While bugfixes and minor tweaks will continue for the base game, the development team have turned their attention to what’s next. The forum post gives a frank assessment of the various options, from releasing free updates, making a sequel, or producing small DLC packs. The team prefer a fourth option, “one big expansion pack.” It’s too early for discuss any plans for what the expansion pack would contain, except that they have lots of ideas and “we don’t think that it will take less than a year to develop.” I like expansion packs, and they’re too rare, these days. I’d rather seasoned developers built wild ideas on top of the hard work they’ve already done, than start over with a fresh slate for a sequel, or delivered smaller ideas via DLC. And Factorio has taken plenty of hard work already. The end of the post delivers a set of stats, including that the game has been worked on for 3233 days. That’s a little less than nine years. It’s had 411 public releases, contains 87,703 different sprites, and has sold over 2.5 million copies. If you want to extend Factorio yourself without waiting for the expansion, check out our list of the best Factorio mods.
