Factorio Expansion Confirmed As Base Game Hits A Big Milestone

Fans of Factorio got a nice surprise today, as the developer behind the game has announced that the title will be getting an expansion. Word of this expansion comes shortly after the game's version 1.0 release last August, which itself followed years of early access development. Unfortunately, there aren't a ton of details about the expansion at the moment, but fans will likely be happy to hear that an expansion is in the works nonetheless.

The expansion was revealed in a new blog post on the Factorio website today. In it, the Factorio team says that the 1.1 update – which shipped out a week ago – is the final big release for the vanilla game. We're told that the game will be maintained through bug fixes and possibly minor tweaks, but beyond that, we shouldn't expect any new updates for vanilla Factorio.

Naturally, the blog post then turned to what's next for the game and the Factorio team. After noting that "retiring is not really an option," kovarex from the Factorio team notes that there were essentially four different ways to go about developing and delivering new content. The first is through free updates on a continual basis, which is something that games like Terraria, Stardew Valley, and Minecraft do. Given Factorio's more niche appeal, though, free updates wouldn't necessarily have the same effect of drawing new people in that they do in other, more popular games.

Then there was also the possibility of making a Factorio sequel or producing a bunch of different DLC packs, but both of those options were discarded in favor of releasing one large expansion pack for the game. Unfortunately, we're not learning much about this expansion today – the Factorio team says that it's "way too early to show any of the plans," but does note that it'll likely take more than a year to develop. Work is also starting the expansion now, but beyond those morsels of information, we're being left in the dark.

That blog post also revealed that Factorio has sold 2.5 million copies so far, which is no small task indeed, particularly for an indie game trying to make it on Steam. We'll let you know when more details about the upcoming Factorio expansion are shared, so stay tuned for those.