'Satisfactory' is a first-person open-world factory-building game that reaffirmed the steadfast support of 'Pioneers' worldwide upon its official Version 1.0 full release in September 2024. Captivated by the thrill of designing endlessly complex automated processes, a massive number of players flocked to the game, achieving remarkable results such as easily surpassing 100,000 concurrent players on the day of its 1.0 launch.
Building on this successful trajectory, publisher Coffee Stain Studios hosted a special digital showcase titled 'The Big Break' on September 29, 2026, designed to give emerging indie developers a stage. Created to raise awareness and bring spotlight to new studios in a market flooded with hundreds of game releases each week, the event also featured major announcements for established hit titles such as 'Deep Rock Galactic', 'Goat Simulator 3', 'Lightyear Frontier', and 'Teardown'.
Serving as the grand finale of the showcase, the very first teaser for 'Satisfactory's first major paid expansion, 'Core Values', was unveiled, capturing the attention of fans. We had an in-depth conversation with the Coffee Stain development team—Art Director Torsten Gunst, Lead Producer Margit Meesters, Community Manager Jason Edwards, and Game Director Emmet Burke—about the expansion and the future of the game, including details on the vast new 'underground world', engine upgrade progress, and the story behind the revamped vehicle system that held a love-hate relationship with the community.
Q. You unveiled the teaser for the first expansion during 'The Big Break' showcase. What kind of content is it?
'Core Values' is the first paid expansion for 'Satisfactory' since its launch. As paid content, we wanted to prepare a massive and substantial new experience. In Core Values, players will venture underground to encounter a giant cave system, where they can enjoy new factory buildings, equipment, biomes, a new power system, and a new narrative that runs parallel to the main game.
Q. Is there a specific reason you chose the 'underground' as the new stage?
Because we wanted to expand the world without disrupting the existing surface ecosystem. Thermatically, an underground world also aligns perfectly with the game's core premise of industry and mineral extraction. In fact, underground was one of the most requested locations from players on our Discord community. Being a place shut off from light, we plan to show a unique and bizarre ecosystem distinct from the surface, and players will experience a much rawer aesthetic of crushing giant, heavy rocks for foundries and smelters.
Q. When can players access this massive underground content? Does it heavily favor existing players?
Once players reach 'Tier 3' in the main game, where Coal and Steel are unlocked, an event will trigger notifying them that Core Values (the expansion) is available. From this point—when automated power via Coal Generators becomes available—players can seamlessly connect new DLC recipes based on the resources they have on the surface.
Existing players who have finished the game can jump straight in from their save files, and transferring resources and logistics between the surface and underground is possible. However, because special resources and new buildings are required, a player with 20,000 hours of playtime won't have an overwhelming speed advantage over someone who just reached Tier 3. Functioning like a side quest running parallel to the main quest, we expect it to be a massive experience lasting around 400 to 500 hours by Satisfactory standards.
Q. Looking at the released images, a creature that looks like a cat or a rat catches the eye.
It's a new, friendly creature you can encounter in the dark. Just as the surface in the main game has the Lizard Doggo, the underground will feature a cute feline creature mixed with an elongated Dachshund body shape that will interact with the player. You can approach it warmly and pet it. Of course, a number of new and dangerous hostile creatures fitting for the underground environment will also be added, so look forward to that.
Q. As factories grow massive, optimization and engine-level advancements seem essential.
With the addition of underground spaces, new technical challenges arose, such as underground lighting systems and level streaming between zones. To overcome these, we are continuously carrying out optimization work, and we plan to transition to Unreal Engine 5.6 soon. Alongside recent work keeping console versions in mind, we are transitioning from traditional CPU-based instancing to GPU-based instancing, continually pushing the game forward so it runs flawlessly across a variety of hardware environments.
Q. The performance of Version 1.0 released two years ago was dazzling. You passed 100,000 concurrent players at the time—what was the internal reaction from the dev team?
It was a huge surprise internally as well. We had positive expectations that it would succeed, but we had no idea it would reach that scale. In fact, we even made a bet in the office on the launch day concurrent player count. We said, "If it exceeds 100,000, three anonymous team members will jump into the local fountain." But it easily surpassed 100,000, so they actually had to jump into the fountain (laughs). We are deeply and sincerely grateful for the players' passionate enthusiasm and support.
Q. What was the most memorable community feedback after the 1.0 update?
Hands down, the vehicle (truck) system. To be honest, the vehicle system was one of the features we were most terrified to update. In the past, the vehicle system had so many flaws that players avoided using it altogether and would skip straight to train tech. Every YouTube video had comments in all caps saying "FIX FUCKING TRUCKS." But this time, we completely revamped the vehicle pathing system into something practical, and seeing players praise the improved vehicles and actively use them made all that hard work feel thoroughly rewarded.
Q. Besides the video game, news of a 'Satisfactory' board game launch has also surfaced.
We have been collaborating for nearly two years with Copenhagen-based Mood Publishing to develop the board game. They are fantastic partners who created the 'Valheim' and 'Deep Rock Galactic' board games faithful to the originals. We participate directly in internal playtests to actively exchange feedback, and we plan to launch a crowdfunding campaign later this year to secure development funding.
Q. When can we expect the 'Core Values' expansion? And do you have a word for Korean 'Pioneers' who are staying up all night perfecting their production lines?
We can state definitively that it won't be releasing this year (laughs). We don't know yet if it will be next year, but we plan to build anticipation by continuously sharing development updates and specific details through our official YouTube channel and other platforms in the future.
And we truly love our Korean players. Even before official Korean language support, there were passionate Korean fans who gathered on our Discord channels to dedicatedly contribute to translating the game. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for playing 'Satisfactory', and we ask for your continued interest and anticipation for the upcoming 'Core Values' expansion.
