Wube Software is gearing up for the 1.1 release of Factorio, which is slated to be the final update for the base game. The devs will continue maintaining it, but there is not expected to be any new content. Only bug fixes and other such necessities from here on out. That being said, the team wants the game to go out with a bang and are now weighing their options. They’ve made it clear that they’re happy with the way the game has turned out and aren’t interested in making another one. As such, they’ve laid out a few options and are specifying what they could do and what, more specifically, they’re not willing to do.
Since they don’t want to do a sequel, that leaves a few other options. The first option is to do free updates that continually drip out, similar to Minecraft. However, they don’t feel that this is feasible due to how niche of a title Factorio is, which makes a great deal of sense (even if I’d hardly call hundreds of thousands of sales “niche”). They could also do smaller DLC packs, but the dev finds these to be clunky and hard to keep track of. Additionally, they don’t want to go through the hassle of ensuring that each little chunk of new content is compatible with every other little chunk, bit-by-bit.
Going out with a “bang”
As such, there’s only one real possibility in regards to moving forward — doing a single large Factorio expansion. It would be a focused piece of content that will work as an expansion pack. The dev details that this lines up with their workflow and, as they do want to make this new content, it’s the best fit out of the available options. At any rate, the expansion is in the early planning stages, so no beans have been spilled in regards to what can be expected. Since they’re starting on it now, it’ll be at least a year before anything is released, so fans shouldn’t start chomping at the bit just yet.
