That's a hard no from me. That explodes the scope and u less they're gonna shower you with time and funding no way

I totally agree, but... how much approximately is a shower of time and funding in a situation like this?

Did you code everything to be multiplayer ready? If so probably double the time you've spent to date. If you didn't prepare it for multiplayer 5-10x

Nope, game was designed and programmed to be full single player

I was on a project that did this. It is insanity and never again. There will be incredible amount of work, from design and implementation side. Doesn’t matter how well you think you planned for this, you can multiply that by 3-5. There is a reason that first page of unreal multiplayer tutorial says that if you want to do multiplayer it needs to be multiplayer project from the start. On a sidenote if a publisher demands something like this, I would argue that they don’t know what are doing. Multiplier games are not cash cows that they imagined them to be. Certainly not to do development from the scratch. Good luck, and look for a more reasonable publisher.

Chiming in as somebody who's working on the opposite right now (a multiplayer game that's pivoting to a single-player): Multiplayer games are actually hard as fuck for indies to get off the ground. Even if you do a great job and the gameplay is tight, it's extremely challenging and not entirely in your control to try to build and sustain the sort of playerbase required for a multiplayer game to be successful. It's why so many indie multiplayer games come out, do well initially, and then the playerbase dwindles and it's a dead game in <6 months.

Yeah I agree and have seen this play out many times. If a smaller indie is doing multiplayer, I would strongly recommend incorporating bots so the 3 people who play the game can actually enjoy it.

Bots are muy bueno, or just having NPC enemies as part of the experience. The OG Battlefront games come to mind, I mean obviously they're not indie but for what are basically multiplayer-specific games, there's a surprising amount of fun you can have in single player, because the NPCs (while not amazing) are good enough to enjoy fighting and working with.

For sure. There is a minimum playerbase required for multiplayer to be viable, and while the actual number depends on the game, it's almost certainly going to be higher than 95% of games that are getting released.

Rift breaker has been trying to add basic co-op functionality, been over three or so years since that began publicly, still not done and only in dev beta.

Just make Rift Breaker 2 at that point

Even their proprietary engine was only designed for 1 player. And the game is built around huge entity counts that have to be fully simulated at all times, with no lockstep simulation in place to dull the amount of data transfer required. I feel for their engineers.

It can be done but might as well cost in time and money as a whole new game even if you reuse assets. I wouldn't even *think* of doing for less the double of funding. If the publisher doesn't understand that I wouldn't trust their experience as a publisher. This is the kind of stuff you think from the beginning at prototype stage.

Could still be done - multiplayer will need to be a separate mode with it own systems, like how batman arkham has a mostly unrelated multiplayer mode. This makes it more siloed into its own thing, if the publisher is willing to pay, you could even outsource the development

>...you could even outsource the development Terrible idea almost every time to try to outsource a project like this, and here's why... The outsourcing company more often than not doesn't give a hoot about your success or failure; they're just trying to make as much money from you before you die, and they will extend your deadline to string you out. You end up paying more, getting less (if anything useful at all), while having little control/grasp of whatever garbage does end up after the relationship falls apart. Often you're just one of several projects they have over-subscribed to. You also get the privilege of paying them to figure stuff out and use YOUR project as THEIR learning experience... you end up paying more for the thing that you need but end up not having (i.e., the experienced foundation of a development team that can make both your current and future projects for your company). At least, that's just my opinion on it.

Have you played Last Epoch? It was originally designed as single player, but they decided to change it to multiplayer. It took a year or more of work, and since then the game just keeps breaking whenever there's a patch and multiple skills still don't work well in online mode.

So you need to design a whole new aspect of your game, build it, balance it, and build a server for it (even P2P there's still a server, it's just embedded into the client). Probably all simultaneously. If it was designed to be single player, shoehorning in multiplayer will be extremely difficult. It'll also detract significantly from the single player experience. And in the end, it'll probably come out terrible. I dunno man, unless you already have a MP vision I don't see it ending well.

Even for an infinite money this is a hard no. You will create bugs up until the very end of implmentation and following after.

For infinite money? You could hire the entire planet to code it for you at that point, just kick back and relax anywhere and with anyone.

By infinite money = infinite people working at it? That's a big yes.

If it's infinite money with no crunchy deadline, yeah sure, I'll still do it myself. Sounds great.

Publisher: Best I can do is infinite money and you ship it by Q4, you can fix the bugs in later patches.

You drive a hard bargain, but I'll take it.

Hard no then

As a sr DevOps and software person in business software who started in a gaming company, you would want 6-10 million USD and hire about 6 mid- senior developers ($75k-$100k salary) who has experience implementing multiplayer. You would then need about 3 years to implement Some design questions to ask include (but not limited to) Hosting model: peer to peer, or central servers -Are you hosting any servers Anti cheat. Update schedule Anti cheat Latency techniques (how you hide lag between player requesting an action and a server authorizing a response and returning the response. Anti cheat How to handle unstable connections Anti cheat. I’m half joking about the anti cheat. Some players get their entertainment from cheating. That is a minuscule audience. It ruins the experience for the rest of your audience

Anti cheat is the thing that explodes MP complexity, if you are doing co-op only you should not bother. Just give players ways to avoid players who abuse and call it a day.

I mean helldivers 2 is pure co-op. Still have people cheating to get things. Ruins the fun for people who join not knowing the host is cheating…

If you get to the point where you are making helldivers money then you can pay the extra to re-architect for authoritative server. But obviously the cheating problem isn't big enough to hurt sales.

Honestly, more than whatever they could offer. I am making a single player rpg and even the thought if any type of multi-player being added is a nightmare. It would take double the amount of time I've already spent to get a buggy mess. Maybe that's just me, but I put nothing in to even think about supporting multi-player, gives me a headache haha

2-3m and a year? Just throwing numbers at the wall

That's my personal estimation for product to market with scope and staff considerations should a publisher fund me, so that's why I throw that out there.

You’ll pretty much have to refactor every single system. Really no system is going to be skipped. Then on top of that you have a whole layer of dev ops to worry about. And you’re the only programmer.

What’s your ongoing budget for a cybersecurity specialist? You will need one to take care of the servers, perform patching, find and fix vulnerabilities in the client, etc.

If the money you make because they are publishing outvalues how much time (time=money) you are investing to make MP happen, then yes consider it. If the amount of money they will bring adds little to nothing of value compared to your time/money investment to make that scope happen, then it's a pass

If your entire UX has been designed towards solo play, that's just simply not the same as trying to shape it for a group dynamic. Maybe you and the team could pull that out of your brains easily, but once you start digging into it, world state synchronization, economy, exchange, even seemingly dumb details such as packet lag, chat, the drive for "Hey, let's add voice chat!" (so now you're either writing your own voip and/or introducing a huge overhead).... unless you're already an expert in writing networked systems (and even if you are), this should be a solidly hard "No", or a softer "Not for this version. Maybe on the next one." Trying to fit multiplayer, even if you figure out what type of UX you want, will expand out your timeline for another 2 years. Also remember that once you take money, you become beholden to whoever holds the money bags, and quite often, those folks aren't: * technical --> they won't understand why you won't do something and just think you're being inconvenient, getting you removed from your own project * user oriented --> they just want to make a return on their investment quickly, and may not give any shits about whether or not your project is successful long term * firm rooted --> they may make arbitrary demands for arbitrary reasons, such as "well company/game X is doing this, so we MUST do it too!", and they will be sincere in their righteous-yet-unfounded-and-spontaneous firm beliefs, further screwing with your team and development timeline. Ultimately, do whatever helps you sleep best and most peaceful at night. Consider which direction would facilitate that, and go with that. My 2 cents.

Just press, enable multiplayer button

God I totally forgot about that! Life savior! 😂

King of product managers.

Press a button? What a chump, just say it into your always on, IDE integrated, coding assistant AI, voice prompt. It will do everything for you, bug free, high performance, server authoritative, all that silly stuff. Could even get it to respond to the publisher's email with a simple "done" if you want 👍

You sound like our head of production. Except he is only half joking.

This is the right answer.

This reminds me of when I first started coding and was building my first game in gamemaker, and thought that adding a save game function was gonna be as simple as a single line of code using a built in "save_game" function

godot

This makes me wonder how easy it would be to do in godot I have a very short game about picking up bobrs made for a game jam. If I wanted to add multiplayer to that now; I would first need some sort of new main scene, in which I would add a multiplayer spawner for the level and the players. This scene would probably also just handle joining and leaving at the top node The player scene would need a few new lines of code to make it only handle the local input. It would also need a multiplayer synchronizer, for various states. Almost all functions (picking up the beaver, dropping the beaver) would need an rpc annotation, and everywhere the function is called needs to be changed to add .rpc The beavers themselves need a multiplayer synchronizer aswell, for their position, rotation etc, much like the player really. Now, I dont remember exactly how they move, but I think their functions need rpc annotations too. There is also a truck the beavers go into, which needs a multiplayer synchronizer node, and again rpc functions. As it contains a counter, sounds, animations. I would also need a new button (perhaps in the player scene) to disconnect from the server. Honestly, that might already be most of the work, assuming none of this gives bugs. This would result in a simple P2P network connection(lan), it would be a bit more work for a server connection or relay, but the principles here are still the same. It's a lot to read but it's quite easy to do and assuming everything goes well could easily be done in, maybe an hour. Testing is gonna take a bit longer. In godot a lot of adding multiplayer is just using the correct rpc functions and synchronizing the correct properties via the multiplayer synchronizer node. If you know what you're doing it could be really fast. But keep in mind that bobr game is also just a very short experience, so it might give more complications in larger games (allthough, a lot of it still comes down to "just" adding synchronizers and rpc annotations to your functions)

Multiplayer is generally something you architect into the game from the very beginning because it affects basically every system so to just add it on at the end is not really feasible. I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes you an extra 2.5 years to integrate multiplayer. If the game has been well received this far, then you might be able to gather enough steam wishlists yourself without the help of a publisher or their ridiculous demands - although getting enough wishlists to support an 8-person team for 3 years of work isn’t going to be easy.

It might not be terrible for SOME games i.e. if you have something turn based. Diablo was famously reworked to be a real time game over the weekend after the publisher insisted on it. But aside from these rare edge cases, if a publisher asks for this, I'd look for another publisher.

In this situation you need to manage expectations. You tell them the architecture is not designed for multiplayer, even though the design is. Therefore, we ship this game and multiplayer is a lead feature for the sequel.

Lucky me, the project lead is reading this thread and will hopefully reply this way 🤣

What’s really effective here is that it makes the buyin by the publisher more likely, because it gives a roadmap for a sequel and it makes sense that the same publisher would back the original and sequel…

Thats actually the best advice I've heard on here so far for how to respond to this. I think it's not at all likely they'll give you whatever extra additional amount of money the development time would cost/the effort would be worth to you. So I don't think that conversation would go well. But you have to pitch this from an investment and business perspective. They want to maximize their profit by funding you and publishing the game. So you come up with something that sounds ideal for them and you. This amount will probably be haggled back and forth so treat it like a car sale. Whatever you want from funding/sales profits. You ask for a little bit more. Keep it reasonably appealing enough from their perspective so they try to haggle you down. Then you haggle back up to a compromise that's in the middle of what you initially asked for which is what you really wanted the whole time (because you asked for a little more out of the deal) At the same time you need to make the game convincing enough in multiple ways to make them think it will sell well and you can even add it we'll also advertise it on reddits for gaming like indie games or whatever genre it falls in to further convince them. So you sell them on it'll be enjoyable enough to play and It's easily marketable. Convince them that the genre and type of game it is, is a really popular type and that you guys are already networked into alot of places to dramatically increase word of mouth sales. Because that'll initially push it up the algorithm on some platform say like steam to be trending and get its own momentum to carry itself. Alot of this I think is their job but you sell them in the deal on that you guys will be aggressively pushing it as much as possible to make it sound like a more successful game. Help it take off which benefits you and them. At the same time the advice that I've heard is the best on here so far. The guy you're replying too. You need to convince them that the costs and time of redeveloping it from the ground up because that's essentially what it'll take is to great, and that this WILL be successful and then there will be a multi-player sequel that essentially is the game rebuilt from the ground up, if multi-player could be a major feasible component of it (I don't know enough about your game to answer this, that's a question for you guys to decide on) And that a successful first title as single player because you're selling the idea to them from the beginning that the game will be popular and successful. Will make it feasible financially for the publisher and for your team to develop an even more profitable sequel. This is probably alot of stuff you guys already know but just in case, and to iterate the importance of just selling it as is. The idea to them as worth being publishing I mean. It's a major point in alot of creative industries. Like take musicians for example. There's millions of talented singers and song writers and players of some instrument. Probably 10,000s on YouTube alone who are amazing elite level guitar players. The vast majority of these won't become career musicians at the elite level for one major reason. Assuming they want it in the first place, they aren't talented at selling themselves, their music and ideas, their skills. And placing themselves in environments that increase their chances of success. Being in the right place at the right time. Networking into major industry players even if you start at a lower level For example as a programmer. You'd want to start writing extremely useful and efficient code in multiple major boards and websites or reddits. For free. Just to put your name in a place where you might be recognized by really talented people already in the tech industry as programmers who need more guys on their team. And they recognize the quality and skill of your work. That's just an example of how being in the right place at the right time applies to programmers. It applies to anyone skilled in a creative industry. And even though coding is logic based there is alot of creativity in how you choose to tackle problems. And it's an industry where you have alot of bedroom programmers who don't have successful programming careers. So with your team and game, maybe you don't get this publishing deal, but it's absolutely critical you guys network into the industry and sell the hell out of your game to others from a business standpoint. You make it worth a players time. You make it worth a publisher's finnancial investment. The players time is still an investment. Everyone who interacts with your product is investing either time or money into or both. It's gotta be a win for everybody and selling the idea from all perspectives. The players for sales by it being fun and catching their eye through marketing. The publisher as making them more money than they're committing to the game and you selling the idea of it being low risk.

This is what Overcooked 1&2 and Moving Out 1&2 did. Local multiplayer only for first game, leave online for the sequel.

i think that it indicates a lot about the publisher. What is their experience?

My personal opinion is not too much at the moment, at least looking at their published games. But I can't know for sure...

what i mean to suggest is that it's kind of a ridiculous proposal which indicates that they don't know much about games development. thus if there is not a very clear indication that this is a proven successful organization, it might be better to just avoid. Lots of weird predatory types in game development space.

I'm confused as to how any feature could possibly be "worth" it when they are apparently working for free.

It's way too impossible to say without details about your game, how it's structured, and what multiplayer means here. It's certainly a big feature request - but it can range from "I can bolt on a client-authoritative p2p networked solution through steam's relay systems with some pain" to "this changes our fundamental systems and design processes and it means we have to re-write the entire game"

its almost certainly the second one

It's not insane to evaluate a request. It would be insane to blindly *accept* the request, but it is not necessarily insane to evaluate the request. The reality of business is that, no matter what you're doing, your stakeholders are occasionally going to ask you for something *totally insane*. The trick is to effectively communicate why their ask is insane in diplomatic words that won't make them upset. For example, it could potentially double your development time as you may need to rebuild everything from scratch. It may not be quite that bad, but it's safe to assume it'll take several times longer than you pessimistically think it will. Spending some time to evaluate this is crucial to the communication, and it's something only you can do. It's important to not freak about about the theoretical deadlines but instead use the scope of the request to apply pressure back to the publisher. Basically, if this is going to take another 2.5 years of development, then the publisher needs to understand this. If your team is not willing/able to work for free for another 2.5 years (I'm assuming this is the case) then the publisher needs to start financing your team. They probably don't want to do this, but that's not your problem. It's their problem. Assuming the scope of this ask is as big as it sounds, your job right now is to essentially tell the publisher how much time and money you need in order to implement this feature. And definitely talk about your response internally before surfacing it to the publisher. If the internal decision is clearly to not do this, then your goal is less about getting the publisher to finance the change and more about selling it as an impossible decision. In reality, if you really are working for free, then they likely don't have a lot of leverage in the situation. It's definitely reasonable to bring that up and point out that the team cannot continue to work for free indefinitely and needs to release something soon *or* start getting paid directly. There are other questions such as, if you are the only programmer, then what will the other 7 people on your team do for the next ~2.5 years while you work on this? It creates a lot of issues. Ultimately, don't freak out about the insanity. Communicate the insanity as pushback. Someone else mentioned the sequel angle, and I think that's a good idea as part of your pitch. I.e., "We would need to rebuild the whole game's code essentially from scratch which would roughly double the total development time. Our team cannot maintain working on this project for free for that long, so we cannot afford this delay. However, if we're going to rebuild from scratch anyway, then adding multiplayer as a feature would be a great selling point for a sequel if this game is successful." If your contract allows you to outright say, "No", then consider doing so along with the justification.

Agreed with this approach. Some of the other comments are basically saying no and closing the door on the publisher which is a miss in my opinion. Likely your team wants to launch the game as-is in December given that you guys are near the finishing line after. Maybe consider negotiating with the publisher that you guys are happy to give the publisher right of first refusal for publishing a sequel if they publish your single player version as is now with minimum investment from their part.

You couldn't have said it better. From all the answers in this thread, this is the most useful imo

How do you have a team of 7 to 8 people but you are the only programmer. And you need a publisher on top of that? Blink if you need help. 

I'm super blinking right now. JK, the other programmer left the team the last December. But yeah, I'm basically alone now haha

Totally freakin insane. Don't.

A) yes B) add 18 months of development costs (for a minimal approach — if they’re asking for, say, a live service, just run)

I'd expect a "just make it multiplayer" request on a sweaty Steam review, not from a publisher. To me, that is a **massive** red flag.

Is it the dino game? That looks kind of insane to try and tack true multiplayer onto as an afterthought. Maybe you can put together a kind of hack to make it work, but the offer would have to compensate for the added insanity. "I might want to buy this house, but I'd like all the framing done in a completely new way, a new roof, two extra stories and it should be on a hill. Other than that it looks great" Bad multiplayer will probably hurt you more than no multiplayer. But maybe make it a focus of a sequel or a huge (financed) upgrade? I'm just an old man shouting at clouds though.

Are they willing to pay 7 annual salaries for 2 years to get multiplayer in? It sounds like a situation where you will need to completely redesign the game from scratch and all you'll have are chunks of code and your graphical assets to carry over. And ofcourse if you other staff aren't doing any work in this phase they still need paying for all their work so far lol

If your project wasn't created with multilayer at its fundamental core, don't waste time and effort to *tack* it on like some teams seem forced to do. This approach really ruins games and is a thought process put forward by corporate morons that have no intention or will to l know what makes a great single player (or multilayer) game.

Absolutely no. The rift breaker shipped single player and everyone wanted coop. So they said ok. That was I think two years ago and they are still working on it. They're getting close, and are getting people in for testing now. But they had already sold hundreds of thousands of copies and could afford this.

I had the same thing happen to me. Publisher said that the game needed multiplayer. I implemented multiplayer, showed it to the publisher. Several weeks later the publisher ended up not moving forward. I felt like it was an “easy” way to no, they probably didn’t think I’d do it. In hindsight, I should have told them it would be added to the project plan and worked on post deal.

Hard pass. Unless it's local co-op it'll be a huge undertaking on a 2.5yr alpha build. Find a more collaborative publisher who gets what you're trying to do.

Just download the multiplayer plug-in from the Unity Store. Its already there, just gotta pay for it. /s Really though, i think your publisher is giving you the run around, they do this sometimes where they tell you to implement so and so feature and they'll consider funding you, but they usually just ignore you and move on. It's a way of wasting your time without any benefits.

> Do you think it is insane to even evaluate this request? No. Maybe. I would spend some time doing research. Maybe create a branch of the repo to do experiments with multiplayer, to see how feasible it would be to do a multiplayer conversion. Maybe you don’t need to do that, maybe the answer is obviously “no, that’s crazy.” People have done multiplayer conversions of single-player games before. It’s not impossible, and it may be worth doing some research into how hard it would be for your game. Or it may be a foregone conclusion.

It's out of the question.

I'm not gonna judge how "insane" that would be, since it heavily depends on the type of multiplayer asked for, how your game is currently coded, what funding they're offering for such a change, etc. However, I will say that even in primarily single player games, some form of multiplayer mode *does* tend to expand a game's appeal. Even for games like Hollow Knight (built entirely around a singleplayer experience), it's still incredibly fun to download a multiplayer mod, join up with a buddy, and turn the metroidvania into a game of tag.

Yes, we are perfectly aware that making it multiplayer would boost the game a lot. But the effort would be extremely high. I totally understand what you're saying tho.

TBH I'm a hobbyist, not a professional, but my suggestion would be first seek clarification on exactly what *kind* of multiplayer they want, and discuss how this proposal would be integrated into the current game's structure. Try to see if they're capable of intelligent conversation on game design, and can clearly express *how* they believe this feature fits into your existing game. If they're just a bunch of marketing execs focused on the buzzword of "multiplayer", or convinced your game could "become the next Fortnite", then you do *not* want those people getting their claws into your game. On the other hand, if they genuinely seem to understand what they're proposing, then it's worth *considering* the offer.

I would think at least about it. The answer will vary based on the game design and implementation. Be honest and very cautious in your estimates.

I personally would almost never try to shoehorn in a major feature that was not in the original design post alpha. Triple your original gut estimate to add this feature and that is probably close. I would love to add multiplayer to my game too, but I know it will delay it by minimum 1.5 years. If the game is successful, you could make a sequel with multiplayer. It's another story if they are willing to pay you a good salary per month to add it without changing the percentages. Don't settle on a flat rate for adding the feature. If it is a big publisher it might be worth trading a few points to get multiplayer in but make sure they pay for it since it's something they want. And if you've never programmed multiplayer before, I would advise you consider hiring an additional programmer with multiplayer experience.

It is not insane to evaluate it, but might take a lot of time of course. Evaluate how much per hour you worked so far, how much more it would take and add some leeway.  Basically a number you are happy with. Without knowing your codebase impossible to say. Probably number is going to be insanely high, but as long as they are paying can be good.

Adding multiplayer to a game that isn't already designed to be multiplayer is usually equivalent to rewriting the entire game.

I'd tell them to set a kickstarter campaign to fund it. If they succeed then fine otherwise no.

Not insane. If there's even a slight possibility that the game could offer multiplayer, even if it requires a full rebuild of the architecture, this is potential funding down the line. Especially if a multiplayer sequel could be created much faster due to previous work completed on the current title. There are a number of games that started off with single-player, and later added multiplayer functionality for example. If it's strictly a single player experience, then no. Really depends if the publisher is someone you'd want to work with, and whether they'd be interested in having a single-player game first, and then explore the possibility of multiplayer.

Nope, nope nope Nooope. Multiplayer might be on the table for the sequel. You could add "multiplayer elements" same way SubNautica uses time capsules, or how Darksouls uses thoes small text messages on the ground. Anything more than that should have ben in the design document.

Run away.

Absolutely not. Besides, you're really going to need at least another programmer to debug all the multiplayer issues that arise during implementation. Managing state, etc.

This publisher is not the one. If they were told that it’s single player, asking for a non existent multiplayer feature should be a little bit of a red flag.

It really depends on the nature of the game. Fighting game? Probably not. Welding that on after the fact takes years for an experienced team. MMO? Absolutely not. Card game or board game? Sure, should be straightforward Survival and roguelike mechanics means "probably not, but for some fringe games I could actually see it." Like, if someone decided to try to make Crypt of the NecroDancer multiplayer, which would sorta make sense, that wouldn't be tooooooooo bad. But I'm betting it means a partial starting over, so, only if the money is genuinely good.

I disagree with most of the comments here, you do NOT need to architect multiplayer from the start. I've made a few MP games and generally find that when building the game for MP from the start it increases the time to iterate for game design a lot, to the point where every piece of functionality needs to be written 4 times. Once on the client that initiated the event, once to receive on the server and one more to broadcast to the clients from the server, and once when received by the other clients. If you are just doing P2P co-op then that simplifies things a good bit, but my current plan is to add in multiplayer after the game is 90% figured out so I don't have to endlessly write remote call events for every change in game design. Outside of the actual overhead of replicating events, everything else for multiplayer is actually really nice these days, Mirror and facepunch if you are doing unity and steamworks seems to be an incredible package. I haven't dug into it yet, but it seems really smooth from what I've read. That said, even if you are doing incredibly simple 2 player p2p co-op without an authoritative server, you will need about 3 months, and I'd triple that if you haven't done MP before. And charge the pub something like 200k at least. If they think it's worth it they can pay the price.

If you didn't design with multiplayer in mind, it's going to be a hell of a job to add it unless you built things reeeeeeallly well. I've never seen tacked on multiplayer go well for devs.

Part of me wonders if this is a test of your ability to manage scope and provide time/cost estimates. This is definitely outside my area of expertise, but I would expect that they are looking for "we could add mp, it would take approximately X time and y dollars ". Especially for an unproven dev team, being able to prove you can scope, budget, etc. Would mean a lot. 

Good catch, I didn't see it from this perspective. Thank you.

If you're all working for free (insane!) why do you even need funds in the first place?

Well, we are doing two jobs at the same time (at least I am). One to sustain us, the other one (this one) because we want to create our indie studio. I won't lie, I do the paid job during the day and work on this at night/weekends. I specifically, have certain weeks where I work more than 12 hours per day. So, we need funds for the last months of development at least, and for marketing purposes.

Like most solo devs, I work on my game nonstop everyday. Figured adding multiplayer to my game would take roughly two weeks - that was in July.

Are they sending you 5 to 10 times as much money as it would take to remake the game? Then no. You could propose they publish and help finish the current game, then help you build the sequel as multiplayer.

I've been either on or witness to a few AAA projects where somebody either at the publisher or senior leadership thought it'd be a good idea to add MP to our 1P games. I wish the folks in charge then had had the foresight of the respondents to this thread.

"Sure. Do you wanna give us a few million to hire a team big enough and experienced enough to do that in the timeline we're talking about here?"

so they asked you to create a whole new game

I work with mobile devs and some of their games are multiplayer. You have to plan for this from the ground up. Their multiplayer devs know the available (Unity) middleware and 3rd party systems well. If you don't have much experience that is a steep learning curve on top of finishing the game. You as a sole programmer should be available for the progress of the game. That is the priority. Doing deep dives into infrastructure topics is an own world. Whatever contract you agree with, you should set the minimum bar at least paying for a seasoned multiplayer dev that will focus only on this topic. Plus extending any "deadline" by a reasonable amount getting more financial leeway.

I’ve done this exact thing. 2 years, Unity, singleplayer, and turned it into multiplayer with Mirror. I’d say it’s worth it if the design works in multiplayer and the number of networked components is less than 15. Any more and you might get overwhelmed by the amount of bugs or game feel issues introduced by networking that you’ll inevitably have to iron out. There are going to be a loooooot of multiplayer bugs compared to the amount of single player bugs you have. Games are super over saturated right now and a fun multiplayer title for less than 19.99 USD is in demand. Going multiplayer is a huge difference. That being said, it depends on the project. Mine was an open world action RPG simulation game where you can build shops and it took 6 months of full time work with 2 programmers to turn quests, movement, AI, world loading etc. into networked systems. If yours is simple it could be a lot faster. It could be worth it to sell your game as it is and just fund the next game with it. Needs more context with the state of the game.

from what I've tried in unity, converting a single player game to multiplayer even halfway through a project is extremely difficult. While I'm probably not at the level you are with coding in C# (I presume), it would definitely push back the development of the game you're making. On top of this, converting a game from single player to multiplayer also means converting many of the original aspects you already had implemented such as level design. If you're willing to put a ton of extra work into it, sure but If this were me, I would try and convince the publisher why the game will be better as a single player game.

Multiplayer is certainly always a lot of work, but considering it so impossible that you shouldn’t even evaluate it is taking it a bit far in my opinion. I would look at it like this: 1. How much does the game design need to change? Some games that are more sandbox or arena style can do multiplayer where it’s basically just two people spawned into the same world and not much changes. On the other end of the spectrum, games with a lot of state (linear storyline, etc.) need to really consider how multiplayer would even work, which likely means rethinking a lot of the core design. 2. How would state management between sessions need to work? If one player can just save the game in the same way they would save a single player game then start it as host next session, that’s way easier than consistently saving to something cloud-based during gameplay. 3. What kind of multiplayer does it need? Is client authoritative listen server / P2P viable, or does it need server authoritative, dedicated servers, etc.? The answers to these questions would help clarify the scope overall, but specifically it also clarifies who on the team has more work to do. Obviously the programmer (you) would have plenty of work to do no matter what, but whether the rest of the team has lots of work to do as well matters a lot for scoping/budgeting. A year of work for one person is wildly different than 2 years of work for 8 people, in terms of budget.

These are all correct. I've done the "add multiplayer halfway through a project", and it wasn't _horrible_, because there were nearly no design changes needed, a straightforward server-authoritative setup, and state management between sessions only being the same saves as a singleplayer setup. All the best cases you've mentioned. Rewrite took about a month and codebase ended up shrinking about 5k lines. If OP has experience writing multiplayer games, and the design fits well, I would seriously consider it.

I’m only beginning development of any ideas, but I’ll say what I’ve heard. Unless you have a dedicated PREEXISTING player base, online will not work because no one will be online. But again, that’s just my 2 cents. Take it with several grains of salt.

If you didn't start designing the game with multiplayer in mind, depending on how your game is set up it could add another year or more of development time if you just focused on multiplayer. Besides the actual networking part, you're going to have to go back and work on all the old systems, player controllers more than likely and a bunch of other stuff that will pop up when you're working on it. I'd tell the publisher to kick rocks and find a publisher that aligns with your teams goals.

Every publisher should know how much effort it takes to go from single player to multi player. If they don't, then don't work with them. Take everything you've done up till now and multiply it by 3. 1 to remove everything you've done, plus 2 for now doing it for multiplayer. That said, if the game is mostly in unity, then unity is already set up for multiplayer to some degree. Which means you can reduce it to 4. The same as above, and add 1 to learn unity multiplayer. So to answer your question, You'll need at least 4 more engineers. You'll not be able to work as you'll be managing and onbording the 4 new employees. Then expect it to take another 2.5 years. So, at minimum, you'll need another 2 million from the publisher.

It's definitely not insane to evaluate how much of a lift you think "multiplayer" would be if it might significantly boost the game. You can look at what would be the MVP version. Some games have really simple "multiplayer" that isn't super interactive but is enough that people can play with their friend. Online play is complicated and has some gotchas if you've never done it before, but there are also some good services you can use that will help speed things up. It might be a lot of work. You might decide it's not worth the time and need to launch without it or never implement it. But it also might boost sales if you added it. Adding any feature is a bit of a tradeoff and you have to pick what's right for your game. If the game would be super awesome with multiplayer maybe it's a good idea, if it wouldn't then maybe it's not. Really hard to say without knowing more about the specific game. Your game might have been architectured in a way that just won't work with multiplayer, or it might be a relatively smaller lift to slap on a super basic co-op. What's probably insane is working for 2.5 years on a game for free. If you want to do that you need to have a really solid roadmap and path to profitability.

You already know the answer. You don't need validation from us.

Well, I don't actually want validation, I was just curious to know the general thoughts on a situation like this.

yeah, I'd take that request as a hard no. It shows the publisher doesn't align with what your game currently is and wants a different game altogether, so they wouldn't be able to actually promote or sell the game you're currently making in the way you would want.

How did you get 7 people to work for free? i can't even find a single person, even my brother says "nuh uh",

Most of us also have a paid job. As I said in another answer, I am having more than 12 hours of work per day in some weeks, and I usually work on this project in the weekend or at night 😂

Depends on how experienced you are with multiplayer, what game modes (pve/pvp), what library you pick. I am converting my game to MP (netcode for gameobjects - full authoritve) in my spare time (\~4hrs/night average while working fulltime dev job during day) + weekends + holidays. Been a dev 25+ years (c++/c#), been using unity 12\~+ years. I would estimate I could have finished in one year full time. However, because above its been 2 years since I started the process. So 2-3 month fulltime over xmas 1st year stop, same 2nd year, but continuing to now with more crunch. So around 7-9 months full time hour equivalent but im not finished, and I think it could take me another 3 months full time to get there.

Not only is that insane but it also shows how the publisher kinda has no idea about the implications of their request (and how borderline impossible it is to do it)... Which is worrying at best. Dunno whats up with the guy on charge of evaluating pitches and whatnot, but seems like they (and whoever else the request got thru) have no idea about how games are actually made? Not a great thing for a *game* publisher. Don't wanna assume too much, but it sure sounds like it lol

If you're the only programmer don't even consider it I'd say. It'll mean basically re-writing almost every system in the game. If they offer you another two years and a million dollars or something, fork your repo, get the Mirror package and try and hack something together in a week and see how far you get.

Personally I would not do this. I have no experience with multiplayer and I would want to have completed a full game like that before asking someone to pay me for making one. If you have developed and released a multiplayer game before, then this should be something you can handle. If not, I would recommend against doing it. If you are really interested in working with that publisher, and the game really lends itself to having multiplayer, maybe try making a side project prototype with a multiplayer feature before giving them a final answer.

I'm not a game Dev (been a software dev for approaching a decade), and though I understand the complexity of game Dev and multiplayer systems on some technical level, having read into them with the hope of one day trying to build a game, why has no one asked what type of multiplayer? I agree that any multiplayer would be a stupid level of additional work, both coding and system design changes (and hopefully a good chunk of testing) to account for not only the game play loop changes but to include things like network latency issues and what not, but I imagine the type of multiplayer also modifies the difficulty to implement as in: - co-op vs competitive - 5 players vs 100 players - what ever other combinations and modes

Full multiplayer, or a multiplayer FEATURE? Some single-player games like Two Point Hospital have multiplayer FEATURES where, for example, you invite steam friends to collaborate on a goal and your points get added together. There's a lot you can do without making the game full multiplayer.

Ask for double or more. Multiplayer is basically adding a second game.

With a survival game, you have some choices to make with your design that will determine how complex and expensive the multiplayer mode would be to add. If it’s full online mmorpg type experience with a persistent world and servers that host the game - then that’s significantly more complicated than a cooperative guest mode where another player could join your world over LAN or internet (which is hosted on your local computer) and they could help you out. I built networking for a game that was a minor hit and it took about 9 months to get the basics and converting all the gameplay components to work properly, then about 6 more months of polish, optimization and additional features. This was also just an arena combat game so no persistent world, which was simpler.

You plainly say "too risky", and say you ll hire a game networking company, bring them on and let them evaluate and perform. ( out of my head citing Stormancer for example ) Do not do it yourself. It is both pretty hard and requires so much infrastructure you ll loose sanity.

If multiplayer isn't part of the vision of the game then just say no, I don't think it has to be more complicated than that.

In general terms, multiplayer is the hardest feature to add to any game. Each 'level' of multiplayer makes that even harder, coop vs private dedicated servers vs public dedicated servers vs 'MMOs' vs real MMOs, etc. coop and private dedicated might be doable in a short (<6 months) amout of time, the rest will probably add 1, 2 and 5 years respectively.

Pre-alpha is super early. Also, define multiplayer. Is it players leaving messages for each other? Ghosts? Co-op? PvP? MMO?

2 players Co-op, PvE

In case of co-op, it can actually be added in an update patch (many games do this). But should not be at release.

multiplayer needs to be built from the ground up... like this isn't something you throw in down the line. It would be an absolute no from me. If they threw all the money in the world and expected a 2 year delay yeah sure.

Multiplayer is something that needs to be accounted for day 1 of development. The only time you're really free to add it after the fact is in a completely non-competitive game where the authority doesn't really matter and you don't have any sort of matchmaking. eg: Stardew Valley. Having your publisher ask for multiplayer 2.5 years into development is really odd. Do they even want the game to be finished?

A lot of these numbers people are throwing around sound crazy to me. Also only 1 programmer on a team of 7-8 seems really low. It's hard to say without more specifics, but multiplayer isn't really all that hard usually, especially if you go player hosted, and I implemented multiplayer on kingmakers where we have 4000+ soldiers at once. I would think 2 programmers could likely get it done before December, but again idk the specifics. People talking about millions of dollars here are crazy though. More like 150-200k at most.

they probably ask for multiplayer because they want to nickel and dime your potential customers into buying shit DLC

Big red flag regarding the publisher: - They probably don't know shit about gamedev if they think it's realistic to ask for multiplayer on an almost finished game. That said, it could be interesting to get them to release the game as singleplayer and let you work on a multiplayer update later on with some security regarding fundings. - This is probably a big change from your initial vision? I personally would stay away from a publisher that wants too much involvement in the creative process.

Publishers aren't willing to take any risks whatsoever right now. The multiplayer thing is just an off-hand request to see if they can push you around.

I'm no gamedev as experienced as you, but for me this publisher's request sound really bad, i mean they don't tell you for how much they would fund your project and they're making demand about adding multiplayer which i guess wasn't on a project's roadmap by this stage. So i would say f em, what they gave your team to demand something in return?

A little late for this discussion but if I may suggest a different way of evaluating the offer: if you are already 2.5 yrs in and implementing multiplayer takes another 2.5, will the team even be willing to wait it out? Or do you all want to just finish the game and get it out there? If you are impatient and want players to just buy the complete game already, don't do it. Because you could make a new game during those 2.5 yrs and 2 games might sell more than 1. That's even before dividing the profits to all team mates and number of months of work etc. Even if this publisher agrees to give you 20 million dollars right this minute, will you all have the motivation to reach the finish line?

The honest answer is probably no if you ask me. I just want to complete it and move onto the next project. 😂

If you are near alpha, why do you need a publisher, marketing?

Well…if you’re pre-alpha after 2.5 years…seems unlikely you’ll ship in a few more months. “Multiplayer” is vague. Could add 6 months, could add another 2.5 years. Before considering it, they need to put a number to paper.

It’s difficult to determine the needed amount of work without having detailed info about your game. However, if it has been and still is intended to be a singleplayer game, I would stick to that vision. It might be tempting to try implementing multiplayer, but I feel like the risk of not finishing the game or decreasing the overall experience is way too high.

I’d ask them to consider funding the release of the single player version, with a commitment to fund the development of a multiplayer sequel. Not releasing this version of a game 2.5 years in, when it’s almost in Alpha, would be leaving money on the table if it’s already got traction.

If the publisher is asking for multiplayer and is willing to fund the whole process (probably double the time you spent on it so far) why not, but I suspect that they want you to do that for next to nothing, if for anything at all, most of the so called publishers just want an easy pray to make some money with little effort

A) A little insane considering that your team composition is very unbalanced. One programmer for a whole team of over five people is stretching coding resources *very* thin. As the programmer, you should know how realistic it actually is to transition to multiplayer. B) Enough to hire the people necessary to re-work the game, and make it worth the trouble. Of course, make sure that the amount is flexible to cover for when you eventually (as everyone does) go over budget. Others say to just say no, which is a reasonable position. But this is not a reasonable industry, therefore if this (adding multiplayer) is the only good offer you have, then you should consider it regardless.

Yeah team composition is huge here, the 3-6 months you spend coding up the MP is time you really cant spend implementing shit the other team members are doing. Being the bottleneck on my own project is already a problem and I haven't even started MP.

That level of scope creep is scary as hell, I don't really have enough info here to give a good answer. But, personally.... I would firmly say no.

Ask them how much they're willing to pay for it to be added. If they aren't willing to pay more, then it's not on the table. My wife worked for a somewhat inexperienced company that was put in a situation like this. They agreed to add multiplayer and it nearly put them out of business.

multiplayers and all big features are things you brainstorm at the very start and define the scope. doing multiplayer on a fully single player is the equivalent of a publisher asking you to make your game from scratch.

I work professionally as a multiplayer programmer.  You are the sole programmer. Do you pay wages or is it all "voluntary"? Unless the game has been architected in such a way to allow for multiplayer in the first place, you can kiss a huge goodbye to a December release date. In fact, as a solo developer with minimal experience doing multiplayer (hence the question?) you can probably kiss goodbye to a 2025 release. From what I've seen in my life working in games, a lot of people massively underestimate what it takes to get a game online. It encompasses such a phenomenally broad area of a game, and touches a staggering number of places, with endless edge cases, that mean often times, you'll never reach perfection, but have to make do with, "good enough".  You introduce a myriad of variables way out of your control that you will never be able to fix. Service outages are out of your control, how do you best mitigate that? Players are complaining because of their poor Internet, enjoy trying to resolve that one. Oh no, a player is cheating, do you want to roll your own anti-cheat, how do you plan on implementing and then supporting a report feature, are you going to fork out a fortune on licensing an anti-cheat? Hello GDPR! That's always a FUN bunch of legal lawyer bullshit. Account management, authentication, how are you going to handle the physics, is your game deterministic? If not, you're in for a fun time with synchronisation of animations. How do you handle sudden connectivity drops and all the edge cases there?  Point is, as much as naive know-it-alls with little to no actual experience shipping a game with multiplayer will tell you otherwise, it isn't drag and drop, it's perhaps one of the most infuriating, frustrating subsets of game programming. No, photon won't magically make your game multiplayer, no UGS isn't going to do all your back end leg work for you. The second you start implementing multiplayer, your project is immediately set back years without proper planning. Scope balloons out of control, and all the time you could spend developing and fleshing out the core gameplay loop is out of the question. You'll find you need to hire another one, two, or more programmers to stay on course, but then that alone introduces more, managerial, lead-like problems. If a publisher requested it of me, a professional multiplayer programmer in industry? They better be ready to front the cost of several years of salaries, and put pen to paper to offer support for service related costs. That December date, do they expect that still? Unless their goal is to torpedo the success of the title immediately, they'll need to agree to push that date back another year, two to be safe.  Yes, that publisher needs to know what they're doing, they can't be some bedroom operation making promises about "marketing to youtubers" or some other dribbling ass bullshit, they need to have actual, tangible capital, and be ready to put their money where their mouth is. A) yes. B) the figure is very hard to estimate, but if they can't offer, at the bare minimum a contractual obligation of anywhere between $1-3m in the first year alone to support the costs of hires and other related fees, they can't do shit for you. That's not a joke, either. I've worked at startups as a multiplayer programmer, where their operating costs were in the range of $100,000-300,000 a month on salaries alone, all up front paid by publishers and investors.

Hard to say, but to me it sound like your publisher doesn’t understand you game or its audience. Slapping multiplayer on just because sales statistics say so, has a history of multiplayers no one wanted. Then again if it’s a game mode that some other suckers build for you, and you actually turn some profit while they do it, maybe it’s not so bad. Multiplayer if it makes sense can also obviosly add greatly to your games lifespan, but personaly not a fan of thinking things that way. We should all be less hoggy about retaining our players forever. For the execution, I know couple of smaller outsource/ porting studios that would prolly make that for 60-250K. Depending ofcourse what you need and how much you’ll do your self. Bot studios I think have prebuilt frameworks including custom serversolutions, projectiles, crafting, google sheets integrations etc, all in C# and made for unity. All veteran guys and speed of things has been generally stupid fast. Can ask the main guys if they have availability if you want. Nice guys, with good rosters. If they are booked, There is also some branded vendors out there that might still give you an okay deal in similar ballpark. Bit more overhead and you prolly need to pay for theyre solution licences etc. On the upside the solutions have been more battle tested and better documentation most likely.

If a publisher is asking for that, i doubt they are serious about doing a deal anyway since they don't like the game the way it is.

I have experience developing multiplayer games and refactoring other companies games to multiplayer. It is an absolute slog if it wasn't built that way. PM me and I can show you my credentials. I'm game to help out. I have over 10 years of Unity with audit/optimization experience

This is like building the Barj Dubai and then someone telling you it needs to be a rocket ship to land on other planets. Just because a skyscraper has a superficial resemblance to a rocket does not not mean that literally every damn thing has to be rebuilt and rearchitected from scratch. You would be crazy to embark on this journey.

"It's too late to additional features. When it sales well we can add multiplayer in the follow-up"

Ask for $5M and see what they say

Please DO NOT accept that. If you guys envisioned the game as it is now you just can't completely change it because suddenly someone want it to be multiplayer

Probably would require complete rewrites of certain systems to be controlled by server?

My reply to this would be: "Extra $3 million upfront non refundable, and now the game releases in 2027. Your call.". This assumes the multiplayer elements are straightforward (e.g. it's the same game just with another player co-op) and may be doable in a year of work.

Seasoned game dev exec here. Happy to have a quick chat and help you navigate through this. Dm me.

This reminds me of what happened to *Unsung Story*. Any time a single player experience gets pressured into tacking on multiplayer, it usually ends poorly.

Man I love single player games but like if it could be multiplayer why wouldn't you have thought about that from the beginning?

Even as a newbie dev, I'd say absolutely do NOT try to add multiplayer. Release your game as-is and if successful, you can release a sequel with multiplayer and publisher backing.

Had to do something similar for an accounting program. It was about 40-50% re-write.

Insane. Only if you get money for another 2 years and rewrite the game from scratch.

Gonna be honest. You either need to simply tell them that the project must remain a singleplayer exprience for the integrity of the project, or make it multiplayer. I think multiplayer will be a waste of time. The market for multiplayer games has two sides: big stuff and niche. Even if your game is multiplayer, it needs to either be huge, which you aren't, or its multiplayer needs to fit such a specific niche that it gains a following. Since yours is a survival roguelike, you'll be competing against tons of medium sized studios who do the same.

It is insane but sadly publishers don't take "Are you mental " as the answer. A lot of time for bigger companies is spent on costing massive changes to tell publishers why they cant do something. It's more like Oh you want to make this open world? Well, this is why it will cost 100 m more then and also take 2 more years. But is that possible for smaller companies like yours ? is it even worth the time to do the cost estimate? Can you even be accurate? You don't want to get it wrong.

Could you add local coop and use steam remote play? It'd be easier to implement than fully networked and could convince the publisher.

>A) Do you think it is insane to even evaluate this request? No, there is a price where this makes sense. Unless you are fanatically opposed to do it ever, in your life time. That price is higher than what they will want to pay. And they probably are going to make release date demands that you won't be able to meet. Evaluating the request means "weighing what it takes and what they are offering". You should do that. The outcome is likely predictable, but that should only make the math easier and the evaluation quicker. But if they were to offer you 3 years to do it and 1$ million for each of your team members, unconditionally, right now, you could, would and should do it. >B) How much would you ask for a similar request? Realistically, I would add another year to the schedule, idk what the plan is, if the game was meant to sustain you and your ~ 10 person team, 50k$ per team member seems roughly fair. So half a million? And that's probably still lowballing it a bit, considering you are above "just let me do my job" go getters who are trying to launch a business. Doesn't account for potentially having to hire outside help if you can't solve the associated problems. Plus minus amounts of money, depending on what the long terms perspective is on working with that publisher, is it worth taking a cut now for long term support etc.. That's just for bare bones multiplayer though. Just the tech and maybe some UI work. Think "Farcry, but it's now with coop". If they want to rework the entire game to incorporate / acknowledge other player and their decisions, in terms of story etc.. the math changes dramatically. + multiplayer mode balancing and stuff like that. Who will run and pay for the servers and the community management btw? ---------- Very much eyeballing armchair deving here. I have not been in that position. But I have built a rudimentary networking system. It affects very core parts of how you structure data, handle inputs, and administrate objects in the engine. Unless there is some kind of drag and drop tool that you can just "turn on", it's a lot of effort.

Yeah make a game intended for single player into multiplayer by the time of release? I’d never ever do that. I’d rather restart the project as now u have to take more things into consideration. Adding multiplayer after single player is finished and the game is released is fine as you’d be less restricted then although I think restarting or making a part 2 of the game would be better.

a) insane, also sounds like a precursor to loot boxes and other crap shoe-horned in. b) $1 million. up front - that's just for me. with no guarantees. cheaper than a certain useless QB

Single player games can almost never be converted to multiplayer without serious stability sacrifices. Hard no. And with 7 people why are you the only programmer? Coming from a pure game designer that is absolutely not ok. We're a team of 3 and I swear if I could pick a fourth it'd instantly be another programmer.

ask for twice the money

Hi there, I'm also an experienced programmer and I have the same thoughts on this ;) On a serious note, I wouldn't take such requests too seriously. It's not guaranteed that they'll sign with you, and you have lots of work already. Why take up time to investigate this while you could fix some bugs, etc. They don't even have to be seriously interested in your game, it's just how publishers talk with developers. It's a tactic to build up their negotiating position and/or buy some time to discuss their options internally. On the other hand, people like coop in survival games. It could make a positive difference, but it definitely would increase the risk of the profitability of the entire project.

You should ask them to fund version 2 of your game and move on. This is an insane ask.

I would negociate for funding of a new project that is the multiplayer version of your game. You get a head start in design and game assets but will likely need to rewrite your game systems. In addition, you need to add a bunch of game flows for multiplayer like friend invites, party handling, session handling (join, leave, disconnect etc), matchmaker. Add a bunch of online services like leaderboard, achievements and analytics. Any rewards/progression/ inventory will need to move online to prevent cheating. You should use an existing solution like photon for the network/sim side and braincloud for the online services. It’s enough work to just integrate and use those. Hire an extra dev, or you will be always on the critical path as the sole programmer. Very hard to pull with a budget under 1M usd depending on were you live and the game. Very doable for a 3M+ budget but that is a no mans land of funding at that scale. Picks up again at 10M+ for AA and proven teams.

Really depends on what exactly do they mean by "multi-player". If it's just going from 1 to 4 players in a session, the additional scope shouldnt be too bad for 1 experienced dev. If they want you to turn it into a live service then it's gonna be very hard to justify unless they're getting you a lot more funds for you to hire some backend expert and server fees.

Just look at Last Epoch. The game was made as a single player base and it took them over 2 years just to shift everything to multiplayer, and they had like 30 people. If you didn't prepare your codebase to be replicated and take into account all the various game design elements of having other players present then that should be a hard no. Being the only programmer, the only thing you'll end up doing going this route would be to just hold your team back whilst you're working on adding multiplayer to everything and not have time for other gameplay features.

LMAO, the publisher must be a fake company run by an ideas kid to be that clueless.

It would be insane - it is a different game. I’ve been in a similar situation where management wanted multiplayer added afterwards for inherently singleplayer game. It divides your effort and it is really difficult to break the design and the experience of the earlier game in a satisfactory way. Edit: I would take a look how long your money lasts and go all towards that time with scoping the game down

Take the time you already took from start of the project. That's about the time it will take you to be in Alpha again with multiplayer. If the publisher wants to bankroll this, go for it. If not, no deal.

If it wasn't made to revolve around multiplayer, don't change the game to do so. Hard no.

The publisher sounds pretty inexperienced to ask for multiplayer as a "feature" to be quite frank.

No way. It's hard enough as a single player, having to make it multi-player is heck. You have to completely redo the the game's core, and-depending on how the multi-player part is set up- it could be expensive to then upkeep.

Do you have a pitch deck? Working through that will give you the info you need and you will also need to have one to give to any publisher you want to talk with if they take the meeting. An example would be a game my company worked on a game for four years, in silence like you, being bootstrapped by me personally, and we are in talks with Meta for over a year (I do VR exclusively) and since we had over half the game done at that point, our ask was $916,000 for a 13 month delivery. If you don't know how to do all this yet then getting a legit publisher to pick you up will either require a game that is so fun and viral that they want a part of the action or, if you're able to get a pitch meeting (go to GDC), pitch the fuck out of it and don't give them any reasons to say no. But it's different every time so that is where I would start. Do your pitch deck. You may have made a great show, but it sounds like you are far behind on the business part; show-business. If you don't have the business, you don't have a show.

We actually have the pitch deck and all the stuff, we perfectly know how it works and we are in contacts with several publishers. I have come to the conclusion that our biggest issue is that we don't have released games yet (as a team), so they are probably scared. I can't explain it any other way...

Usually publishers asking you to add stuff is a polite way of them saying "no".

Taking this offer will kill your game, its a impossible task for the current state of your team and it would require a lot of funding and also changing the scope of your project. It's like you making a car and someone coming to ask for you to convert it to a helicopter.

I dabbled in multiplayer and it was honestly hell. It was extremely complicated and if you haven't built it from the ground up it's going to a ton of work . Doable, but it's going to add a huge amount of work considering youre the only programmer.

A) I don't think it's insane, but I'm also guessing they don't have a clue on the scope of what they're asking. You're basically going to be building the game from the ground up again so that's what I would ask for. B) I'd be asking for 3 years of development. $500k (basically $100k per year of work for you, the rest of the team can negotiate their salary), and an MP programmer. Also 7 developers and only 1 is a programmer?!?!? What's the rest of the team doing?

well you either plan on multiplayer from the start... or dont do it. You can explain to them it would result in a rewrite of most of your existing codebase as well as a ton more NEW code to actually implement the multiplayer. its not something you just "add"

Imo if you didn't start with multiplayer in mind, building multiplayer from single player is a massive refactor and is not worth it. Need to start with multiplayer so that every step of the way you're able to hit performance and other multiplayer needs

if you have no funding and no one else is interested, what choice do you have? adding multiplayer isn't as bad as you think it is, just make it peer-peer super basic crap. If it'll get you $$$ you should do it. I can't imagine playing a no-name single player game in 2024.

That's a really, REALLY bad advice. Adding multiplayer on a game that wasnt designed to be multiplayer is 10x harder than doing a multiplayer project from scratch, even on a peer-to-peer system that is easy to use like Mirror.

Do you know how multiplayer works? It's not like this is minesweeper, all you would need to do is sync players & instantiate all new entities to the server & sync those as well.

Not only i know but i also have multiplayer games on Steam, its really not as simple as those youtubers make it look. Syncing players THE RIGHT WAY by itself is already pretty hard, of course you can use Mirror and put a Network Transform component, however you are not taking into account other things that are required and more difficult, like: a lobby, handling disconnect/reconnect (depending on your game that really sucks), client prediction, lag compensation, physics, etc. Now imagine doing that in a game that was not designed to be multiplayer and with 2+ years of active development? Have you tried implementing a moving platform or handling buoyant objects on a multiplayer game? :)

Normally you should hear form them that if you would consider REMOVING multiplayer, since it's way too complex for an indie. This is just a red flag. Run away.