Suggested Business model for Keen.

This is just a suggestion....

The base games (Space Engineers, Medieval Engineers, whatever Engineers) are open sandboxes. They are the place where people can experiment, build, and test. The only story lines are in the players imaginations.

What you sell as DLCs are story content. You create playable missions based on this open sandbox world, The player buys a mission pack, plays it until he gets bored and then goes back to inventing new creations in the open world while he awaits the release of the next story. The mission packs need to be serious endeavors on the part of Keen. A Mission pack needs to be comparable to a modern video game. It needs to have an engaging story line. It needs to be compelling, it needs to be challenging.

As you have recently discovered. Adding blocks as DLCs is problematic. It annoys the people who don't want to buy them because they can't use ships from the workshop that are built with the DLC blocks, and it annoys the people who do buy them because if they use these blocks in a ship and upload it to the workshop, only people that have the DLC can really use their creation. Basically, DLC block are going to end up having the same stigma as mod blocks from the workshop. Actually worse. Everybody has access to the mod blocks for free, But not everyone is going to spend money on DLC blocks. Eventually DLC blocks will be seen as not being "Vanilla". Bottom line for Keen. The more DLC block packs you release the less of them you will sell. so don't do that! Instead as you develop mission packs, add more blocks, and other functionality to the base game to support the mission packs. Everybody gets all the blocks, all the physics, all of the framework, for the price of the base game.

Think of it this way....

Some things get old Quick. A story driven video game gets old the more you play it. Once you know the story line. It's never going to be as fun.

Some things have more staying power. An open world building system that is only limited by your imagination, where you can share your creations, and test out creations from other people. That has much more staying power. I'm going to play that a lot longer. If the open world game is regularly being improved, and receiving new functionality, I'm going to play that for a very long time. I may stop playing for a while, to play a traditional video game that just came out, but I'm going to keep coming back to this game for years.

the money is in the stories. Because they do get old, there will always be a demand for new stories. This provides an opportunity for recurring revenue from DLC sales. There should be a constant stream of new story line DLCs under development.

the longevity is in the base game. If I can use my X-wing fighter that I've been perfecting for a year now to play part of the new story DLC that's coming out next month, I already have a time investment in content that has not been released yet. I am much more likely to buy that DLC than I am to buy a new game that I have no time investment in.

Bottom Line....

A strong open world platform that is regularly getting improved will create user longevity.

A constant stream of compelling DLC story content that runs in that open world will generate recurring revenue.