The Plan for 2026:
[p]That being said, I have some info about how things in the new year will work, which is a significant change from the last 3 years of development. Since 2022-ish, we have been doing two updates a year: One smaller one in the spring/summer, then work to deliver something BIG in the fall. That cadence worked for the team but required us to go dark for extended periods while we cooked up our big updates for the latter half of the year. That just isn’t going to work this time around, so we are swapping to a monthly cadence with more frequent patches for the first half of 2026. Longtime players might recognize this style, it is how we used to operate in the years around our 1.0 launch, and should help us feel more connected with you all. We can figure out the rest later, but for now, it is clear that we have prioritized new content over fixing long-term bugs and quality of life updates that the game desperately needs. While this isn’t as exciting as announcing a big new content update, I hope that this reprioritization is welcome news for the community who just wants to enjoy what is already in ASTRONEER.[/p][p][/p]Timeline:
[p]The first patch of 2026 will happen in early January, and then we will keep rolling with regular updates after that, keeping you all updated along the way. I don’t have any shiny graphics, my producer Sarah would be frustrated with me if I shared the raw internal calendar she sent me, but it is basically:[/p]- [p]JANUARY – QOL UPDATE[/p][/*]
- [p]FEBRUARY – QOL UPDATE[/p][/*]
- [p]MARCH – QOL UPDATE[/p][/*]
- [p]APRIL – QOL UPDATE[/p][/*]
- [p]MAY – QOL UPDATE[/p][/*]
What happened?
[p]While I think we addressed it in our apology note, I wanted to be transparent and shed light on some of the factors that got us here in the first place. Astroneer is a nearly 10 year old game, and the underlying technology is so outdated that the very platforms and core code the game was built on are no longer supported by current standards. The engine version that the game had been running was Unreal 4.23, (released in 2019!!!!) before the PS5 platform had even been released. The Xbox platform we released on in 2016 (UWP) has been phased out for a new system. That made continued development of Astroneer very difficult, but we managed for a while.[/p][p]Nearly halfway through developing Megatech, we realized that the game would need an engine upgrade to continue feature development. The upgrade process can sometimes take months because you must upgrade and test all existing content, then verify everything is working across all shipping platforms before moving on to new work. Engine upgrades often introduce tons of bugs on their own, and this year was already full developing Megatech content and getting the PS5 version of the game out, which have their own bug loads. This meant our very methodical process for bugfixing and testing became much more complex, and ultimately led to a rough launch. We weren’t just finding issues with Megatech, we missed some crucial bugs that were introduced in the upgrade, and that made fixing things quickly even harder. We really like Megatech conceptually, but it is plagued by bugs and a lack of polish that is stopping some players from enjoying it, which is where we are now. [/p][p]We are committing ourselves to:[/p]- [p]Getting back to our process that leaves us with dedicated time to bugfix without new changes going in.[/p][/*]
- [p]Be more malleable about dates. If things aren’t ready, delay, apologize for the delay and deliver higher quality later.[/p][/*]
- [p]Focus on fixing issues in the game now before adding new content, so future content updates will go smoother.[/p][/*]
