Key facts
- Cheapest right now
- € Standard · Steam Account · Global · G2A
- Live offers
- 30 offers · 13 stores
- Our pick
- Standard · Steam Key · Global · Difmark Digital Keys — €
Want to see more from Gocdkeys on Google?
You need to be signed in to your Google account.
Factorio 2.1 went stable on 23 October. Wube announced it in Friday Facts #449 after a summer in the experimental branch, which it had joined on 26 June. There won't be another one like it: back in June the studio said 2.1 would be Factorio's final big content update, and that from now on it will only ship fixes, compatibility work and mod support. You won't find new planets, enemies or tech trees in it. What it does is polish the base game and, above all, the space side of Space Age.
Like every Factorio update, it's free if you already own the game. Space Age, the paid expansion released two years ago on 21 October, is still sold separately and needs the base game. Now that the content is final, if you're still on the fence there's only one thing left to decide: is the base game enough, or should you get both?
What everyone gets in 2.1
Going by the patch notes, none of this depends on the expansion:
- Circuits. Wires show separate colours for input and output, labs can pick their research from a signal, boilers and heat exchangers can be wired to the network, and landmines can work as tripwires.
- Building. Pumpjacks and burner mining drills can be flipped, belts show lane arrows, and the protection against mixing fluids is back.
- Biters. Their expansions now scale with evolution.
- Graphics and ARM. Assemblers, the oil refinery, the rocket silo and the heat exchanger have new art, and there's a native Linux ARM64 build.
What only Space Age players will notice
Most of the update is about space platforms. Rockets can carry mixed cargo, platforms get "Import from any", they can pass cargo straight to each other, hub requests can be set by circuit, and radar has a universe mode. Asteroid damage now depends on how much health the rock has left, the hub is tougher, and drag scales with the platform's mass. Back on the ground, the landing pad gets an unloading bay that inserters can empty.
Two changes involve Quality, which comes with the expansion. You can now play Space Age with Quality switched off, and locomotives and wagons can have quality as well. If you bought Space Age and never warmed to Quality, the first one is for you.
Before you update an old save
Saves from 2.0 load in 2.1, but some builds, circuit setups especially, may stop working, and you can't go back to 2.0 afterwards. Make a backup first. Some mods haven't caught up yet either, so if you play with a big mod pack, check that it's been updated.
What each option costs today
Wube doesn't discount Factorio on Steam, so the €32.00 it costs there (no fees) won't come down in a seasonal sale. Space Age is also €32.00 (no fees). Keys are where you save:
| What you buy | Steam (no fees) | Cheapest key today |
|---|---|---|
| Factorio | €32.00 | Difmark Digital Keys, Steam Key: €16.67 with the Gocdkeys coupon (€17.42 with fees) |
| Space Age | €32.00 | K4G, Steam Key: €23.77 with GCDK14DEAL (€26.19 with fees) |
| Both | €64.00 | €43.61 with fees |
The base game key comes in at a little over half the Steam price. Next up is K4G at €22.86 with GCDK14DEAL (€25.20 with fees). At the top of the offers you'll also see something much cheaper: a Steam account at G2A for €5.22 with the GCKG2AM4E7H coupon (€5.51 with fees). An account isn't a key. You get the login for someone else's Steam account that already has the game, so it never lands in your own library, and a Space Age key you activate on your account is no use without the base game on it. We'd take the Difmark key.
For Space Age, today's K4G key is a first. In 185 days of tracking, the cheapest key we'd seen was €23.99 on 24 July (historical figures don't include fees). Difmark also has a Space Age account at €15.53 with the Gocdkeys coupon (€16.23 with fees), with the same catch. If you'd rather have the DRM-free GOG version, its key is €35.71 (no fees), which is more than Steam.
Base game first, or both at once?
Factorio has 187,219 positive Steam reviews out of 193,009 (97%, Overwhelmingly Positive). If you've never played it, start with the base game. The key is €17.42 with fees and it already includes everything 2.1 does for circuits, belts and fluids. Space Age can wait: Steam won't put it on sale, so holding off doesn't mean missing a discount there.
If you've already launched your first rocket and want more, the two keys together come to €43.61 with fees, €20.39 less than on Steam, and the expansion has never been this cheap in our records. You can buy Factorio key and add Space Age from its own page, or set a price alert for Space Age if you think it could drop further.
On Switch and Switch 2 we only see accounts, no keys, so we're not recommending any.
Prices checked on the morning of 25 October.
Buying guides and price comparisons written alongside live prices from the stores verified by GOCDKEYS.
Italiano
English
Español
Português
Deutsch
Français