Encore
Keep an end-of-life game playable, paid for by the people who still play it.
Encore is in alpha. It works end to end, and details may change before it is generally available.
A studio stops supporting a game. Its servers would normally be switched off, and everybody who bought it would own something that no longer works.
Encore is the other ending. You declare the game end of life on Plany, Plany checks that it is, its servers move into a project of their own, and that project is funded by its players — through a "keep the servers running" item you sell inside the game, from your own Steam storefront.
Players never see Plany. They see an item in the Steam overlay, in a game they already own, sold by the studio they bought it from.
Why this exists
"Stop Killing Games" is a consumer campaign, with a European Citizens' Initiative behind it, asking that a game people paid for stays playable in some form after its publisher stops supporting it. Whatever comes of the regulation, the practical obstacle for most online games is the same: somebody has to keep paying for the servers, and a studio that has stopped earning from a game cannot do it forever.
Encore moves that bill to the people who want the servers to keep running, and makes the arithmetic visible to them.
Three things to know first
An Encore project spends only its own credit
No plan credit, no free allowance, no plan discount, and none of the account credit you bought for anything else. The project has a balance of its own, and it is the only thing its usage draws on.
So "the players are keeping it alive" is literally true — and when they stop, the servers go to sleep rather than quietly spending your other budget. The rest of your account is untouched either way: an Encore project running out stops nothing else, and your account running out of credit does not stop the Encore project. See Funding.
Plany runs the Steam purchase and decides the amount
You link a Steamworks publisher Web API key. When a player buys, Plany opens the Steam order itself, at the price the offer holds, and credits the project the amount the offer holds — and only once Steam says the order settled.
A game client is never asked what the player paid, what the item costs, or how much to credit. A modified client cannot claim a price it did not pay, because nothing it sends is used as one. See Offers and purchases.
Verification says yes, or asks a person. It never says no on its own
Plany gathers evidence that the game is ending — that your key owns it, whether Steam still sells it, what your own announcements say — and either verifies it straight away or puts it in front of somebody at Plany.
Only a person declines, and their reason is shown to you as they wrote it. See Verification.
Where the money goes
Read this before you link a key, because it is not the same as buying credit for your account.
- A player pays Steam
In their own currency, through the Steam overlay, for an offer priced in US dollars.
- Plany credits the project
The moment Steam reports the order settled, the offer's credit lands in the Encore project's own balance and its servers can run on it.
- Steam pays you
On Steam's own schedule, net of Steam's share, exactly as for any other in-game purchase.
- You owe Plany the credit it issued
Plany extended that credit before Steam paid you. What you owe is shown on your publisher link as
outstanding, and each payment you make is recorded against the link as a settlement.
That makes every link a line of credit, and it has a limit:
- The outstanding limit starts at $0, which means nothing can be sold yet. Plany sets it per link — contact Plany to have one set.
- A purchase is refused before the player is charged if its credit would take what you owe, plus purchases other players have in progress, above the limit.
- Settlements are arranged with Plany directly. Each one is recorded when your
payment arrives, and appears in
ListSettlements.
An offer's credit can be at most its price less Steam's 30% share, so no sale ever leaves you owing more than you were paid for it.
Refunds and chargebacks are taken back from the project. Plany reads Steam's order report and removes the refunded share of the credit from the project's balance. If that credit had already been spent on hosting, the balance goes negative and the servers stay asleep until it is topped up again. What you owe Plany falls by the same amount.
The shape of it
- Link your Steam publisher account
A publisher Web API key with Microtransaction permission. Plany reads which games it can act for. Linking Steam
- Declare the Encore
Name the game, the Steam app, and what players may see about funding. Verification starts at once. Verification
- Transfer the game into its project
Convert the project it already runs in, or move its servers into a new one. Transferring
- Create offers
"One month of servers — $4.99", credited $3.49. Offers and purchases
- Ship a store in the game
The Unity and Unreal SDKs, the C++ SDK, or four JSON calls. Unity · Unreal · Other engines
Every step can be done from the console's Encore area, the CLI, or the API. Linking, declaring and pricing can also be declared in Terraform; a transfer is started from the console or the CLI, because it renames resources your other configuration may manage.
Encore → Declare a game end of life → choose the game → Connect Steam publisher → choose the Steam app → choose what players may see → Declare end of lifedata.plany_encore_funding reads the project's balance and runway, for a check
block that fails a plan when the servers are running out of money.
What it is not
It is not a way to sell anything else. An offer credits one project's hosting and nothing more. There is no inventory, no entitlement, and nothing a player receives in the game but the servers staying up.
It is not a second storefront. The purchase is a Steam microtransaction on your own app, so the game must be sold on Steam.
It is not a player account. Plany holds no identity for a player. Steam vouches for them, per purchase, with your key.