Foundations, focus, and what comes next
Summary
- Space Engineers 2: VS2 proved survival and colonization direction.
- Space Engineers 1 kept evolving; we’ll keep supporting it.
- Prometheus drones: prototypes ready, pilots starting.
- Steam revenue grew roughly 50% year-over-year.
- 2026: deepen SE2, mature Prometheus, restart AI NPCs.
Theme of the year
For me, 2025 was about foundations.
We turned Space Engineers 2 (SE2) from a prototype into something people can actually play, we pushed our drone project (Prometheus) into reality, improved the effectiveness of all teams, and started merging Keen and GoodAI structures.
2026 should be about depth and proof.
Less “setting the stage”, more “this is clearly fun, useful, and working in the real world”.
2025 – Five things that mattered most
1. Space Engineers 2: VS1, VS2, and a clear signal
In 2025 we shipped:
- VS1 – Creative Mode with several smaller follow-ups (VS1.2, VS1.3, VS1.5, including modding support).
- VS2 – Planets & Survival Foundations.
VS2 is the one that really changed things.
In the first week after VS2:
- Around 62,000 unique players jumped into SE2. Most were SE veterans, but we also saw thousands of lower-experience SE1 players and people completely new to SE.
- Peak concurrent players on Steam reached about 6,500 on release day.
- Average game session time jumped to roughly 50 minutes, and world session time to about 25 minutes – both were around 8 minutes before VS2.
- About 55% of people who started the FTUE finished it, and around half of players completed at least one contract.
- For newcomers, day-one retention was around 40%, with a reasonable tail into day 7 and beyond.
Numbers are nice, but the feeling is more important.
Before VS2, SE2 showed only glimpses of what we want to bring (creative mode, 25cm unified grid, projection building, blueprints). With VS2 we finally saw people staying in the world, playing, and coming back the next day. It was a relief. It also clearly confirmed what many of you were telling us:
Building is great, but you also want survival, progression, and colonization.
That will guide SE2 in 2026.
2. Space Engineers 1: Still alive, still supported
SE1 is more than 12 years old now, but it’s still very much alive.
Over the past updates, we’ve reworked nearly every aspect of PvE: Prototech, Factorum global encounters and planetary encounters in Contact, Cargo Ships and Unknown Signals in Fieldwork, and most recently, Hazards and Space Encounters in Apex Survival.
The last major piece of that PvE puzzle is coming in the 209 update – Economy stations and missions. This next step will expand the universe with new opportunities for exploration, trade, and progression.
We’re more motivated than ever to keep pushing the boundaries of what Space Engineers can offer. The future of the game is bright, and we can’t wait to share it with you.
SE1 stays the classic experience, while SE2 is where we push new tech, colonization, more intuitive UX and onboarding, story, water, and NPCs.
As Clowreed48 said: “Space Engineers is a game about engineering. SE2 is a game with engineering.”
3. GoodAI → Keen: one roadmap instead of two
For several years I was building GoodAI next to Keen.
In 2025 I decided to merge GoodAI into Keen.
The idea is simple:
take what worked best from GoodAI – research, tools, and people – and use it directly inside our games and our robotics projects.
Instead of two parallel paths, we now have one company and one roadmap, where AI research feeds straight into SE2, Prometheus, and future projects.
4. Prometheus and GoodAI Swarm Robotics: when drones become teammates
Prometheus is our long-term robotics project: autonomous drone swarms that work without a pilot, without GPS, and without a constant radio link.
https://www.goodai.com/swarm-robotics/
Each drone:
- Flies indoors and close to obstacles.
- Builds a 3D map / point cloud of the environment.
- Runs an LLM-based “brain” that understands natural-language goals and reasons about the mission.
- Returns to a briefcase-style dock to auto-charge so the system can run 24/7.
You don’t program waypoints; you say things like:
“Search the second floor and show me all heat sources and blocked exits.”
In 2025 we:
- Built an end-to-end Prometheus prototype (drones, dock, autonomy stack, LLM control).
- Got it flying in real buildings, mapping interiors and explaining what it sees on a live 3D map.
- Launched GoodAI Swarm Robotics / Prometheus publicly and started looking for a co-founder CEO and pilot partners.
We’re now moving from prototype to pilot projects.
The goal for the next phase is simple: find the first real situations where Prometheus is not just impressive, but clearly useful – for search and rescue, inspection, and security.
5. Strong Europe: why I wrote it, and why it matters
In 2025 I published my personal statement on Strong Europe.
It’s not a party-political thing. It’s my belief that Europe needs to stay sovereign, resilient, and technologically capable in the coming decade — especially in areas like energy, manufacturing, defense, and AI.
This connects directly to what I’m building: games that push engineering thinking, and robotics/AI projects like Prometheus that aim to become a real European capability, not just another dependency.
6. Culture, execution, and business results
On the people’s side, 2025 was about raising the bar.
We put much more emphasis on ownership, professionalism, and production effectiveness. Teams became better at finishing what they start, communicating clearly, and keeping the player and product in mind instead of just “closing tasks”. The result is simple: our output per person is higher than a year ago.
We also improved how we plan and execute: fewer distractions, clearer priorities, and more focus on shipping concrete value rather than circling around ideas forever.
On the business side, Steam revenue grew by roughly 50% year-over-year, mostly thanks to SE2.
For me, the most important part is that our trajectory feels strong and compounding. We’re not done, but our culture, standards, and momentum are clearly moving in the right direction.
2026 – Five priorities
1. SE2: deepen the game
The foundations are in VS2. Now we need depth.
The current plan:
- VS2.2 in Q1–Q2 2026, polishing and extending what VS2 started – new contract types, more variations of contracts, combat and weapons, rotors and pistons, weather, and many more.
- Then VS3 – Water, with planetary-scale volumetric water.
- Then VS4 – NPCs and Cooperative Multiplayer.
Design-wise, I want us to focus on:
- A satisfying colonization loop (progression, challenges, rewards).
- Combat and conflict that make sense in a world of engineering.
- More diverse, interesting contracts and scenarios.
- Making the world feel more alive, reactive, and worth returning to.
2. SE1: keep it alive and meaningful
SE1 will keep getting meaningful updates, not just maintenance.
Our goal for 1.209 is to bring the existing economy system up to the same modern standards as our recent NPC and PvE overhauls. The end result should be a unified, intuitive system that’s more engaging for players and easier to understand.
My view is that SE1 and SE2 can coexist:
- SE1 as the classic engineering playground.
- SE2 as the next step, with more systems, colonization, narrative, and NPCs.
3. Prometheus: from pilots to a real business
For Prometheus and GoodAI Swarm Robotics, 2026 is about proving it in the field:
- Run and evaluate our initial pilots.
- Decide which use-cases and industries we double down on.
- Find the right co-founder CEO to lead the company.
- Once we have clear product-market fit, start fundraising and scaling.
We want GoodAI Swarm Robotics to become Europe’s leader in intelligent drone swarms – a sovereign capability for SAR, defense logistics, and critical infrastructure. This tech will exist; the only question is who builds it, and where.
4. My personal focus: time and AI NPC experiments
One of my personal goals for 2026 is to organize my time better.
I want more protected blocks of time to:
- Think and design at a deeper level.
- Start new prototypes for AI NPCs – whether inside SE2 or as a smaller experimental game.
I still believe that AI NPCs with goals, memory, and personality are a big part of the future of games – and even simulations of synthetic civilizations – or a return to my ideas on multi-agent systems and memetic evolution. I don’t want to lose that thread, even if I had to park it for a while.
5. Team, culture, and execution
To make all of this real, the team and culture have to keep evolving.
For 2026, I want:
- A lean, high-ownership team, with more A-players in key roles.
- Clearer priorities and fewer side quests.
- Faster decision-making, less bureaucracy, and less tolerance for long-term mediocrity.
Big visions are worthless without execution. 2026 needs to be the year where we prove we can consistently ship, not just talk about what we could build.
What this means for you
If you’re an SE1 player
- SE1 is not going away.
- We’ll keep improving it and listening to feedback.
- SE1 remains the “classic” experience with years of content and mods.
If you’re an SE2 player
- VS1 and VS2 were just the start.
- 2026 will add water, NPCs, coop multiplayer, and a stronger colonization loop.
- Your feedback from VS1 and VS2 directly shapes what we focus on next.
If you followed AI People / GoodAI
- AI People and AI NPCs are paused, not cancelled.
- Short term: SE2 and Prometheus come first.
- Mid term: I plan to return to AI NPC experiments when we’re past the most critical SE2 and Prometheus milestones.
If you care about Prometheus / drones
- Prometheus is now moving into real pilot deployments, not just test environments.
- 2026 will decide how big this project becomes, based on results, CEO hire, and funding.
Community Highlights
I never expected music from Space Engineers 2 to be played in the Rudolfinum in the center of Prague – but here we are.
Huge thanks to our composer Karel Antonín and Filmová filharmonie.
I want to thank everyone who:
- Tried SE2 and sent us feedback (positive or negative).
- Kept building crazy things in SE1 and now SE2.
- Made videos, wrote guides, or just talked about the games with friends.
Seeing what you create is still the most satisfying part of doing this.
Personal note and how you can help
2025 reminded me that I can’t do everything at once.
I had to choose: put SE2 and Prometheus in front, simplify the structure, and accept that some cool ideas (like AI People) would have to wait.
I’m still refining the balance between vision and focus, but I’m clearly happier with our direction than I was a year ago.
If you want to help:
- As a player:
- As a potential colleague:
- If you think you’re an A-player in game development, AI systems, or robotics, and you want to work on these projects, you can reach out.
- As an industry partner:
- If you operate places where autonomous drones could be useful (mines, industrial sites, security, etc.), contact us about Prometheus pilots.
Thank you for sticking with us through all these experiments.
Let’s see what we can build together in 2026.
Space Engineers 2
We are always trying to automate the more mundane tasks in our workflow and make our development pipeline faster and more reliable. Tools like this help us spend less time on repetitive manual work and more time on actual game design and content.
Here we can see a sneak peek of our new Blender tool, which allows us to quickly generate fracture pieces for our blocks. This tool will help us speed up our workflow while maintaining consistent fracture quality across all block types.
Creating fractures is not a simple boolean operation. It requires several steps in geometry generation, material assignment, and clean mesh separation. In the video, you can see that every time the mesh is split along an edge, we generate an additional edge with the same material as the top layer.
The inner split uses a special damaged material with parallax mapping and shelf shadows, giving fractures more depth and a more believable broken look. This kind of automation saves a lot of time, especially as the number of blocks grows, and it lets us keep the visual quality high even when producing a large number of fracture variants.
VS3 – Byblos WIP
Planet Byblos will not be only a water world – it will be a world of fire and ice. The planet will push the survival experience in two extreme directions. On one side freezing temperatures and the cold depths beneath the waves. On the other side, volcanic activity that breaks the endless water surface, carving underwater channels and creating sharp, scattered islands all across the planet.
These contrasts make Byblos feel unpredictable. The meeting point of boiling heat and freezing water creates a world that is far more than just an ocean planet. It is a place shaped by constant tension between elements, with terrain that tells the story of eruptions, flows, collapses, and glacial erosion. And this is only the rough beginning of what we want to build on Byblos.
Question to you: How do you like the planet Byblos so far?
Share your thoughts in the comments below – I read them all, and they’re one of my favorite parts of making our games.
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Will there be tropical regions on Byblos? It would be cool to see dense jungles in SE2.
RE the jungle, probably not given Marek’s description of a half volcanic, half cold water world. It would be cool on verdure though.
I would like if the cloud coverage on byblos was thicker and storms were very frequent, would enhance the creepy/mysterious vibe I think they are going for. It would be the perfect place to introduce a horror aspect into SE2, which imo pairs very well with the sci-fi genre (flood from halo, protomolecule from expanse, deadspace, aliens etc).
I am very excited for NPCs, not just for ships and people, but for planets to feel alive with potentially their own ecosystems.
Imagine being able to take creatures from one world to another, or have some go extinct, or introduce a new species to a planet it didn’t originiate from, and see how it effects the ecosystem etc.
all just ideas, but I think it will really make worlds worth exploring.
I could see a “Space Zoo” being built, having one of every creature a player has found that they bring with them as they explore the universe, some big some small.
So fun to think about!
Please do not throw away years of good will by putting ai based NPCs in Space Engineers 2. I understand the desire to experiment with them but AI is widely unpopular with normal people so please keep it separate from the released part of SE2 (I don’t care if you experiment behind the scenes or use it for development) and keep it a pure experience.
I second this. For one, I don’t want SE2 to rely on having an internet connection and being connected to an API to function fully. Then there is the quality issue. Current AI tech just cannot make compelling characters, and any models that would be anywhere close to compelling would run up against the previously stated issue. Additionally, I would much prefer to see hand crafted characters – even if that means they can’t be as “dynamic”.
I’m overall not a fan of LLM based “AI”, but I would like to outline what I would be interested in seeing along those lines:
– Any in-game AI running locally on modest hardware
– Avoiding LLM AI for story character dialogue. You need the human touch for a human character.
– AI driven npc decision-making would be exciting to me if done correctly
– AI control blocks that expand on what SE1 has but “Just Work” so to speak with minimal setup, controlled with simple settings and maybe even a natural language prompt.
I don’t want to mindlessly reject AI being put into the game but it needs to be done thoughtfully and in a way that enhances the experience rather than tarnishing it in the eyes of many long time SE fans and newcomers alike.
I agree as well, we don’t need more AI slop.
love the game though! water is gonna be epic!
Byblos looks great.
Congrats on significant milestones in 2025 and I look forward to an exciting 2026 for your company and SE2 🙂
Let me know if you need any instructional writing doing. I also like to write a bit of fiction.
Happy New Year 🙂
While it does look like a resort planet, I am not really sure what to do there. Will there be a reason to vist for specific materials? Maybe specific new ores? A lot of planets are nice to look at but I don’t see reason to hang around them and waste time doing nothing.
Regarding the game, would there be a chance we get some cheaper foundation blocks for base building? I was having a lot of fun playing the current verticle slice with all the travel around planets. Roaming on a single was pretty fun and you gave us bases that are already set up or just need minor fixing.
When I am making my own base for the very first time, it costs a lot of plates/ iron, time and effort just to make a foundation. Because I want my containers, housing, refineries and such planned out for the start and be able to have proper shelter (I guess it’s a bit roleplay-ey but eh), I am kinda disuaded from that. At the same time, I am not sure how long I want to be on that planet so I am not judging “Do I really wanna base here or else where?”
It would be really nice if we had cheaper “armor blocks” that don’t cost 20 steel plate but maybe like ~ 3 to 5 that don’t actually provide real protection. Call them “foundation blocks” or whatever, but just so I can have a thing to plop down my buildings for, build it up fast and be protected.
Thank you.
Ideally, every planet would have unique resources that are hard to obtain and require learning a new gameplay loop.
Imagine how confused the dog is watching the Prometheus Drone! Please tell us more about weapons I beg of you! 🤤
Thank you for sharing your thoughts in so much detail, have a great new year.
For the drones.
Farmers have a need for autonomous eyes with memory, fences and gates need to be checked regularly. A rotten fence or a loose gate can be a problem with livestock. Locating animals after bad weather can be a problem too. Would suggest supplying drones to farmers as a two pack as breakages are common on the farm. Your drones would be useful to farmers that have become incapactated for what ever reason. It would help them to stop worrying when they could not do as much.
The first images look very nice, but the planet seems very flat. However, like everything else in the game, it’s beautiful. I think it would help to add some birds or fish as “fake decoration”—you can see them, but you can’t touch them.
You mentioned an underwater volcano; perhaps some smoke or bubbles rising from the bottom would be nice.
In my tests underwater or in games with aquatic planets, the sounds of animals and the creaking of structures make them an essential part of the decoration. I always play without music; I love listening.
Happy New Year, Marek, and to the whole Keen team.
Happy New Year !
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Regarding Byblos, Zer0’s Legion mentioned that there might be a water pressure mechanic added? That could be a unique engineering challenge specific to that planet.
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I was wondering, with the introduction of sectors into the game, will there be plans to introduce a dynamic economy into the game later on? Different sectors having different ores available creates opportunities for the player (either mining / trading independantly or through contracts). Of course such a system could be expanded on even more but I don’t want to write essays here. 😄
What I was thinking about recently what SE1 needs:
A) a good reason for the player to want to visit Byblos that isnt just a contract repair/fetch mission
B) interesting/different game/survival loop compared to building a base elsewhere – think factorio, space exploration is a success because it’s not just the same game on other planet, the planet is a whole new loop experience – wube clearly took hints from tech mods in minecraft and really polished a masterpiece
SE1 often suffered from not having particularly engaging reasons to do anything after getting enough resources to make all the blocks other than to make more bases and ships – prototech was a great idea but what about after you get all the prototech? what’s it for? SE doesnt just need a nether and an ender dragon, it needs a reason to choose this game every night.
As an example of an obscure game that really did progress well, Hazeron had the players build tiny rocket with old tech to get to the moon, using those resources to upgrade everything and unlock truly powerful spaceships, and that was just the beginning – progression really felt like it even if the game looked jank.
Would it be possible to get ice plates or icebergs in the arctic regions on byblos, or other planets in this case as well? Would make it great for arctic bases and titanic scenarios
So far Byblos has has good parts but it looks very empty. I think it needs something extra to make it interesting. The same is true for Kermik as well..
If I’d need to ideastorm for Byblos, I’d add volcanic eruptions that are at random time eject a gigantic blak cloud and throw debris around into the ocean that would damage ships and buildings as they crash.
I’d also add a few islands outside of this ashy thing, just tropical paradise, nice beaches, thick jungle with land POIs to explore.
If you wanted to make a water planet fantasy, you need more underwater caves, underwater POIs, larger underwater caves to explore and go down, perhaps another layer of under-ocean if you can make it, that has a few transition points next to perhaps some well recognizable areas.
For me the underwater fantasy ultimate is Subnautica 1. It started close to the surface, and you went deeper and deeper to find new biomes, and eventually in the pitch black water, the bioluminecent plants took over, eventually as you went further down you got into lava caves and geothermal vents etc. Underwater is great when you commit to it, you are not building a land map with a lot of water, you need to lean into underwater more. I’d say the current spit is 50:50 wate land from pictures, it should be 10:90 land:water with a lot of things underwater where you literally need to stay underwater for a long time, maybe transport oxigen from the surface, and have a full world underwater.
Was disappinted not to see fixing the physics a major goal for SE2. Being able to do all the creative, sometimes janky, things to get around a problem is what make SE1 unique. Really hoping we aren’t losing that in SE2. I really am hoping for SE2 and mot Empyrion 2.
The detail of the terrain looks good, but the zoomed out pics always look like huge mountains on small planets. How large are the planets. Also in the current version of SE2 it felt so easy to leave the planet. I’m not sure if that’s on purpose, but I would like it feel more substantial to launch all the way to space.
How soon do you think a mod will release enabling PvP after the release of “cooperative” multiplayer 🤣 May as well enable it as an optional experimental feature. Regardless, keep up the good work.