Factorio

Factorio is a factory-building and automation game developed and published by Wube Software, released in full on August 14, 2020 after a long early access period. Players land on an alien planet, mine raw resources, and construct increasingly complex automated factories — from hand-mining ore to belt-fed megafactories producing thousands of items per second. The goal is to build a rocket and escape, though most players spend hundreds of hours optimising their factory long after launch.

Factorio supports full cooperative multiplayer where any number of players share a single map. The game uses a lockstep deterministic networking model: instead of synchronising game state between machines, every client runs an identical copy of the simulation and only player inputs are sent over the network. This means all clients must process every tick identically — if any client diverges, a desynchronisation (desync) occurs and that client is disconnected. The practical consequence for network quality is significant: your ping determines the command delay (how many ticks elapse before your input takes effect), and sudden changes in latency or packet loss cause severe lag spikes or desyncs rather than smooth rubber-banding.

The October 2024 Space Age DLC (version 2.0) expanded the game to four new planets with unique mechanics and a space-platform factory layer, pushing the all-time concurrent peak to 118,674 players on Steam. As of early 2026 the game maintains roughly 19,000 concurrent players — exceptionally high for a premium-only title with no free-to-play component. Factorio has no anti-cheat software; its deterministic architecture makes cheating structurally difficult without triggering a desync. The game is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and does not require Steam — Wube sells DRM-free copies directly from factorio.com.