‘Dispatch’ Developer Sets Live Concert Event to Celebrate Hit Indie Game’s One-Year Anniversary, 5 Million Copies Sold (EXCLUSIVE)
‘Dispatch’ Developer Sets Live Concert Event to Celebrate Hit Indie Game’s One-Year Anniversary, 5 Million Copies Sold (EXCLUSIVE)
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Oct 22, 2026 8:25am PT
‘Dispatch’ Developer Sets Live Concert Event to Celebrate Hit Indie Game’s One-Year Anniversary, With 5 Million Players (EXCLUSIVE)
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Jennifer Maas
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AdHoc Studio
It’s been one year since indie game developer AdHoc Studio launched its now-hit episodic narrative superhero adventure game “ Dispatch” — and in that time the game has attracted more than 5 million players. Now, the team behind the title (which has doubled in size since last October) has decided to celebrate its digital win in the physical world.
Titled “Dispatch: Night Shift,” the anniversary event is described as “an in-person, live entertainment experience.” Set up by AdHoc as a one-night exclusive show taking place in December in Los Angeles, Night Shift will bring the game’s songs and its original score together on one stage with the score acting as the connection between each set, just as it connects the game.
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Among those set to take the stage at the live event are “Dispatch” composer Andrew Arcadi, who will perform the game’s original score live alongside select artists who contributed to the game’s soundtrack, including Thot Squad, Bershy, Primer, Caroline Kingsbury and Fartbarf, playing tracks from “Dispatch” and their own albums.
The “Dispatch: Night Shift” event will be held at the Avalon Hollywood nightclub in Los Angeles on Dec. 3. Doors will open at 6 p.m. and the Night Shift show will kick off at 7 p.m. Because tickets are “extremely limited,” fans are encouraged to sign up for AdHoc Studio’s email list to access ticket sales early at this link. Pre-sale tickets go live on Oct. 28 with purchases limited to two tickets per person; more info is available at this link.
Along with the live show, AdHoc is marking “Dispatch’s” one-year birthday with a number other surprises. That includes a free update to the Deluxe Edition featuring two new behind-the-scenes modes: Commentary and Storyboard. Commentary Mode features more than 16 hours of cast and crew commentary, and Storyboard Mode lets players experience the entire game through the original storyboard animatics. Existing Deluxe Edition owners will have access to Commentary Mode and Storyboard Mode with a free update, while Standard Edition owners can purchase the Deluxe upgrade for $10.99.
The company also announced that “Dispatch” is coming to mobile: The game will launch on Android and iOS, with support for Google Play Games on PC, starting Dec. 9, 2026. The mobile release includes the base game, rebuilt for touch and vertical play. At launch, players will be able to access the first four episodes for free and unlock the full mobile release for $19.99.
In addition, AdHoc announced a lineup of “Dispatch” anniversary merch, featuring artwork by the game’s art director, Derek Stratton. Created for the Dispatch three-record soundtrack vinyl set available exclusively through Lost In Cult, the designs can now be found on shirts and hoodies. In addition, 100 album-art posters signed by Stratton will be available for purchase. AdHoc and Lost In Cult also are expanding their collaboration with a “Dispatch: Design Works” collection, featuring a hardcover book and collectible box featuring interviews from the cast, developers and more.
Aaron Paul stars in “Dispatch” as the voice of Robert Robertson, a.k.a. Mecha Man, who is at the center of a dysfunctional team of misfit heroes. You play as dispatch operator Robert, who must strategize about who to send to emergencies around the city, all while balancing office politics, personal relationships, and his own quest to become a hero with a damaged suit. The game’s cast includes Laura Bailey (“The Last of Us Part II,” Critical Role), Erin Yvette (“Hades II,” “The Wolf Among Us”) and Jeffrey Wright (“American Fiction,” “The Batman”).
AdHoc chief operating officer Nick Herman and CEO Michael Choung, two of the studio’s founders, say the concert-style “Dispatch: Night Shift” experience has been in the works since January. At that time, several of the musicians who participated in the “Dispatch” soundtrack were asking if they could include assets from the game in their own live performances.
“It felt like there was an opportunity here where we have our fans going to their shows. Why don’t we create a place for everyone and have basically like a mini-festival and celebrate all this stuff,” Herman says. “As soon as we had the idea, it was like, ‘OK, this is gonna be overproduced, we’re gonna go crazy.’ We’ve never produced a concert, so we’re working with Banter Events who has experience doing live events and they’ve been really great at teaching us how to do this. It’s kind of similar to ‘Dispatch’ where we had never made a premium animated television show through that pipeline. It’s kind of nice not knowing because then you just ask for crazy stuff, and then they go, OK, and then we’ll figure it out.”
Herman has had “Night Shift” “written in the top corner in permanent marker” for the team since the beginning of the year, when the game was coming off the high of impressive early sales and multiple 2025 Game Awards nominations.
“There certainly was a plan — but I will say, the energy, especially in January, was more drunk than sober in the sense that the success just walloped all of us,” Choung says. “We had no idea what that was, it was just like, we got to do something. And then Nick was like, let’s do this. We signed up for it knowing nothing about how to do this stuff.”
Herman says that the launch of “Dispatch” has “given us confidence in our instincts.”
“This is our first original as a studio, the first original IP that we’ve ever done as as creatives,” says Herman. “So whenever there’s a weird idea, we’re like, ‘Well, maybe it’s not so weird, the last weird idea works.’ We’re really excited and bullish on the future of what we’re doing and what our teams are building.”
Adds Choung, “I think one of the things that success has meant for us, which is again entirely new, is a blank page. And that’s kind of both a benefit and a curse for a writer. It’s like the best thing you can hand someone. It’s the worst thing you can hand someone. And so we’re filling it in with things that we just never thought we could do. We’re also not in a crazy rush to fill it out, because the potential and the possibilities of a blank page are so exciting. So there’s a lot of ideas and a lot of thoughts inside of the studio about what could be next, what we ought to be doing.”
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