

Early Access
Yes, last updated 2 days ago, averaging 4.1 updates a month.
Last checked Oct 21, 2026
The developer filed this on the Steam store page. It is not a guess by active.games.
Dead Reckoning is written, and designed by one person. I want to be precise about where AI tools do and don't appear in it. Creative content — no generative AI. All writing, narrative, and design is mine. I've worked as a technical writer for twelve years; the game's voice is my own. All art and visual assets are hand-made or licensed from named human artists. All music and sound effects are licensed from named human creators (public domain / Creative Commons) — none of it is AI-generated. This is a hard line and I intend to keep it. Development & release tooling — where AI assists. I use AI in the engineering and release pipeline only, never to author the game itself: - Coding assistance while writing the game's GDScript. - An automated QA/test harness that plays the simulation thousands of times to catch crashes and balance regressions. - Assistance in building linters (Valve YAML sheets) that check the project's text. - Drafting and summarizing the release notes (patch notes) from the project's changelog. None of this creates any of the writing, art, audio, or design inside the game. Localization. The four translations (German, French, Italian, Spanish) are machine-translated by DeepL from my English source, with automated guards that fall back to English wherever a translation would break. This is an accessibility vs. quality decision, and I decided on the former. Proper localizations are planned and will be contracted out if the budget allows.
Dead Reckoning: The Long Drift: 49 updates in the last 12 months, avg every 4 days. The chart covers 5 months from June 2026 to October 2026, including months with zero patch notes. Counts are dated patch and update posts, not branch builds. June 2026: 21, July 2026: 5, August 2026: 6, September 2026: 6, October 2026: 5.
| Month | Updates |
|---|---|
| June 2026 | 21 |
| July 2026 | 5 |
| August 2026 | 6 |
| September 2026 | 6 |
| October 2026 | 5 |
Oct 18, 2026 · Patch note
v0.6.24 — Survey reports and colony encounters
v0.6.24 — Survey reports and colony encounters New features Colony and Chronicle Twenty-one new colony cards from Victor Biancardine and Deniz Keleş cover care for elderly parents, occupied habs, crop damage, medical trials and other disputes on the ground. Their choices use actual people, buildings and stores. On eligible Chronicle worlds, request admissio…
Oct 18, 2026 · Build
Public branch build 26024522
Latest build time Steam reports for the public branch.
Oct 14, 2026 · Patch note
v0.6.23 — Stories on the ground
New features Colony Twenty new colony cards from the writing team: century events, a poisoned household, a contested grave, an adulterated ration, a homicide, a violent student, waste treatment and a child adapted to the planet. A thirteen-card expedition storyline. A story the colony has already started now takes the year's slot before a random event, so i…
Oct 14, 2026 · Build
experimental branch build 25936551
Latest build time Steam reports for the experimental branch.
Oct 7, 2026 · Patch note
v0.6.20 — Single-player and stability hotfix
v0.6.20 — Single-player and stability hotfix I mistakenly put the Council-only build on Steam's default branch. It blocked normal solo play and opened the separate Council profile, where existing solo saves and voyage archives did not appear. I'm sorry. This hotfix restores the normal solo launch and its original save location. It also reduces pauses in lon…
Dead Reckoning: The Long Drift last posted a patch note 2 days ago (Oct 18, 2026: v0.6.24 — Survey reports and colony encounters).
Dead Reckoning: The Long Drift averaged 4.1 updates a month over the last year. Dead Reckoning: The Long Drift is irregular (42/100). 7 of the last 12 months had at least one update day. Gaps between updates are uneven.
No. Dead Reckoning: The Long Drift shipped a build or patch note within the last 90 days.