd be throwing our game into an empty void. Even though it's not always perfect, we've creating something special together -- this weird and wonderful interplay of creators and players -- and for that I am very grateful. It's a big part of what makes this game special to millions of people around the world.

Thank you for everything you have brought, and bring with you every day, to THE LONG DARK. It's a lot more than just a game to me, and I know it's the same for you.

Here's to another 10 years of making memorable experiences for you, our players.*

♥️

- Raph

* Just maybe some new experiences too, thanks. 😅