Vampire Survivors was ported to mobile because of its imitators

Vampire Survivors developer Poncle chose to port its surprise hit game on mobile devices as soon as possible because of the hundreds of copycats and literal clones that started flooding the marketplaces.

According to a report by GI.biz, developer Poncle had been trying to release the game on mobile devices ever since it reached its surprise popularity after the game’s full release on PC and Xbox. “Soon after the initial success of VS, I started to look for a business partner to work on a mobile version of the game,” he said on a blog post on the official Steam page for the game. ““Unfortunately, nobody I spoke with was on board with the monetization I had in mind for the platform: non-predatory.”

As it turns out, after these conversations, Vampire Survivors started to appear on mobile shops en masse, and not only similar games (of which there are now many), but actual one to one copies of the game. These titles were complete clones of Poncle’s own creation, featuring what the developer claims is “stolen code, assets, data, progression…”

He revealed that “This forced our hand to release the mobile game ASAP, and put a lot of stress on the dev team that wasn't even supposed to worry about mobile in the first place.” The game’s release was announced the very same day it came to digital storefronts, and announced on December 8, 2022 during The Game Awards. It was released simultaneously on Android and iOS, but hardcore fans of the game quickly realized that some features had been left out of the new version. Now we know why.

Surviving for everyone! (Vampires not guaranteed)

However, not all is bad news, as this version of Vampire Survivors contains all of the original content, which is still dozens of hours of gameplay and fun. According to the developer, the team is still working to bring these features (like cloud servers and crossplay between all versions) to mobile, at the same time as they try and fix every bug they can identify.

Of course, as the game is entirely free to play on mobile, fans are not being as harsh towards the developers as in other occasions. Even so, Poncle is looking to be entirely transparent and fair about the game’s monetization. They’re even trying to find a solution on how to offer the recent DLC, Legacy of the Moonspell, for the free to play version of the game while making it fair and accessible to all.

Source | Steam, GamesIndustry.biz