[Update]: After nearly a decade in development, Factorio has now finally been released!

Factorio has been in Early Access for quite a few years at this point, and if you were worried it was planning to remain there indefinitely like some of the other games on Steam, worry not as the developers have now announced that they're slowly getting ready for the full release. In other words, Factorio will be leaving Early Access on September 25th, 2020!

"The approach 'It is done when it is done' was serving us well to deliver a high quality product, but if we continued this way, we would be doing it basically forever," reads the developer update. "A lot of us don't have any problem working on Factorio for some more time, but the main problem is, that we would like to introduce new features and content instead of just polishing parts that are already present in the game."

"We also considered, that the game is quite polished now, and if we just pushed the button to release 1.0, it wouldn't be a catastrophe. From our perspective, a lot of things wouldn't be finished, but from the perspective of a new player, the things we are working on now are mainly nitpicks."

I bought Factorio over a year ago, and even back then I was fully satisfied with my purchase, so I have no doubts that the 1.0 version will be a pretty darn good one as well. So if you're like me and you love to construct a variety of horribly planned out machinery that somehow still manage to do their assigned tasks without too much trouble, then September 25th is well worth marking on your calendar. Factorio certainly is a unique experience!

You can learn more about Factorio, as well as potentially grab yourself a copy once the full version goes live, over at the official website.