Coffee Stain: Satisfactory hits 5.5m sales after five years of early access, 1.0 due "this year"

As acclaimed first-person automation sim Satisfactory inches closer to the fifth anniversary of its early access launch, developer Coffee Stain Studios has revealed it's eyeing up a version 1.0 release "this year", and that the game has now sold over 5.5m copies. Satisfactory released into early access back in March 2019 - initially as an Epic Games Store exclusive before making the jump to Steam the following year - and it quickly made a splash thanks its co-operative, open-world spin on the automated resource exploitation loop popularised by deeloper Wube Software's much-loved Factorio. In Satisfatory, Factorio's irresistably compulsive fundamental formula - in which, essentially, you mine stuff to craft stuff that'll make mining more stuff easier so you can craft bigger stuff and so on - plays in first-person across a vibrant, explorable sci-fi open-world, with up to four friends able to work together to achieve their goals. It's a twist that's clearly resonated with people too, as developer Coffee Stain has now revealed Satisfactory has sold over 5.5m copies since early access began. Read more