Deep Rock Galactic sets Season 07 for December and announces its first paid expansion

Ghost Ship Games has laid out a year of Deep Rock Galactic at Coffee Stain's Big Break Showcase, and the headline is not the season arriving in December. It is what comes after: the co-op mining shooter is getting a paid expansion for the first time.

Season 07: Contingency Protocol

Season 07 is called Contingency Protocol and the studio is aiming for a release somewhere in December 2026. The in-fiction setup has gravitational anomalies spreading around Hoxxes IV, with geomagnetic poles reversing inside concentrated areas and a run of fatal Drop Pod crashes that management thinks may be connected. Crews get sent to the crash sites to pull Memory Cores out of the wreckage, and the developers warn that gravity in those spots is still unreliable.

Mechanically, the biggest items are about 20 new Overclocks weighted towards secondary weapons, including ones named Neurotoxin Minelets, Dragonfire Shells and Dismantler Rounds, and a rework of the perk system. Eleven new perks are being added, some existing ones are being reworked, and a new Perk Maintenance system will work like the existing Weapon Maintenance. Once everything is unlocked, players will be able to pour leftover perk points into Perk Proficiency slots for very small baseline stat buffs, which addresses a long-standing complaint from veterans sitting on piles of unspendable points.

Two cosmetic systems round it out. Tattoos finally arrive by way of a new passive, camouflaging cave creature called the Kadoc Inker, whose ink sacs you harvest for industrial pigment and, unofficially, ink. Traversal tools can also be repainted. Season 07 brings another entirely free Performance Pass, headlined by a weapon framework called Ironclad Tactical. Ghost Ship stresses that all of it is work in progress and may change.

Season 08 and The Expansion

In summer 2027, Season 08 will land alongside what the studio calls an extensive gameplay expansion DLC. Season 08 will be free, as every season has been. The expansion will not: Ghost Ship says plainly that it "will cost real-life money," and frames it as a way to be "way more ambitious with the content we're adding." The studio says free content updates will continue, and that Season 08 will likely be one of its smaller ones, building on the story Season 07 sets up.

No further detail on the expansion was given. Ghost Ship says it is focusing on Season 07 first and will have more to say afterwards.

Why it matters

Deep Rock Galactic has run on free seasonal updates since it left Early Access in 2020, and that has been a big part of its reputation. A premium expansion is a genuine change in how the game is funded, and the studio is clearly aware of it.