After 13 years of development, over half a decade of post-release support, and one of the most incredible expansions ever made, Wube Software is preparing to call time on the development of Factorio.

In its latest Friday Facts blog, the Czech developer revealed that the coming 2.1 patch will be the game's final significant update, with the studio switching to minor quality of life patches thereafter.

"We envision 2.1 as our last major update of Factorio, and we will shift the focus onto long term support. So things like bug fixes, platform support/compatibility, modding features, etc," the studio wrote. "Other than that, we feel we've reached a good place to conclude the active gameplay development."

I am honestly a little surprised. Like Dwarf Fortress or RimWorld, Factorio is one of those games that seems like it could just carry on development forever. To be clear, though, 'surprised' does not mean 'disappointed'. The original game was already a preposterously vast, life-consumingly complex game, assembling one of my favourite PC gaming experiences when I reviewed it back in 2020.

Then, four years later, came Factorio: Space Age, an expansion that exploded the game's scope in even more ludicrous fashion. Not only did it involve building a space factory on top of your existing factory, but you also then took that space factory to four other planets that offered totally different factory-building challenges.

Alongside the many, many mods that have been built for Factorio, there's enough game here to keep you playing for the rest of your natural life. So while I am a little surprised to see Wube close the book on Factorio, I don't begrudge it at all.

As for what 2.1 itself will bring, Wube hasn't revealed specifics yet. But the studio is open about the fact that it won't bring any major new features like planets, enemies, and so forth. Instead, it will introduce some quality-of-life improvements, several "small" new features, the usual round of polish and bugfixes, plus a few tweaks to modding support.

It's also worth noting that, while development of Factorio is ending, Wube Software is kicking around ideas for something new. Again, Wube is candid about the prototypical nature of these ideas, stating that "there will not be anything to share for a long time". But the studio has recruited three new staff members to replace three departing employees, while its focus will gradually shift from supporting Factorio to spending time on "other game prototypes/experiments."

"Guy who leaves negative Steam review after ungodly hour count" is truly one of the strongest soldiers in modern gaming. They scare me. It's a practice that speaks of obsession, but also a level of expertise and familiarity you just can't fake: What do you say to someone who knows your game that well, and hates it? Anyway, I'm in awe of ArkaneArdvark78, who left a negative Steam review of Destiny 2 after 10,098.5 hours, then kept playing for another 157.8 hours.

I think the craziest part of this is that ArkaneArdvark78's review is extremely reasonable⁠—shout out to Scott Smith, who's 8,000 hour negative review of Battlezone 98 ultimately won over PC Gamer news writer Joshua Wolens. ArcaneArdvark78 echoes sentiments I certainly felt during my piddly 700 pandemic-only hours of Destiny 2, as well as what I've heard from the community and PCG's own five figure lifers like brand director Tim Clark and UK editor-in-chief Phil Savage. I've reproduced ArkaneArdvark78's review here in screenshot and text form:

"First of all let me say this, I have been a loyal Destiny fan since it launched over 10 years ago. But that has changed with this new expansion. I have well over 10,000 hours between console and PC. With the Edge of Fate and the new gear tiers, character leveling and weapon tiers I have lost all interest in the game. What better way to offend your player base than telling them that all the armor and weapons that they have spent countless hours grinding towards is now useless.

"Unless you pour every waking moment you have to get the tier 5 gear you aren't maximizing your builds anymore. The Portal and the level grind of spending countless mind numbing hours grinding the same activity over and over and over to try to level up is a morale killer for the game.

"Bungie is so far removed from actually listening or understanding the player base it should be a major red flag. I can't even express the amount of disgust I have for this game after Edge of Fate released. I am done with this game. I don't think Bungie can bring it back to the point where I was excited to log in and run missions. Congratulations Bungie, you have lost another one."

Certainly heated, but not at all unfair or unnecessarily cruel, like you see in a lot of Steam reviews, regardless of hour count. There seems to be unanimous agreement that the Portal overhaul was a disaster. Even back in the relative golden age of The Witch Queen expansion, when I contemplated getting back into things, the thought of grinding pinnacle activities over and over to do actual fun stuff like raids and dungeons made me feel queasy.

ArkaneArdvark78 left this review last September, and time has only vindicated it further: Destiny 2 is being sunset, Destiny 3 is apparently MIA, and it's unclear if Marathon is big enough to sustain Bungie as it currently stands. They lost ArkaneArdvark78, and they lost the war.

As for ArkaneArdvark78's 157.8 hours post-scathing review, well, we've all been there I guess. Your friends ask you to hop on for some Nightfalls and one thing leads to another. That speaks to one of many small tragedies in Destiny 2's end of life: The many friendships it facilitated needing to find new outlets.

And hey, I can hardly judge: I still play Elden Ring Nightreign almost every day with PCG senior guides writer Sean Martin and contributor Tyler Colp. At least once a Depth 4 run, I say something along the lines of "I hate this game," "I hate all games," or "I'm glad we didn't put this on our 2025 game of the year list." I've only logged 382 hours, but I'm getting there.

Last week, Star Citizen surpassed $1 billion in player funding, an eye-popping milestone that inevitably raised all the same questions about Cloud Imperium Games' wildly ambitious space MMO. Is it a scam? (no). Is it playable (yes). When will it be finished? (no idea). What's the situation with its single-player component, Squadron 42?

The last we heard, Squadron 42 was on course to release sometime this year, but the breadth of the release window, combined with the fact that Squadron 42 has been delayed numerous times already, made it difficult to take this too seriously. However, it might just be that Squadron 42 is nearly finished after all. In a recent interview Star Citizen's creator Chris Roberts said the single-player game is "in the closing stages" of development.

Speaking to Variety during Star Citizen's recent DefenseCon event, Roberts shared some fresh details about Squadron 42's current status. This started with him reiterating the pitch of the game, which takes the technology created for Star Citizen and uses it to build an "authored" single-player campaign.

"My pitch is, basically, you're the star of this huge blockbuster event movie, and it seamlessly goes between the storytelling and the cinematic moments to you being in control and [in] first person," Roberts explained. "It feels pretty epic. I'm actually very excited for when people—because we're right at the end now, we're in the closing stages and it's coming together really well."

Roberts added that "the heat is being turned up for Squadron", in reference to the game's marketing, implying that we'll start seeing promotional material for it soon. He added that this was a "difficult thing to deal with" because of how closely he says CIG communicates with the community. "As we get imminently closer to launch—and I say that in game development language—it's very hard to keep it under wraps."

It certainly sounds like we'll be hearing more about Squadron 42 soon, though it might not necessarily be news we'll want to hear. Following Roberts' statements to Variety, rumours began to circulate that what CIG will be announcing will be another delay rather than a release date.

These rumours derive mainly from YouTuber and Star Citizen specialist TheAstroPub. In his most recent video, TheAstroPub says that he has spoken to several (anonymous) Star Citizen developers, who have been providing him with intermittent progress updates over the last few years.

TheAstroPub says that, according to sources he spoke to at the start of 2026, Squadron 42 had entered "some sort of beta" in February or March this year. More recently, The AstroPub apparently reached out to his sources again, whereupon cited concerns about how Squadron 42 will perform on release.

When TheAstroPub asked whether these performance issues could be fixed by a theoretical October release date, the response was surprising. "They all went 'no, it's not October, it's 2027.' They said a specific date in 2027. I am not going to repeat that date in case it gets them into trouble."

On top of this, TheAstroPub suggested that Squadron 42 will make an appearance at this year's Summer Games Fest. The evidence he cites for this is tenuous—a message that appeared on a Spanish streamer's Twitch channel from someone with the same online handle as Star Citizen's Senior Game Designer. When translated from Spanish, this message says: "I'll just say that I'm not missing Summer Games Fest this year just in case".

That said, I do find the theory plausible. Squadron 42 is the kind of game that Geoff Keighley would want to showcase at SGF, and the fact Roberts is openly talking about ramping up the marketing lends further credence to the idea. As for whether such a showcase would announce a release date or a delay, my money is on both, a specific launch date in 2027 as proposed in TheAstroPub's video.