The interstellar building sandbox of Starbase is seeing an update in the next week or so. That news taken on its own is kind of unremarkable, but the post announcing this upcoming patch also notes that updates to the game will be much less frequent while developer Frozenbyte switches focus to other game projects.
“The reason for this rather sudden major update is that Starbase’s sales performance hasn’t been the strongest, and thus we need to prioritize other projects for some time in the interest of ensuring the game’s continued development and long-term future. Starbase’s server costs are low so they aren’t in any danger, but its development will be slowed down and updates will be less frequent for some time. While this is not ideal, we’re looking forward to returning to development as soon as possible, reinvigorated and ready to make Starbase the game we all want it to be.”
Delays have been a common occurrence over the course of Starbase’s development trajectory. The sandbox was first announced in 2019 with a plan to enter early access that same year, but that target was missed, and then was missed again in 2020, until finally arriving in 2021. The game’s player population has since taken a nosedive from nearly 10K players at launch to just over 200 now.
The upcoming patch in question, which was meant to be part of the larger update that would add station sieges, will add capital ships, moon mining and moon bases, an alloy furnace, a blueprint update, and some balancing adjustments among other features. Meanwhile, station siege testing will continue to be available on the game’s PTU as “a prelude of things to come,” but for now it looks like Frozenbyte is drawing things down for a bit.
