Sandbox space sim Starbase’s development has been almost non-existent for a year now

Why go to (virtual) outer space when you can send robots to handle all of the peril for you? That’s the thinking behind the quirky space sandbox Starbase, which went into early access all the way back in July of 2021. The $35 title hasn’t emerged from this state since then, and a recent check-up reveals a worrying slowdown of development.

In fact, Starbase hasn’t done much at all in the first five months of this year apart from a couple of events, some PvP activity, and a community starship showcase; there was a “cargo and capital” event this past weekend and a tiny patch this week to add a new rocket launcher and fix a ship deletion bug – its first in five months, according to players.

The community’s noticed the slowdown, too, as the team hasn’t done much to pump out new updates as of late. Back in April 2022, Starbase was put on the backburner, with the studio saying, “Starbase is still being developed, but development will be slower for a while as we focus on other ongoing projects (which have been in the works this entire time). We’re not abandoning the game.”

“Slower” went to “nearly non-existent” by last fall. When asked about when development will resume, the studio said in March that, “It will just take some time for us to get there.” And while that might be enough to appease the relatively large Discord of fans, we did note one lamenting this week that the game’s numbers are on the low side, “peak[ing] at 85 over weekends concurrent.”

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