V Rising and Feature Upvote

Stunlock Studios is a Swedish game development company with a team of about 40 people.

Their hit game V Rising saw massive success in 2022 when they launched in early access, reaching a peak concurrent player peak of 150,000 on Steam. Since then, they have sold over 5 million copies.

Managing player feedback at this scale obviously presented significant challenges for a team of their size.

We interviewed Jeremy Fielding, Community Manager at Stunlock Studios, on how Feature Upvote became a crucial tool for organizing player feedback, prioritizing development efforts, and creating a more efficient workflow for their small but mighty team.

What were the results?

“Feature Upvote became a major part of how we ended up solidifying our entire customer support ethos because it worked so well for us. We realized that with a smaller team, the best way to handle this is to have a central point of contact that serves as a stabilizing ground to direct players to. It’s been incredibly useful.”

“Incalculable difference”

Beyond the raw numbers, Stunlock Studios has experienced tangible benefits that have transformed their development process:

• A centralized feedback system that automatically prioritizes features and issues based on player votes
• Better-informed development roadmap with clear visibility into what matters most to their community
• Ability to identify and address the most critical issues affecting the largest number of players first
• Reduced time spent on administrative tasks through smart duplicate detection and merging
• Improved transparency and communication with their player community
• A scalable feedback system that grows with their success

What made Stunlock Studios look for a tool like Feature Upvote

“When our early access release happened, we hit our 150k concurrent player peak on Steam very suddenly. It was way higher than we anticipated, so we had no infrastructure in place to support that volume of players.”

The early access launch of V Rising brought unexpected success, but also overwhelming amounts of player feedback. The team was faced with a chaotic situation:

• Random bug reports coming through personal messages
• Feedback scattered across Discord with no way to measure importance
• No clear system for determining bug priority
• Limited development resources that needed to be allocated efficiently

They knew they needed a centralized, organized way to collect and prioritize feedback to ensure they were addressing the most critical issues first.

Finding Feature Upvote through industry connections

“We reached out to our sister company Funcom, as we’re both owned by Tencent. They had similar issues when they released one of their games and suggested Feature Upvote. They’d also seen it work very well for Valheim, which is from another Swedish studio.”

The team took Funcom’s advice and implemented Feature Upvote when the early access blew off. It didn’t take long for them to see why their colleagues had recommended it.

What clicked for the Stunlock team:

• The smart search and merging features to easily remove duplicates
• Customizable status tracking for different stages of development
• Easy-to-modify interface that could be adapted for different purposes
• Responsive support team willing to implement requested features

“The platform is extremely simple, easy to modify, and very adaptable. If you need to use it for several different purposes, you can just adjust it on your end and make it work. That flexibility is super useful, especially for game designers.”

Feature Upvote as a centralized feedback hub to support V Rising’s stellar growth

“We could funnel everyone to one place. If somebody messaged me with a bug, I’d respond, ‘Please submit it on the Feature Upvote board.’ Or if somebody posted on the forums, we’d direct them, ‘Please post it here instead.'”

Feature Upvote provided Stunlock Studios with a single, definitive destination for all player feedback.

This centralization has fundamentally changed how they interact with their community:

“Once people began posting there, we consistently directed everyone to that platform and started linking to it everywhere.”

The benefits of this centralized approach extend beyond just organization:

1. Consistent messaging: Players know exactly where to go with their feedback
2. Community visibility: Players can see what others have already suggested
3. Transparent development: Status updates show players that their feedback is being considered
4. Reduced redundancy: The team doesn’t need to answer the same questions in multiple places
5. Simplified workflow: Developers have one place to check for prioritized issues

“I no longer had to directly respond to every person about every problem. Instead, we’d acknowledge the issue, create an article about it, and redirect people there. Eventually, other people began redirecting people there as well.”

This shift has allowed the small Stunlock team to effectively manage feedback from their player base without becoming overwhelmed, creating a sustainable system that scales with their success.

Eliminating duplicates effortlessly

“We still get duplicates because some people brute force their way through, insisting they need to post their own version. But aside from those unique circumstances, Feature Upvote has helped tremendously.”

One of the most significant challenges in managing player feedback is the proliferation of duplicate reports.

Before implementing Feature Upvote, the Stunlock team would waste valuable time sorting through multiple reports of the same issue.

Feature Upvote’s smart search functionality has transformed this aspect of their workflow:

“When users go to create a new issue, it automatically searches keywords from their entry and suggests, ‘Are you sure it isn’t one of these existing issues? Perhaps you should upvote these instead.'”

This proactive approach to preventing duplicates has several benefits:

• Consolidates votes for the same issue, giving a more accurate picture of its importance
• Reduces the time spent merging and managing duplicate entries
• Allows the team to focus on addressing issues rather than administrative tasks

Shaping the roadmap: The value of prioritization

“Most of the major features we implement in each patch come from the top 10 items on our Feature Upvote board usually. We review that list and identify what players genuinely want the most, then work to make it happen.”

With limited resources, the team must make difficult decisions about which features to implement and which bugs to address first. The voting system gives them clear data on player priorities across both areas.

“In game development, you can technically do almost anything, but how do you decide what to prioritize? Choosing to implement one feature usually means declining to pursue other ideas. There’s never a shortage of possibilities — quite the opposite.”

Without proper prioritization, the team could waste valuable time on issues affecting only a handful of players:

“Often when investigating a bug, you might take 20 minutes trying to diagnose the issue only to discover it’s limited to a specific graphics driver on a particular card. It’s incredibly easy to lose significant time on issues like that, especially since the more obscure the problem, the longer it takes to identify the cause.”

Feature Upvote provides the clarity needed to make informed decisions about both feature development and bug fixing.

“You’re able to identify the most critical bugs, the ones causing the greatest frustration, and the most widespread issues.”

Now, they can:

• See at a glance which issues affect the most players
• Prioritize features and bugs that have the biggest impact on the player experience
• Make more informed decisions about resource allocation
• Deliver improvements that matter most to their community

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