Deep Rock Galactic explained before you start

Deep Rock Galactic's autumn event, Rocktoberfest, started today. The developer's preview put the time exactly: "The celebration kicks off on Thursday, September 24th at 13.00 CEST and runs for two weeks." When we read Steam's player counter at 13:40 UTC, two hours and forty minutes in, 7,563 people were playing.

Deep Rock Galactic key art: four armoured dwarves in a green-lit cave, a red-bearded miner in the centre crouched with a pickaxe raised behind his head and one foot on a dead spiked red creature, flanked by a heavy gunner with a minigun, a dwarf raising a beer mug with a rifle, and a driller with a drill arm, while insect-like aliens close in from the dark — The four classes, as Ghost Ship draws them. Image: Coffee Stain Publishing press kit, provided for editorial use; fetched 2026-09-24.

This is a piece for someone who has seen the name for years and never started. The game is six years past its full release, on its sixth season of updates, and in the first hours of its yearly beer festival. Here is what that means if you are new.

What it is

A co-op first-person shooter for one to four players. Steam's own summary is accurate: "a 1-4 player co-op FPS featuring dwarven space miners, procedurally-generated destructible environments, and endless hordes of alien monsters." You and up to three others drop into a cave system on a hostile planet called Hoxxes IV, dig out whatever the mission asks for, fight off what lives there, and run for the drop pod before it leaves without you.

The developer is Ghost Ship Games and the publisher is Coffee Stain Publishing. Steam lists the full release as 13 May 2020, and this March the studio held an in-game party called "Eight Years in Orbit". The official site says the current content, Season 06, "Relics of Hoxxes", "is out now on Steam, Xbox and PlayStation". On Steam it is a Windows game only.

Ghost Ship has also put a separate game, Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core, on Steam in early access this year; Steam lists it as released on 20 May 2026 at $29.99. It is a different game, not an update to this one.

The four classes

Everything in Deep Rock Galactic is built around the fact that no single dwarf can do the whole job. Steam's store page describes the four classes in one line each, and we quote them because they are the clearest summary there is:

Scout: "The nimble wayfinder. Light the way with your flare gun, zip around with your grappling hook, and be the first to fall down a really deep hole."
Gunner: "The heavy weapons guy. Great at turning alive things into dead things, and keeping teammates safe behind his impenetrable bubble shield."
Engineer: "The defensive support specialist. Sentry guns, land mines and 40mm grenades help you keep a secure perimeter."
Driller: "The living bulldozer. Carve through terrain and shape the work site with your handheld drills, and solve problems using your flamethrower and C4 charges."

Read those as four answers to the same problem. The caves are dark, so someone has to light them; the walls are in the way, so someone has to go through them; the swarms are large, so someone has to hold a position; and the terrain is vertical, so someone has to build platforms and cover. A new player can pick any of the four. The one piece of advice the class list implies is to play the role the rest of your team is missing, because a team of four Gunners is a team with no light and no way through the rock.

The store page also puts numbers on the scale of the thing: "11 distinct biomes", "over 50 different enemy types", and caves that are "100% destructible".

What it costs today

Store	Price on 2026-09-24	Discount
Steam (US)	$29.99	none
Steam (UK)	£24.99	none
Steam (DE)	29,99€	none

When we checked on 19 September, the game was 70% off: $8.99 in the US. That sale has ended. The full price is back in all three stores this morning, so if you saw the discounted price last week, it is gone.

The price buys every season. Steam's description is direct about it: "Deep Rock Galactic features six full seasons of additional content on top of the base game, and it's all free." It goes on: "No time-limited battlepasses, no FOMO shop rotations, no gated content. The only extras you can buy are a couple DLC armors." Steam lists 14 DLC items for the game; the store page's claim is that none of them is content you need.

The reception, in numbers

Steam holds 380,271 reviews, 369,274 positive and 10,997 negative, which is 97.1% positive and the store's highest band, "Overwhelmingly Positive". The Metacritic score on the Steam page reads 85.

The review total spans six years and six seasons, so it is a verdict on the long run rather than on this month. The concurrent count is also a single reading taken on the first afternoon of an event, which is when a long-running co-op game is likely to be busier than on an ordinary Thursday. On 19 September, at a different time of day, we read 4,482. The two readings are not a clean comparison, and we would not read a trend into them.

What Rocktoberfest actually gives you

The Abyss Bar on Deep Rock Galactic's space rig decorated for Rocktoberfest: a neon Abyss Bar sign over a wooden counter hung with bunting, pretzels, pumpkins, sunflowers and autumn leaves, hay bales and barrels on the floor, and a Rocktoberfest banner to the left — The Abyss Bar dressed for Rocktoberfest, from the 2024 event; the developer says it is dressed up again this year. Image: Coffee Stain Publishing press kit, provided for editorial use; fetched 2026-09-24.

The preview post lists the event's contents. Most of it is cosmetic, and one part matters to someone starting out:

Double XP, conditionally. "Dig up and deposit a Wurst Stein mug during your mission, and you and your team will receive Double XP for the mission." It is not a flat bonus. Someone on the team has to find a mug in the cave and bring it back.
A new hat. Completing this year's Rocktoberfest assignment unlocks the "Freihand Tap Cap".
The old hats. Any player who never earned the event's Lederhosen can complete the "Hunt for Lederhosen" assignment again, and it also awards "the previous years' Rocktoberfest hats in case you've missed out on those". For a new player, that means one assignment catches you up on every earlier year's event cosmetic.
Best Wurst Beer is back on tap at the space rig's bar, and the bar itself is, in the post's words, "once again dressed up in the colors of the season".

The event runs for two weeks from 24 September. Double XP is the only part that changes how fast a new player progresses, and only on the missions where the team finds a mug.

One more date, and what is not known

On 16 September the developer announced that Deep Rock Galactic will appear in Coffee Stain Publishing's Big Break Showcase, premiering on Coffee Stain's YouTube channel on Tuesday 29 September at 19:00 CEST, with "some exciting stuff to share about good ol' DRG". The post does not say what, and nothing public today does.

The last patch to the game itself was S06.05.02 on 6 August, which prepared the summer event. So the base game has not changed in seven weeks, and the next real news is five days away.

Should you start now

If you have three friends who will play it with you, yes, and this fortnight is a reasonable time: the event puts a Double XP chance in some missions, one assignment gives you every past Rocktoberfest hat, and there are no paid seasons to catch up on. The game can be played solo or with strangers, but it is built for a crew that talks to each other.

If the only reason is the sale you saw last week, it has ended. The game is $29.99 today. And if you want to wait for next Tuesday's showcase before deciding, that is a reasonable thing to do; whatever Ghost Ship announces there, it will not be known until the 29th.