Besiege: The Splintered Sea

24 May 2024
Besiege: The Splintered Sea

Project Overview

Spiderling Studios is the UK-based developer behind the popular sandbox builder, Besiege. Initially released in early access in 2015, the full game was released in 2020; along the way, multiple updates—including a multiplayer expansion—were added. The studio is dedicated to expanding this castle-smashing, machine-building adventure and interacts closely with its community to hear player feedback. Besiege’s most recent update, titled The Splintered Sea, is a water-themed expansion three years in the making. With a May 24th release date, Spiderling Studios approached Starfall PR for a two-month campaign launch campaign. In those two months, The Splintered Sea was covered by over 130 outlets, amassing over 500,000 content views and skyrocketing Spiderling onto the home page of multiple Tier 1 game sites.

The Task

In anticipation of the upcoming expansion Besiege: The Splintered Sea, Spiderling Studios identified the following expectations:

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Generate Steam Wishlists for the new expansion
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Draft and distribute press releases around the expansion’s major marketing beats
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Organize an early access influencer campaign with large creators who previously expressed an interest in Besiege
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Organize interviews with key members of Spiderling Studios; this was the first time Spiderling opened itself to press interviews.

The Results

Besiege: The Splintered Sea is a masterfully developed game; in combination with Starfall PR’s expertise, the expansion launched with immense success:

  • Over 50,000 wishlists at launch
  • 130+ positive pieces of coverage, ranging from videos, articles, interviews, and reviews
  • Mentions in Rock Paper Shotgun, IGN, PCGamesN, GameSpark, Inverse, and more
  • Multiple videos amassing over 100k views
  • Increased player count for the base game in anticipation of the expansion
  • 2 published interviews with Tier 1 outlets
  • Positive reviews across international outlets, including print publications
  • Continued media coverage post-launch, demonstrating the impact of a strong PR campaign

 

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“Besiege is a fantastic toy […] and Splintered Sea is more of that, but with boats and sharks. Also a giant squid at one point. It’s great and I love it. Seven out of six point five thoroughly shivered timbers.”

Rock Paper Shotgun
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What’s always set Besiege apart from anything else out there is how it embraces sheer chaos. […] Adding water into the mix only ups the cavalcade of chaotic craziness, as now you’ll have to deal with ocean physics and everything bobbing about on the waves. It’s those physics which add an entirely new dimension to the game.

PCGamesN
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At its early access release in 2015, I fell immediately in love with it, but in the decade since then, I’d come to assume that Spiderling had quietly moved onto something new…[but] Besiege is back with The Splintered Sea, a full-scale expansion that takes the chaotic physics of the initial release and places it on the high seas.

GamesRadar

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