Why we can't give feature release dates

We get the same question everyday: "When will feature X be released"

We would love to tell you when, but we don’t know ourselves.

Here are some of our todo lists:

• We constantly look at our player suggestions list and build as much as we can.
• We also have another request list from our community pros, youtubers, and tournament organizers.
  

We want to complete all of them, today if possible. However a lot of these features require a tremendous amount of work to complete and we have to prioritize.

Being completely independent has its advantages in this regard. Unlike other games, our roadmap is not pressured by any external parties. This independence gives us the opportunity to prioritize features based on how much players want them.

However, in addition to all of the suggestions, we frequently get new problems that throw our plans out the door. Here is a list of examples:

• Last game update had bugs that need to be handled
• Servers are getting overflow of users
• An infrastructure system changes something, breaking it’s functionality
• A business partner or dependency requests an urgent time consuming change
• Google Chrome changes something and breaks half of all games
• Feature requires review from another overloaded developer
• Feature needs review from play testers
• Boring things to do about business, operations, finance
• Problems with communication and community
• Looking for new team members
• Integrating and training new team members
• Making sure online tournaments run smoothly
• Underlying code needs to be refactored and improved
• The update wasn't as good as we thought and now it needs to be redesigned
  

There are many more, but you get the point :)

When you factor in all of these possible setbacks, it is surprising how we manage to release anything at all. The amount and frequency of these problems only increase more and more as we scale the game. We have to delicately balance maintaining and improving Colonist as priorities shift everyday.

This is why we can’t tell when your most wanted feature will be released. We don’t know when it will be released, and if we gave any estimate we’d be lying. The last thing we want to do is set up false expectations.

The best we can do is give a priority roadmap.

We can’t solve the estimation problem, but we can increase improvements per game update. The best way for us to improve Colonist faster is to get more people involved.

If you want us to actively help us improve Colonist:

1. We’ll be hiring more people
2. We’ll be adding new contributors

While we can't tell you when a feature will be released, what we can tell you is this. Our already powerful development team will become even stronger as more people come on board. Before you know it, we will bring boats, fog, metropolises, knights, and much more to each and every one of you. Thank you all for waiting patiently, and stay tuned for many exciting things to come.

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