After four years in Early Access, Factorio 1.0 launched last year - ahead of schedule, as it turns out. Version 1.1 has now arrived, and it's the final release of the game. Developer Wube Software says it's been thinking about its options for the future, and that it's decided to move ahead with creating a full-fat expansion pack for Factorio rather than a sequel or series of smaller, free updates.
Wube announced the expansion in the latest Friday Facts blog post on the official Factorio website. After a brief statement explaining that version 1.1 will be the final release of Factorio, the developer turned to the future. Now that the industrial management game has launched, the studio felt it had four options: creating free updates for Factorio "forever," making a sequel, doing small DLC packs, or one large expansion.
It's the last one of these options that "seems to fit the best," Wube says. "It would be one well-defined product that would be significant enough to recapture people's attention, and it would be compatible with our workflow. Technically, it would be 'just' a new version of the game, so all the infrastructure of mods being updated, multiplayer etc. would just work the same as it worked until now."
RELATED LINKS:
Factorio finally gets a full Steam launch, after four years of early access
Factorio will leave early access ahead of schedule due to Cyberpunk 2077
The Factorio release date is set for September 2020
