Factorio expansion will be as big “as the whole vanilla game”

3.9

It’s been over a year since the reveal of a new Factorio expansion, which developer Wube Software opted to do instead of smaller DLC packs, and fans haven’t heard anything since. Now, the team has finally provided an update, confirming that it will be a full-priced release as big as the original game – although it might still be a ways off a release.

The Factorio expansion was announced in February 2021, along with the news that the Steam release would mark the end of updates for the game – so the expansion would be Wube Software’s focus from that point on. It also said that the expansion wouldn’t “take less than a year to develop”.

That statement was correct, as a year later the Factorio DLC still isn’t out – but Wube has released a blog post to update fans on its status. The developer plans to make the expansion $30, the same as the main game, and “put in enough content to make it well worth the price”. “The general goal,” the blog post states, “is to make the expansion feel like as big an addition as the whole vanilla game”.

The post says that the team is currently creating a prototype build of the expansion. “Big parts of the game are playable, and we are approaching a state where we can playtest from start to finish”. After this, Wube will move on to the tweaking and improving, then beta testing – which it plans to invite “a limited number of players” to help with – before releasing the final expansion.

The expansion will release alongside a free Factorio 1.2 update with a lot of the improvements – like the various quality of life tweaks – but not the content, although it will be possible to “turn off” the expansion and play vanilla Factorio without it if you buy the DLC and want to do that.