Eco
by Strange Loop Games · 6 Feb, 2018
326 downloads
About the Game
Enter the world of Eco, a fully simulated ecosystem bustling with thousands of growing plants and animals living their lives. Build, harvest, and take resources from an environment where your every action affects the world around you. An imminent meteor strike threatens global destruction. Can you save the world without destroying it in the process?
Construct buildings and towns, tend to your farm, hunt wildlife, build infrastructure and transportation, craft clothing, build power plants, and research new technologies. Specialize in a craft and trade your goods to other players. Develop your civilization and sculpt your planet.
As your civilization grows, you’ll need to analyze data from the simulation; evaluating the impact you have on your world. Use this data as evidence in proposed laws, restricting harmful activities without disrupting the advancement of technology. Balance your individual needs with the needs of community, all while maintaining the state of the ecosystem. The future of your world is in your hands.

Every organism in Eco exists as part of a detailed simulation; a disruption in one species can have cascading effects across the planet. Chop down all the trees, and habitats for creatures will be destroyed. Pollute the rivers with mining waste, and your farms will become poisoned and die. The ecosystem supplies the resources you and your community will need to stop the meteor. Manage your pollution, mining waste, hunting, and resource collection to balance your effect on this system.

Eco is built on a rich ecological simulation. All the data generated from the interaction of plants, animals, climate, and players can be searched and analyzed using in-game graphs and heat-maps. Use the collected information as scientific evidence support to proposed laws. The ability to successfully debate using scientific evidence is your greatest weapon against the destruction of your world.

Establish and maintain your own set of laws and government, which are enforced automatically by the game. Draft a proposal to limit clear-cutting in a protected forest, incentivize green energy solutions over fossil fuels by providing tax subsidies and penalties. Participate in elections for world leadership, allowing you to set tax rates and allocate community money. Use a programmable law system to make dynamic and flexible rules for the community, passing them by vote. Construct a wide variety of governments; from tightly-regulated dictator-states, to tax-and-spend subsidy programs, or even lawless communities relying on trust.

Your skills increase based on your food and shelter. By consuming a highly nutritious variety of food and building an elaborate home you will rapidly increase your skill points. Skill points can be spent on skills like farming, hunting, trade, engineering, research, and more. Contribute to the greater good while increasing your own personal success.

In the player-run economy, you achieve the most when you specialize and trade both goods and services. Create stores to buy and sell goods you need asynchronously with other players. Setup contracts within the game’s quest-like labor market, soliciting other players to perform specialized work for you in exchange for payment. Build complex crafting machines and charge a fee for players to use them. A thriving economy in Eco can be both a powerful tool for progress, or a dangerous threat to the environment.
To grease the wheels of commerce, you can create your own currencies, backed by fiat or by resources. Manage the value of your currency relative to others by setting exchange rates at asynchronous currency exchanges. Sell items at stores and collect credit from other players. Eco is designed for rich asynchronous play, allowing many players of many disciplines to contribute to one another’s goals at separate or simultaneous times.

All of the world’s resources originate from its environment, which is affected by your actions. While a meteor looms over head — set to strike the planet in thirty days — a more subtle threat grows from player-interaction with the environment. Without careful attention, ecological destruction can destroy civilization before the meteor even strikes. To ultimately succeed, you and your community will need to use the tools of government and economy to find a balance between progress and protection.
Included Features
- Online Multiplayer - Collaborate online with a community of players.
- Local Singleplayer - Build your own world, with the option to invite friends.
- Dedicated Server Included - Host your own Eco worlds.
- Over 30 different craft tables, with hundreds of recipes.
- Hundreds of items, skills, craft tables, and building blocks.
- A simulated ecosystem with dozens of unique species.
- With limited carrying capacity, players must create vehicles and networks of roads to transport materials.
- Create your own backed or fiat currencies, using them as a means of exchange in the economy.
- Build stores where you can sell your excess items for a profit.
- Eat varied and nutritious food and build ever larger homes to increase your skills.
- Create contracts for jobs that you would like players with different skill-specialties to accomplish for you. Take on contracts from other players that need the skills you possess.
- Design laws using programmable template system to protect your world or increase your profits, enforced by the game if ratified by the population.
- Run for election and make decisions that affect the globe.
- View and compile rich data from the simulation and use it to argue for group decisions.
- Claim land as your own property, and share access rights.
- Give and remove reputation from other players.
- Find a balance between progress and protection, between individual needs and those of the group, succeeding or failing together.

Eco is our forever project. We plan to keep growing, expanding, and improving it with the support of the community. Follow our plans and progress through the Eco Tree, which displays in-depth details on current and future features. The Eco Tree can be found on Eco's official website.
Screenshots
28 imagesVersion Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Hotfix 14.2.1 with the following changes:
Civics
Added: New civic values "Is Leader In Settlement" (whether a citizen holds the leader title of a settlement or of any settlement within it), "Votes Cast By Settlement" (how many citizens of a settlement have already voted in an election) and "Settlement Leader" (the leader title of a settlement).
Fixed: Picking up a claim stake or settlement foundation could destroy it permanently instead of returning it to the player.
Fixed: Picking up a claim stake gave the player the claim papers stored inside it without removing them from the stake.
Fixed: When a founded settlement's built-in civics (leader title, constitution, citizen demographic, election process and immigration policy) went back to draft, they were replaced by new ones, losing changes like a renamed leader title.
Fixed: When a civic object came under the influence of a different settlement, a settlement's built-in civics placed in it could be handed over to that other settlement.
Fixed: Copying another law or title into a settlement's built-in civics replaced them. They can now only be edited.
Fixed: A settlement's built-in civics went back to draft when a civic object they were placed in was disabled or lost the settlement's influence, even though they don't need one. Other laws and titles still turn off with their civic object, as before.
Fixed: Destroying a settlement claim stake was counted by its settlement as a destroyed claim paper, so the number of stakes and papers it handed out was wrong.
Fixed: Moving the foundation of an unfounded settlement did not move its area of influence along with it.
Fixed: Moving the foundation of an unfounded settlement could check whether citizens' homesteads and member settlements were still covered against its old position instead of its new one.
Fixed: When editing a law or civic, the list of values offered for a field could include values of a different kind than the field accepts, which were then rejected.
Economy
Fixed: Any player could change the settings of a wood shop cart, including turning it on or off, its prices and its bank account.
Fixed: Store offers created by dragging an item from the inventory onto a store category started with a price of 999,999 when selling or 0 when buying and could be traded right away, instead of showing "No Price Set" like offers added from the item list.
Fixed: The minimum bank account balance of a store also blocked customers from buying from it when the store's account was already below that minimum.
Fixed: The bank account list of the economy viewer could miss accounts the player had recently gained access to.
Fixed: The currency list of the transfer window showed currencies held in any of the player's accounts instead of only those held in the selected source account.
Fixed: Buy offers with an infinite limit showed a meaningless number as "Quantity wanted" instead of "Unlimited".
Fixed: Moving a trade offer to another store category, then dragging it again right away, could leave the store window out of sync.
Improved: Clearing the price of a store offer now removes its price, so it can't be traded until a new price is entered.
Gameplay
Added: Throwing away an item whose garbage would fill more than one block now asks for confirmation first and displays how many blocks of garbage bags it will fill, allowing to cancel the action. The confirmation can be turned off through a "Don't warn" checkbox or in the escape menu.
Changed: Throwing away items that turn into more than one block of garbage now places garbage bags on all the blocks that would be occupied after decaying, instead of a single bag that later spilled garbage all over its surroundings when it decayed. If there isn't enough room or you lack authorization on one of the claims the bags would cover, the items can't be thrown away there.
Fixed: Ores, dirt and other blocks stored in a storage destroyed by an explosion disappeared. They are now dropped as themselves, while scraps, residuals and other products of garbage sorting turn back into mixed garbage.
Fixed: A container carried by the truck's dumpster loader disappeared when the server restarted while it was still carried.
Fixed: Trees could vanish for the player who felled them when hit again while still falling, sometimes leaving branches stuck in the air and logs that other players could not pick up.
Fixed: Filtering machines kept filtering when their output was full, piling up output instead of holding the fluid back.
Fixed: Barge ramps could not be raised while a truck with a dumpster loader or a garbage truck was aboard, showing "Ramp is blocked" even though nothing was in the way.
Fixed: Hand plows and other vehicles without storage could not be picked up after being driven away from where they were placed, until they were moved with a hammer.
Fixed: Containers that can only be placed with grid placement could not be set down reliably by the truck's dumpster loader.
Fixed: Two rooms touching only at a corner could merge into one room when an object or a pipe filled that corner.
Fixed: Trees that had already grown could still appear as saplings after playing for a while.
Fixed: Vehicle parts with the same durability and integrity could end up in separate stacks that never merged.
Fixed: Containers set down by the truck's dumpster loader appeared at a different spot from where the loader arms put them on the ground.
Fixed: A container carried on the truck's bed clipped through the bed edges when the truck leaned while driving or turning.
Improved: The truck's dumpster loader now sets containers down with either grid or free placement, following the configured default setting. Holding shift switches to the other mode, as is the case when placing objects.
Performance
Fixed: Food spoilage tracking could stall the server for up to half a second while it started up with many storages containing food.
Improved: Terrain loading now takes less time each frame, reducing stutter while new areas stream in.
Improved: World objects now update in parallel without getting in each other's way, reducing occasional server lag spikes on busy worlds.
Improved: Machines now use far less memory while running, making the short server pauses for memory cleanup shorter and less frequent.
Improved: Terrain and objects ahead of a player travelling fast (for example by vehicle) now load first and before the player reaches them, instead of loading evenly in every direction.
Improved: Vehicles and other fast moving objects now show up before they get close to the player, instead of popping in nearby.
Improved: Pumps and other liquid producers connected to long pipe networks now use much less server time.
Improved: Servers with large, long-played worlds now start significantly faster.
Improved: The surface around the player now loads before the caves and mines under it.
Improved: Newly received or edited terrain chunks now show up much sooner.
Improved: Moving back and forth near the edge of the view distance no longer reloads the same terrain over and over.
UI
Added: The market analysis window now shows a chart for the whole market when no item is selected, with the money traded per hour or per day and the total quantity sold over time.
Changed: The volume column of the market analysis item list now sorts by quantity sold instead of money traded, matching the figures it displays.
Fixed: Crafting tables sometimes claimed they had no materials although they were present in their linked storages, until the storage was unlinked and relinked.
Fixed: Crafting tables consuming water reported too low input instead of a blocked output when the low input was caused by the blocked output.
Fixed: Buy offers with an infinite limit showed an infinity sign as their quantity in the shopping cart instead of the amount added to the cart.
Fixed: Older chat messages loaded while scrolling up could appear at a wrong position instead of in chronological order.
Fixed: Tooltips of food in store offers always showed full durability and "Dinner Party fresh!", no matter how fresh the food actually sold by the store was.
Improved: The item list in the market analysis window can now be sorted by clicking a column title, clicking it again reverses the order and an arrow shows which column the list is sorted by and in which direction.
Improved: The "Offers right now" panel in the market analysis window now grows with its content and shows a scrollbar when its lines no longer fit.
Improved: Text in the market analysis window is now larger and easier to read.
Improved: The seller and buyer pie charts in the market analysis window are now larger.
Visuals
Fixed: The ocean behind water that is part of an object (like fountains) was invisible when looking through that water.
Fixed: Trees and objects above deep mines could take a long time to appear because they waited for the terrain far below them to load.
Fixed: Distant trees could vanish before the actual tree replaced them, leaving an empty spot for a moment.
Fixed: Plants could appear on distant terrain before the terrain around them was shown.
Fixed: Looking through glass that touches water showed a clear view instead of the underwater fog of the surrounding water.
Miscellaneous
Added: Vehicle module control bindings can now show a second hint for the Shift + key variant of an action. (Modding)
Changed: Trade offers created in code without a price now also start without a set price instead of using 999999 for selling and 0 for buying. (Modding)
Fixed: Proximity voice chat could stop working after crossing the edge of the world.
Fixed: Ecopedia tabs could lose their icon when a mod added pages to them.
Fixed: Block effects of mods made for older versions of the game caused repeating errors, they are now skipped.
Fixed: Multiple errors appearing in the console.
Improved: The Dumpster Loader now handles liftable containers with more than one storage: each storage gets back its own contents on setdown rather than everything going into the first storage. (Modding)
Server & Configs
Fixed: Players interrupting the process of joining a server could rarely be considered to be logged in on the server until it restarted, preventing them from joining other servers until then.
Fixed: An error could occur when shutting down the server due to the statistics trying to save their data after the database connection has already been closed.
Improved: The economy history database on the server now only takes about half the disk space and grows significantly slower on servers with laws that make frequent automatic transfers. Existing history is converted automatically on the first server start after the update.
Improved: Shop lists and trade history filtered by currency now load faster on servers with a long trading history.
Improved: Warnings about slow world objects in the server log now show what the time was spent on.
Performance.eco.template
Added: "TrackRuntimePauses" config variable in Performance.eco, determining if every server-wide pause over 200 ms and every other server stall over 500 ms should be logged in the jobs log, including whether a pause was caused by memory cleanup and how much memory the machine had left - defaults to false.
Mod.io Integration (Thanks to @primo4e)
Fixed: The browse mods tab, its dialogs and the world layer buttons in the server window cut off text when the display was scaled above 100%.
Fixed: Mod descriptions showed special characters incorrectly, for example "amp;" instead of "&".
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Hotfix 14.1.1 with the following changes:
General:
Fixed: An issue that allowed malicious actors to manipulate bank account data on servers.
Fixed: A server crash that, depending on plugin load order, could occur during boot while initializing settlement claim stakes.
Fixed: Plants did not visually change size as they grew, they only updated once their chunk was reloaded.
Fixed: Trees located in far terrain failed to render.
Fixed: Far terrain could, under specific circumstances, stay visible through already loaded terrain.
Modding:
Added: Mods can now hide areas from the minimap per chunk, making them render as flat fog and with all otherwise displayed data being suppressed. Such areas will also be hidden from the map on the Web UI.
Added: A Synced Video Player script for the ModKit, allowing mods to play a video synchronized between players, with a shared pause or a local pause per player.
Fixed: Food items added by mods did not display the shelf life tooltip.
Fixed: Food items added by mods did not display a model when placed on a surface even when a 3D model was setup.
Fixed: Plants added by mods could not be interacted with.
Fixed: The shadow placement outline of some modded world objects was offset from the object when the prefab was not placed at the scene origin.
Fixed: World objects whose prefab had an empty occupancy size set could not be placed in the world, with no hint as to why that is being provided. They can now be placed as a 1x1x1 object and an error pointing at the prefab will be logged.
Fixed: UI controls bound to a mod's server-only view properties did nothing and logged an error instead of sending the value to the server.
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Hotfix 14.0.3 with the following changes:
Balance:
Changed: Cost of Crushed Mixed Rock for Asphalt and Concrete recipes was increased from 5 to 10.
Changed: Cost of Crushed Mixed Rock for Bloomery recipe was decreased from 20 to 10 and a cost of 10 Clay was added.
Changed: Salvage Materials for base rock was decreased from 1 to 0.25 Crushed Mixed Rock, reducing the large amount of stones generated.
Changed: Tailing inputs in their reprocessing recipes are now static and their Crushed Mixed Rock yield was decreased from 4 to 2.
Changed: Stack size in modern dumpsters was increased from 12 to 24.
Fixed: Aggregated module and talent bonuses incorrectly stacked additively instead of multiplicatively, allowing bonuses to near or even exceed 100%.
Fixed: Gathering Research Paper Advanced was missing the research tag.
Fixed: Salvage Materials of Bloomery incorrectly contained iron, allowing to create iron out of thin air.
Fixed: Sulfur Concrete was missing the Crushed Rock ingredient.
Removed: Crushed Mortared Stone recipes that were accidentially not removed before.
Gameplay:
Fixed: Appliances could get stuck in a state of permanently showing 0 electricity supply, despite supply being present.
Fixed: Cancelling or deleting a work order for items requiring a blueprint did not refund the blueprint.
Fixed: Occupancy of the Biowaste Sorter was incorrect, allowing roofs to clip through its top block. The information in its tooltip has been adjusted accordingly.
Improved: Garbage Pickup Bounties now allow to be picked up partially instead of rejecting the pickup when the destination storage doesn't have enough space or weight capacity.
Interaction:
Fixed: The player avatar could randomly get stuck on flat ground.
Fixed: The player avatar was sometimes unable to climb small, steep bumps.
Fixed: Movement speed was inconsistent depending on the direction the character was moving into and which way the camera was facing.
Fixed: Rubble mined by another player sometimes stayed visible without collision until leaving the area or reconnecting to the server.
Fixed: Under specific circumstances it was possible to place a waterwheel at bedrock, destroying the bedrock and leading to a server crash if water flowed through the hole into the void.
Fixed: Digging up the dirt block under a sapling could leave the dirt block occupied by an invisible entity, preventing interaction with it.
Tutorials:
Fixed: Tutorial progress could be lost or get stuck when disconnecting while a tutorial chapter was started but not yet fully completed.
Fixed: Furniture required to complete tutorial steps sometimes wasn't recognized when placed before the room was finished or just before the room updated.
Fixed: Some seeds didn't count towards the "Collect seeds" and "Plant seeds" steps of the "Start a Garden" tutorial.
UI:
Fixed: Workbench tooltips displayed the benefits of installed modules even when they were disabled.
Fixed: "Display Object" checkboxes in the minimap settings could display the text "Show Objects" for every category instead of the respective category name.
Fixed: The "Vehicles" toggle in the minimap settings didn't hide vehicle icons when off.
Fixed: Chinese, Korean and Japanese texts weren't displayed in some places of the UI.
Improved: The voice chat overlay now uses in-game player names, preventing an issue that led to no or wrong names being displayed.
Miscellaneous:
Fixed: Amphibious animals (Alligators, Crabs, Otters) drowned in water two blocks deep or deeper.
Fixed: The new singleplayer setting wasn't selectable when the target player count was set to 1, it is now the default when doing so.
Fixed: The "Cultural Phenomenon" achievement was unobtainable.
Fixed: Dinner party related achievements incorrectly counted attendence, especially for guests.
Fixed: The recycler was missing its animations.
Fixed: Flatbeds of trucks in worlds that were migrated from Update 13 weren't displaying their contents.
Fixed: A server crash that could occur when migrating a world from Update 12 or earlier to Update 13 or later.
Improved: Crafting tables and Currency Exchanges now allow to select the bank account with which fees should be paid with respectively with which an exchange should be conducted with.
Improved: Empty Primitive Bins now look visually empty.
Improved: The "Drop or Pickup Garbage" trigger now has a selector that allows choosing what item has been dropped or picked up.
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Hotfix 14.0.2 with the following changes:
Balance:
Changed: Yield for Composite Lumber, Flat Steel and Framed Glass was increased by 2.
Changed: Yield for Ashlar Stone was increased by 1.
Fixed: Some tables incorrectly required a Smelting Basic Upgrade instead of the Smelting Upgrade.
Fixed: Upgrade modules had no weight.
Gameplay:
Fixed: When cancelling a craft order that used items with a durability value of 200 due to talent, the refund of those items into a stockpile would turn all items it stacked with into "broken" state.
Fixed: A problem where a deed owned by a title couldn't be edited by its title holders until the server was restarted.
Fixed: Picked up objects kept the previous owner's bank account settings when placed down by another player.
UI:
Fixed: Recipes in a workstation were not clickable when the list was currently filtered due to a search.
Fixed: Currency, Settlement and Store links in the Economy Viewer couldn't be clicked when the window was resized.
Fixed: The star cost in the skill ui could be different between the list on the left and the selected specialty on the right, with one of them showing a wrong value.
Fixed: Purchased items going into the carry slot would display "Unknown" as location for the notification.
Fixed: Some test data for modules remained, leading to some modules showing weird information like having a power requirement themselves.
Fixed: Decontaminants couldn't be linked in the chat.
Fixed: Opening an object with linked storages would show "This object has no nearby storage" while the list was loading. It now shows "Loading nearby storages..." instead.
Improved: Storage lists with many linked storages now load significantly faster.
Improved: Civic check results in tooltips are now displayed in an easier to read format, so that the results of negated checks are no longer confusing.
Miscellaneous:
Fixed: Migration to Update 14 wouldn't remove all modules from all tables as was intended.
Fixed: The new singleplayer setting didn't correctly apply character experience being granted when specialty experience was gained.
Fixed: Painted blocks would sometimes show misplaced colors.
Fixed: Supporter bundles would be granted a second time when the server language was changed after the player had already joined the server.
Fixed: A race condition that would lead to a server crash.
Fixed: The shelf life multiplier being changed in the server ui didn't immediately reflect in the game.
Improved: The new singleplayer setting now sets the costs for all specialties to a single star.
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Hotfix 14.0.1 with the following changes:
Fixed: Players that had a world marker referencing a crafting order that was removed on world migration due to the recipe no longer existing couldn't join that world anymore.
Fixed: Resizing the Economy Viewer UI completely changed the displayed results.
Improved: Increased quality of the new main menu background.
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Maintenance Update 13.0.4 with the following changes:
Localization:
We have given Eco's localization system some long needed updates. All language files were converted from CSV into XLIFF 1.2 format and the main game language file that contained translations into all available languages was split into separate files per language. The translation files were updated with all missing strings and obsolete strings have been removed from them. Translations can now be edited by the community again through our new localization portal.
Added: Updated translations for French, German, Japanese and Russian.
Fixed: Chat commands sometimes didn't work when the language wasn't set to english.
Improved: The language selector now displays a yellow respectively red warning when the translation status of a language is below 80 respectively 60 percent.
Gameplay:
Fixed: The fishing trawler was unable to catch fish in low-density water.
Fixed: Pump jacks could not produce oil related products quicker than every three minutes. The new minimum time is 18 seconds, compared to 30 seconds before the introduction of this bug.
UI:
Fixed: The crafting time displayed for oil related products in the pump jack was not accurate.
Fixed: Resource cost increases caused by talents were displayed in green text instead of red text.
Fixed: A number of issues where color codes didn't close correctly on their own, leading to colors bleeding into UI text that should not be affected by user-generated formatting.
Improved: The text in the confirmation popup that appears when abandoning a specialty now makes more clear that no experience is refunded when the respective server setting is configured accordingly.
Miscellaneous:
Fixed: The avatar creation and editing screen didn't show any assets for selection.
Fixed: An issue with the room cache that could lead to rooms not being recognized as valid after a server restart.
Fixed: An issue where rooms attached to other rooms with a shared wall could become wrongly recognized as outdoors after a server restart when the setting EmptyBlocksCountAsWindows is set to true.
Fixed: The server would crash when a rent with a calculation loop was setup.
Fixed: The camera calibration in the settings menu was missing the new "scan for cameras" button.
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Maintenance Update 13.0.3 with the following changes:
Balance:
Changed: Bannock output was increased to 2.
Changed: Ingredient cost for outdoor furniture was reduced from 20 to 12 plastic.
Fixed: Static recipes were erroneously affected by resource cost reductions from talents.
Fixed: Long Lumber Shelves incorrectly used the Composite Lumber tag.
Fixed: Composite shelves incorrectly used the Lumber tag for some combinations.
Fixed: Processed Fish Oil didn't get unlocked by the Omega 3 talent.
Civics:
Fixed: The trigger "On tree felled" did not fire when the talent "Logger's Luck" triggered.
Gameplay:
Fixed: When the "Lucky Logger" talent was chosen, trees could disappear while being cut with the scorpion.
Fixed: Trees that were cut by a vehicle could visually reappear after a server restart, but be uninteractable due not actually existing on the server.
Fixed: When abandoning a specialty, any talents chosen for it were not reset and prevented from being leveled up when relearning the specialty.
Interaction:
Fixed: Free placement didn't work on thin-bottom floors.
Fixed: Doors that were picked up could sometimes not be placed in the same location again or didn't count as doors anymore when doing so.
Fixed: In some edge cases the shadow preview in free placement mode showed a red outline despite the object could nontheless be placed at that location.
Improved: Cottom Streamers are now easier to place.
UI:
Added: Talents now show an overlay with their star cost in the talent selection menu.
Added: Talents now have colored borders signalling their effects. Talents only providing benefits are marked with a yellow border, talents providing benefits and drawbacks are marked with a orange border and talents that can be upgraded are marked with a brown-ish border.
Fixed: Work parties for recipes that require multiple different tags as ingredients visually merged all required tags into the first listed tag. For example, if a recipe required 30 Basic Research, 10 Advanced Research and 10 Modern Research a work party for it would display it requiring 50 Basic Research.
Fixed: Notifications for sold paintings showed the picture frame as icon instead of the picture.
Fixed: Formatting for rotten items in the room details tooltip was incorrect.
Fixed: The star amount display on the skill button and in the skill ui overflowed when too many stars were available.
Fixed: The description for the Robotic Assistance talent erroneously stated that the talent would be upgradable.
Fixed: Recipes that are unlocked by a talent erroneously displayed a second talent requirement in their tooltips.
Fixed: Unclosed formatting codes in store names no longer cause the formatting to bleed into text located after the store name in tooltips.
Improved: Hovering the "Talent Choice" icon for a specialty in the skill ui now displays all possible choices in the tooltip.
Improved: Talents that can be upgraded now show their level in the player tooltip.
Miscellaneous:
Changed: In the avatar creation screen, cameras now need to be actively searched for to prevent crashes caused by incompatible third party software.
Fixed: Long Lumber Shelves and Shelf Cabinet were displayed in the wrong Ecopedia category.
Fixed: Marketplace purchases could trigger more than one notification.
Server & Configs:
Fixed: A number of potential causes for server crashes.
Fixed: During world generation it was possible that the deep ocean layer extended too far to the beach, preventing building on some beaches when the respective setting is enabled.
Improved: Added support for Debian 13 (thanks to @superbjorn09) and Ubuntu 26.04 to the linux installation script.
Features.eco.template
Added: "AllowMultipleTalentPicks" config variable determining if multiple different talents from the same level can be taken - defaults to "false".
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Hotfix 13.0.2 to address an issue with the construction of blocks, thanks for reporting!
Fixed: Building with blocks taken from a stockpile could sometimes fail with a "Block type mismatch" error.
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Hotfix 13.0.1 with the following changes:
Balance:
Changed: Transmission Pole recipe ingredients were reduced by 2 Iron Bars and 4 Copper Wiring and increased by 1 Basic Circuit.
Changed: Waste Filter recipe ingredients were reduced by 4 Steel Bars and increased by 4 Basic Circuits.
Changed: Oil Refinery recipe ingredients were reduced by 4 Iron Pipes and increased by 4 Basic Circuits.
Changed: Pump Jack recipe ingredients were reduced by 2 Pistons and increased by 2 Basic Circuits.
Changed: Electric Machinist Table recipe ingredients were reduced by 4 Steel Bars and increased by 4 Basic Circuits.
Changed: Electric Machinist Table, Oil Refinery and Pump Jack now require Basic Circuits as maintenance parts.
Changed: Wool Yarn recipe ingredients were reduced by 1 Shorn Wool.
Fixed: Crafting an Electronics Assembly required plastic as an ingredient.
Fixed: Fish Stew wasn't affected by the Stew Gourmand talent.
Civics:
Fixed: Deconstructing multiple blocks at once with the hammer did not fire the "Construct or Deconstruct" trigger.
Improved: Settlements now also have jurisdiction for the "Reputation Transfer" trigger when the target of the reputation is a deed or picture within the influence of the settlement. Priorly, settlements only had jurisdiction for reputation granted by their citizens.
Gameplay:
Fixed: The "Focused Workflow" talent was only visually reducing craft time.
Fixed: Talents that alter the power consumption of a work table could erroneously do so multiple times.
Fixed: The "Natural Fibers" and "Modern Materials" talents were erroneously providing resource cost reduction for all Tailoring recipes instead of the intended craft time reduction.
Fixed: The "Concrete Applications" and "Set in Stone" talents were accidentially switched in their progression position.
Fixed: The talent descriptions of "Logger's Luck" and "Bright Applications" were inaccurate.
Fixed: Passive outdoor decorations like fountains and statues failed to register as outdoor furniture, unless they were picked up and placed again after initial placement or an active decoration was placed nearby.
Fixed: Positions above the topmost solid block were not recognized as outdoor room, preventing open-air and rooftop decorations to count towards the outdoor room.
Fixed: Daisy, Lupine, Tulip and Rose were not affected by gathering level.
Improved: Flowers now have the "Petals" tag.
Interaction:
Fixed: An exploit allowing to multi-place a structure with the hammer despite not having sufficient materials to do so.
Fixed: An issue that could cause the hammer to lose the ability to multi-deconstruct blocks.
Fixed: When attempting to fell a tree that cannot be felled due to a law with a wood cutting machine no error message was displayed and the wood cutting machine could get stuck in its animation.
Fixed: When using the claim tool instead of the map edit mode, a deed created by a claim stake from a parent settlement but located in a child settlement could not be expanded with claim papers of the parent settlement.
Improved: Pipes now support multi-placement with the hammer.
Improved: The form selection when holding a hammer no longer automatically adjusts based on the amount of blocks currently held but instead remembers the last selection of the player.
UI:
Added: Hovering the star cost of a specialty now shows a tooltip providing an explanatory breakdown of the cost.
Fixed: Specialties that weren't yet unlocked by reading their skill scroll displayed a wrong star cost when the config variable "CostPerAdditionalSpecialty" was set.
Fixed: After sorting an inventory or moving items from or to it with hotkeys it was possible for an inventory slot in that inventory to display a wrong item that cannot be interacted with.
Fixed: When opening more than one container in the void storage without closing the void storage window in between, all containers opened after the first would display white tiles instead of the contained items.
Fixed: When moving a broken item, its red highlight could disappear.
Fixed: When moving an item with a durability bar, the bar could blink.
Improved: While deconstructing multiple blocks with the hammer, error messages (like the amount of blocks to be removed exceeding the space in the carry slot) are now displayed dynamically on screen, removing the necessity to attempt the deconstruction to be made aware of a problem.
Improved: The form selection menu for the hammer no longer displays the block form indicator when holding no block or a block that doesn't have block forms.
Miscellaneous:
Fixed: The wood cutting attachment for the Steam tractor could produce logs that cannot be picked up due to being too large.
Fixed: Steam tractors could "wobble" when cutting trees with the wood cutting attachment.
Improved: Non-refundable specialties added by mods no longer increase the additional cost per specialty when the config variable "CostPerAdditionalSpecialty" is set.
Server & Configs:
Fixed: World migrations triggered by a change in mods could lead to corruption of the savegame, preventing the server to boot after its next restart. Servers affected by this issue unfortunately need to restore a backup from before the world migration, as the save corruption is irrecoverable.
Improved: Servers using a localization other than english will no longer fail to boot with an error when a custom ecopedia file is present, but no translation file for it. (Thanks to @bushusuperstar)
Balance.eco.template
Changed: "RetroactiveExperienceRate" config variable now defaults to 12, providing a player that joins after the start of the server an amount of experience equivalent to the experience they would have gained if they had joined at server start and not had either food or housing bonus since then.
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Maintenance Update 12.0.7 with the following changes:
Civics:
Fixed: Elections that failed due to not having enough voters still displayed the player with most votes as winner.
Fixed: An issue that could lead to lower-level settlements influencing a deed despite the option to block such influence being set.
Fixed: The trigger "Drop Or Pickup Garbage" already triggered when opening a garbage bag, instead of only when something was added to or taken from it.
Gameplay:
Added: A mechanic that reduces the housing score of rooms affected by ground pollution.
Fixed: Ornate Iron Frame Wide was not affected by diminished returns.
Fixed: The "Lavish Workspace: Oil Drilling" talent didn't apply to Polishing Paste.
Fixed: The "Lavish Workspace" talents didn't apply to vehicles.
Fixed: The "Power Shot: Hunting" talent didn't work.
Interaction:
Fixed: An issue that led to manually unlinked storage objects and vehicles automatically getting linked to stores again.
Fixed: Outpost netting could not be placed on ceilings.
Fixed: Ceiling objects showed a red highlight in free placement mode despite the placement being valid.
Fixed: An issue with boat placement that could lead to them being placed too high or too low depending on if free or grid placement is used.
Fixed: Food animations could break when eating while sitting in a boat.
Fixed: A ghost block could persist after reconnecting while shadow placement was active.
Fixed: When exiting a seat on a boat and then mounting a different seat, the avatar would be teleported back into the seat they originally sat on.
Fixed: Explosions could cause blocks to enter the space occupied by world objects.
Improved: The Ecko statue can be mounted again.
Improved: Vehicles authorized to "Everyone" do no longer automatically link to stores.
Improved: Storage objects outside of deeds do no longer automatically link to stores.
UI:
Fixed: For recipes with a large amount of ingredients, module reduction notices could overflow into the recipe list.
Fixed: In some cases the text on the credit and status tabs could overflow the boundaries of the UI.
Fixed: Players talking in voice chat were displayed with their Steam ID instead of their username.
Fixed: In some cases the economy viewer and tooltips showed a wrong distance to a store.
Fixed: Trying to pick up an animal carcass while the inventory was full didn't display an error, despite failing.
Fixed: Trying to leave a work party when already having contributed didn't display an error, despite failing.
Fixed: The lumber stockpiles didn't show their occupancy in their tooltips.
Improved: Clarified the exhaustion tooltip in regard to saving playtime for later use.
Improved: Reworked all mentions of tool integrity to better describe how it works.
Miscellaneous:
Added: A new tutorial explaining dinner parties, appearing after the "Furnish House" tutorial.
Added: An "Other Volume" audio slider to control the volume of unity sounds, for example from mods.
Fixed: An issue that could lead to a player being disconnected from the server when an animal died.
Fixed: An issue that could lead to some objects no longer being rendered until reconnecting to the server.
Fixed: An issue that could lead to blocks rendering wrongly, being displayed as a pink block.
Fixed: An issue that in rare cases could lead to UPnP failure.
Fixed: Lumber ladders didn't visually change when painted.
Fixed: Low maintenance smoke effects weren't visible on trucks that have items stored inside them.
Fixed: An issue that prevented modders from hiding biome layers in the map.
Improved: When players are invited to residency multiple times due to them for example being part of multiple invited titles, they will now only receive a single invite notification.
Improved: Implemented stability improvements for the Avatar customization flow.
Server & Configs:
Fixed: An issue that could lead to ClimateState data becoming corrupted and reset on world generation.
Fixed: Servers that have invalid formatting (e.g. spaces) in the setting for the config variable "Playtime" would display an empty server description UI with a greyed out join button.
Fixed: The Craft Resource Multiplier for the High Collaboration preset was incorrectly set to "0.7" instead of "1.0".
Fixed: The position of invisible players wasn't hidden in tooltips.
Improved: The profanity filter no longer applies to admin and developer commands.
Improved: Several stability improvements for the LiteDB implementation.
Balance.eco.template
Removed: "SkillGainMultiplier" config variable due to not providing sufficient capability for balancing, please switch to and use "SkillCostMultiplier" in Difficulty.eco instead.
InitialSpawn.eco.template
Changed: Configuration file and template renamed from "Initial Spawn" to "InitialSpawn" - please make sure to rename your local configuration file.
Added: "AdditionalSpawnPoints" config variable, allowing to setup custom spawn points as an array with the properties "Enabled", "Position", "Name", "Description", "Color" and "Priority".
Added: "DisplayOnlyAdditionalSpawnPoints" config variable, determining if only the configured additional spawn points should be displayed and selectable - defaults to "false".
Rooms.eco.template
Added: "PaintedBlockTierBonus" config variable, determining by how much the tier of a room increases when every block belonging to it is painted - defaults to "0". The increase of tier happens in a curve - the more blocks are painted, the more the tier increases towards the maximum value configured here.
Added: "PaintedBlockHousingBonus" config variable, determining by how much percent the housing score of a room increases when every block belonging to it is painted - defaults to "0.2", equalling 20%. The increase of housing score happens in a curve - the more blocks are painted, the more the housing score increases towards the maximum value configured here.
Added: A new category "PollutionPenalty" that contains the settings following below, allowing to reduce the housing score of rooms that are affected by ground pollution.
Added: "Enable" config variable, determining if the housing score of rooms affected by ground pollution should be reduced by a housing score reduction curve - defaults to "false", but is planned to be enabled by default in a future update.
Added: "PollutionValueWherePenaltyStarts" config variable, determining the average ground pollution value of a room at which its housing score starts to get reduced - defaults to "0.2".
Added: "PollutionValueWherePenaltyStopsIncreasing" config variable, determining the average ground pollution value of a room at which the reduction of its housing score reaches the maximum - defaults to "2.0".
Added: "MinPenaltyPercent" config variable, determining the minimum reduction of housing score in percent - defaults to "0.0", equalling 0%. This is the start value of the housing score reduction curve.
Added: "MaxPenaltyPercent" config variable, determining the maximum reduction of housing score in percent - defaults to "0.25", equalling 25%. This is the end value of the housing score reduction curve.
Added: "PenaltyScalingMode" config variable, determining by what method the housing score reduction curve is calculated in relation to the ground pollution value - accepts "Linear" (Constant increase), "Exponential" (Slow increase at the start, fast increase towards the end), "Logarithmic" (Fast increase at the start, slow increase towards the end) and "DoubleSigmoid" (Fast increase at the start and towards the end, but smooth in the middle) and defaults to "Linear".
Users.eco.template
Added: "HidePlayerPositionInTooltip" config variable, determining if positions of players should be hidden in tooltips - defaults to "false".
Added: "HidePlayerPositionInMinimap" config variable, determining if player markers should be hidden in the minimap - defaults to "false".
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Hotfix 12.0.6 with the following changes:
Changed: Items no longer as a preventive measure get automatically reset to 100% durability on server restarts when their durability is higher due to some mods making purposeful use of items with higher durability than 100%.
Fixed: Objects placed against walls in grid placement mode were frequently not recognized as valid.
Fixed: An unfinished rebalance of culture calculation was accidentially already enabled, leading to cultural deeds with low-rated pictures and high-rated architecture to not yield relevant culture anymore, while deeds without pictures were not affected.
Hey Citizens,
we have just released Maintenance Update 12.0.5 with the following changes:
Animals:
Fixed: Elks frequently attacked the player after being fed.
Fixed: Animals could fall through the world when killed, not providing a carcass.
Improved: Animations and movement of fish has been improved.
Civics:
Fixed: It was possible to leave a work party despite already having contributed to it.
Fixed: Holders of an elected title were not reliably removed from the title when they were no longer eligible to hold it due to losing membership in a required demographic.
Improved: Settlements that increase their influence to cover a deed bound to a claim stake of a higher-level settlement they are member of will now gain jurisdiction over it and lose it again when the influence no longer covers the deed.
Gameplay:
Changed: Slightly increased yield of the fishing trawler.
Fixed: The "Lavish Workspace: Tailoring" talent didn't apply to clothes.
Fixed: Painting blocks didn't reliably update the tier value of the room.
Fixed: Bathrooms wrongly considered the Outdoor room as a main room when it comes to their 33% limitation for purposes of the calculation of cultural property value.
Fixed: An issue that led to disabled objects in a room to nontheless provide housing points.
Interaction:
Changed: Players that are authorized on an object can now place objects on its surface and also interact with any objects placed on it.
Fixed: Eating while sitting in a vehicle could lead to the avatars' hands getting stuck holding nothing.
Fixed: Maintenance items could be stacked by consolidating in a storage, potentially resulting in them having more than 100% durability and hence being impossible to sell.
UI:
Fixed: When using specific resolutions it wasn't possible to scroll to the end of some Ecopedia pages.
Fixed: Control hints for shadow placement present in the background of an UI affected the cursor within that UI.
Fixed: The player direction arrow on the map now correctly displays the direction the player moves in, even when the player is sitting in a sideway seat of a boat.
Vehicles:
Fixed: The elevation of the barges was too high.
Fixed: Canoes could become lopsided when driving.
Fixed: The industrial barge could be turned by running into its railings.
Fixed: Barges could sink or get stuck in air when its ramps were open while a chunk reload occured.
Fixed: Truck wheels could visually sink into the ground after dismounting the vehicle.
Miscellaneous:
Fixed: An issue that could potentially lead to players being unable to interact with the world after retrieving an item from the void storage.
Fixed: Elks didn't display their christmas decoration despite the holiday being active.
Server:
Fixed: An issue that could lead to the server getting stuck on "Loading ClimateState" when booting.
Fixed: It was possible to place objects above the configured maximum placement height.
Fixed: It was possible to reduce the configured maximum placement height below a priorly configured value, despite that is not supported and causes a multitude of issues.
Thank you for your support! We wish you happy holidays and great start into 2026!
Latest on Steam
SteamDBBuild info restricted by publisher
Last Steam update Jun 03, 2026 — check SteamDB
Current Release
Build v0.11.1.8
Uploaded Jul 04, 2025
System Requirements
How to Install
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
Needed when extracting (WinRAR / 7-Zip) — not a site login.
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