Building and automation game fans have likely heard ofSatisfactory, Coffee Stain Studios' Early Access project that has garnered over three million sales since March 2019. While not as huge an online sensation as the developer’s previous game,Goat Simulator,Satisfactoryhas certainly left enough of a mark to keep many coming back to grow their factories with various new mechanics in each big update; from fluid pipelines to improved cosmetic decor.
Game Rant spoke to Coffee Stain Studios CEO Stefan Hanna about his history with the developer, and where he seesSatisfactorygoing after its huge sales milestone. Interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Q: What were you doing leading up to your time at Coffee Stain, and how did that venture get started?
A: Yeah, we can do a way-back-when thing. The road to Coffee Stain started at University of Skovde inSweden. That’s where me and the other eight people who founded Coffee Stain met, we all had different disciplines in this game program.
After three years there, we immediately started Coffee Stain through the help of an incubator. We were fortunate to have some good luck early to find funding and release our first game,Sanctum. For us, it was a big hit that let us continue developing. We made a sequel for that game, and it was a moderate success as well, which led us toGoat Simulator: our big break in the industry, our 15 minutes in the spotlight.
Satisfactorywas the project we started after that cycle of madness. We originally releasedGoat Simulatoron Steam and saw there was an audience, so we made more content, released on mobile and consoles. That was a fun journey.
Q: So is game design something you’ve always been interested in?
A: This is probably the story of a million developers, but yeah I personally had a passion for playing games. I have a very specific memory from when I was eight, nine years old playingTetrison the Nintendo Entertainment System, wondering how it determined which blocks come. Somewhere there’s always been a part of me thinking about understanding how games work, and it went well with the programming track I chose.
Q: How did you wind up melding with the group that started Coffee Stain?
A: As I said, we were all in the same design program, some for art or programming. It’s really funny when you think about it, a lot of those people who startedCoffee Stainwere people I vibed with from the first day. We were a group within the group, kind of. Of course people came and went, but there was a clear connection between us over those three years, and we followed through to start Coffee Stain.
Q: Why did you decide to start withSanctum?
A:Sanctumwas a project during school that some people did - I wasn’t on that project, it was only about five people. It was a mod forUnreal Tournamentat first. We were contacted by Epic because of a competition, “Make Something Unreal,” where the mod was submitted. The positive feedback said our game was good and we should try doing something with it, and that was the spark that made us decide to start a company with it.
Even hearing something from a real studio when you’re students is an important thing. We’ve had agood connection with Epicfrom the beginning, so that was the project we felt like we could take it from a mod to a game in only a year.
Q: From what I understand,Sanctumis like a tower-defense game-
A: It’stower defensewith first-person, that was our thing.
Q: Why did you start diversifying from there?Goat Simulator, for example, is a very different kind of game.
A: For sure, it’s an interesting catalog of games.Goat Simulatorwas a kind of outlet after working so long onSanctum 1and2. Especially forSanctum 2we reached way beyond our limits, going from just a PC game to releasing on Xbox 360 and PS3 simultaneously; less than two years of development time in total. We also committed to a one-year season pass becauseBorderlands 2did it. I don’t know what we were thinking, we were stupid.
It was a long period of having to deliver this, this, and this, so we wanted to have some fun. That wasGoat Sim.
If you look atSanctumandSatisfactoryyou can see that they make a lot more sense for us as a studio and what kind of games we’re drawn to.Goat Simis the joker in the deck, in that sense.
Q: At some point Coffee Stain split into multiple studios. I know you said you’re new as CEO at Coffee Stain Studios, but do you have any kind of involvement with the other teams?
A: It has been slow steps all the time. Like I said, when Coffee Stain started we were with an incubator and coaches who asked what kind of company we wanted. “Where do you see yourself five years in the future,” all those discussions you have to have even though it never winds up being what happens.
I think the idea of growing horizontally, not just building a big studio but having smaller groups, was something we talked about early. That’s what happened; we didn’t grow the studio, we found partners to work with. Either we started having publishing deals with them before they joined Coffee Stain, or through ourCoffee Stain Publishing branchthat grew into its own.
AfterGoat Simulatorwe had funding and ideas, we knew we wanted to help and do more than just make one game at a time. It felt natural to separate into a publishing division. Some people moved to that, and then we took in others who could help work toward that goal. We like to grow in a way that doesn’t make anyone an anonymous pawn in the company.
Q: With that in mind, in light of the big Microsoft acquisition news-
A: Ah, you heard about that.
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Q: I think everyone did! What would you say the other benefits are to sticking with a smaller, indie scope?
A: It has its benefits and its drawbacks, for sure. That’s what we like, that it draws people who share our idea of how to make games. It’s not a very set strategy, but when you’re in thatspace of 10-to-30 developers, it’s a team where the things everyone does matters. You have quite a lot of responsibility, and it seems to work for us.
That does mean if you want to make grander things it might take too long, or you just can’t do certain things. I don’t think it’s the perfect way to make games by any means, but I feel like we know this corner of it. It’s good to know your strengths and weaknesses.
Q: Getting toSatisfactory, what was the driving force behind it? Especially if it’s more similar toSanctum.
A: The initial idea was that the person who pitched it - the same one who was the driving force forSanctum- really lovedFactorio. There’s no way around that,withoutFactoriothere is noSatisfactory. But that’s also where theSanctumthing comes in; we can do it, but with our spin. We felt bringing it into first-person would do a lot for the game, the same as with tower defense. It would make the game stick out, be more unique and immersive.
There’s a lot of legacy inSatisfactory’s code because it started off being kind of aSanctumsequel with the same base, you can see it in elements like the build gun. It’s fun to see that direct connection between the series.
Q: Has that been incorporated into the lore of the universe?
A: No, no. I’ve been a proponent of that, but so far it’s not canon that they’re the same universe. We had a discussion about it at some point, but decided it wouldn’t make much sense. We love theSanctumseries, but it’s not a big name to the extent we’d gain something by saying they’re connected. In the end, I think it was the right choice tomakeSatisfactoryits own game.
I’d assume this holds true for any studio, it’s just interesting to see how the games you make affect what you make next. We couldn’t have madeGoat Simulatorwithout the base ofSanctum. The lessons you learn are brought to the next project.
Q: BeyondFactorio, what games did you pull inspiration from?
A: For building I think it’s mostly our first-person building experience fromSanctum- beyondFactoriofor the obvious factory focus. When we started doing the prototype and leaned into exploration, we looked atSubnautica,No Man’s Sky, and other exploration-heavy games to try and define our space; where we fit into the factory automation and exploration worlds.
I think we found a niche that fit us well, and it has been interesting to see other games come after us likeAutomation EmpireandDyson Spherethat find even deeper cracks between us,Factorio, and other games. There’s definitely more room for competition.
Q: How long were you working on design and prototyping before you hit Early Access?
A: We officially wrapped our work onGoat Simin December 2015, so in 2016 we startedprototyping all kinds of games. By the beginning of summer we knew theSatisfactoryprototype, which was under 10 weeks old, was the game we wanted to make.
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It’s interesting to go back to that first prototype and see how it’s still the same game. You build factories and connect them with conveyor belts; the system is there. There’s tons and tons of extra features stacked on top now, but it’s the same core. It’s good that we knew what was fun about the game early and had that to work with.
So it was from about June 2016 to March 2019, then welaunched in Early Access. We’ve spent quite a bit of time there, but we’re still not ready with the 1.0.
Q: Do you have any idea when you might reach that? Or will you know when you get there.
A: That is the golden question we’ve been struggling with, honestly. It’s been my thing to do since taking over as CEO, making sure we work toward 1.0. I think we’re really good at making content, as seen with the updates we’ve released, but it’s hard to get a game from Early Access to 1.0.Satisfactoryhas so much room for adding more stuff, but we need to hit a limit and realize what our 1.0 version is. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of content, but rounding things off in a good way has been a challenge.
Q: Why were you chosen to be the new CEO?
A: A fight to the death.
No, no, really though there’s been a lot of small changes at Coffee Stain these past few years. Theprevious CEO is now working at Publishing. He wanted to work with other projects, but there weren’t any major disruptions - it was a smooth transition that made a lot of sense.
I’ve been working as a programmer for nearly 10 years, so personally it was a good way for me to experience new things. It has been really fun, the last year has gone by in a flash and taken five years at the same time.
Q: What have you learned from working on a game in Early Access?
A: I guess we knew this before, but there is no real end to a game if you don’t outright say where the ending is. We could stay in Early Access for five more years,have fun with the community, see where they want to take the game, and keep building on what fits. But it’s a stressful environment to be in when you’re able to’t reach that finish line, like a marathon where the post keeps moving.
In order to keep the team’s sanity, we need to be stricter with ourselves.Satisfactoryhas been a great success and that’s rare, it’s not to be taken for granted. So we want to keep improving the game and keeping its fanbase alive and healthy, but we have to make sure people at the studio enjoy developing the game and don’t just do it because numbers keep coming in.
Q: In terms of that success, you just reached three million sales. How did it feel?
A: It felt great, super awesome to see the support this game has. Not just in terms of sales, butconcurrent playersreally hit home for a lot of us. It’s not just a game you buy on sale and store it for a rainy day, people come in and play. As I said, we had lots of success withGoat Sim, but it hasn’t had interaction in the same way asSatisfactory.
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Q: Have there been particular moments where you noticed the most growth?
A: We released Update 5 last year, and Updates 3, 4, and 5 have really felt like a mini-launch. It’s a tough market to be in, where even if you are successful there are plenty more being released every day. To reach out beyond peoples' filters of new game releases, we wanted to make our updates big things.
I think the numbers show this model works, as opposed to launching an update each week with small content. This way we can interact with the community, tease them with new content, and give them surprise goodies to play with. Our hardcore fans keep coming back, and when they do the game gets up in the algorithms,friends see them playing on Steam, and it creates a ripple effect. Being active in Early Access and beyond is super important.
The 1.0 status won’t change things, for us the biggest change is we’ll have delivered the things we promised and wanted to deliver. Hopefully then the game can live on.
Q: It seems Update 5 was largely about cosmetics and quality-of-life improvements. Was that the goal?
A: It was, thecosmetic part was really the main focus. Our other intent was to complete some of the deliverables we started, like the train system and vehicles. It was about paying off the debts we’d added but hadn’t taken up to the standard they should have been.
Cosmetics was the big thing we wanted to give players, more tools to express themselves. Before when you looked at creations there was a gray foundation and boxes, because that’s the tools players were given. Now it looks like a totally different game when you surf channels and see people posting their factories. It’s been a fun update to get out because of what people can create now.
Q: I also noted you were messing with dedicated servers. How does that impact community engagement?
A: That was a highly requested feature, so we’ve been working on it.Dedicated serversare a weird thing because I don’t know if that feature itself fixed a lot of things people thought it would. As a dev you hear people want better stability in multiplayer, and they think dedicated servers will fix it. In reality, it’s about the fixes needed in order to host dedicated servers.
Obviously it was nice to add a feature that so many people have been talking about, and I hope they enjoy it. Let us know otherwise.
Q: Are there other big fan-requested features you’re looking to implement?
A: I think the biggest thing people want is to play the game with a start and finish; to know what the game is. That’s something we’re looking forward to adding. We’re also looking at how toimprove mod supportsince it’s a mod-heavy game, modders have created so much content. I don’t even know how they do all of that, but we’re going to try and help them out by making the process easier.
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Q: I haven’t played a lot ofSatisfactorymyself, but I have a friend who’s very invested. He wanted to know if there were plans for combat updates.
A: Since Update 5 wrapped, we’ve been talking a lot about what areas are lacking or haven’t been updated.Combating creaturesis one of those areas we’ve put the least energy toward so far, we’ve been focusing a lot on the factories because, I mean, it’sSatisfactory.It’s in the name.
We still want to make sure all parts of the game feel good, that nothing feels left behind. Combat is one area we’re looking into.
Q: Do you know when Update 6 might be coming around at this point?
A: No, no we don’t. Honestly, discussions we have internally are tied to when we do new updates, how we decide what goes into 1.0 or not. There’s plenty of unknowns we’re trying to figure out about wrapping the game.
I don’t think I can say much more on that topic at the moment. We have had a six-to-eight month interval for updates in the past, but we’ll have to look at whether that suits the task of bringing 1.0 into reality. We might need longer or shorter times between updates, or we may attempt to deliver things that don’t fit into a timeframe. There’s a lot to consider.
Q: I know you talked about the difficulty of multi-platform development forSanctum, but are you considering console launches forSatisfactory?
A: That would be fun, but we’re focusing on delivering 1.0 for the PC version. It wouldn’t feel nice if we lost focus on what we promised. Butif we can get consoles to workin other ways, it’s something we’re looking at - perhaps finding partners, or just seeing how things work after the 1.0 release. It’d absolutely be fun to bringSatisfactoryto a bigger audience.
Q: I’m sure you’ll still be working on this for a while, but has Coffee Stain thought about what’s next - if you even want to do something next?
A: Those thoughts do pop up as well, we’ve been working on this game for five, six years. I think there’s about three people left at the studio who started and are still working onSatisfactory, so it’s basically a whole new team full of people working on it for different amounts of time. Some are super eager to start new things.
I think it’s going to come down to how we can focus our resources, whether we want to wrap 1.0 before working on other things or create small pockets in order to work withgame jams, prototypes, and so on. There’s definitely energy for creating new stuff alongsideSatisfactory, which is fun to see. The studio is more than just this game.
Q: In that respect, having basically a new team, how has their reception been to the success? To getting in on a project people really like?
A: That’s been really fun to see, and it’s honestly where I get my energy from sometimes. Like you said, the three million copies sold is a huge thing. Sometimes you get speed blind if you’ve had a big success before, or you look at a game likeValheimthat presents crazy numbers, so it’s fun to see people working on the game who have a lot of energy and interact with players. It’s a good source for positive energy.
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Satisfactoryis available now on PC
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