Lifeless

Lifeless has had a turbulent history — originally launched in Early Access in June 2016 before going dormant — but the two-person studio (Desync Donkeys) reacquired the rights in 2021 and spent years rebuilding it. On March 7, 2025, they relaunched the game on Steam with a massively overhauled version built on Unreal Engine 5, featuring a new world map, co-op multiplayer, crafting, base building, story missions, and hundreds of other additions. Following the relaunch, the developers shipped feature patches in March and May 2025. On May 20, 2025, they reaffirmed their commitment to the game, describing it as "a damn good base for us to continue building upon." On May 29, 2025, they published a community roadmap allowing players to vote on future development priorities. On June 3, 2025, they announced the game would transition to free-to-play and explicitly confirmed active work on update 0.9.0, described as "a big update with some really cool new stuff." As of today, October 8, 2026, the game remains flagged as Early Access on Steam. The last developer communication on record is from June 3, 2025 — over 15 months ago. While that is a lengthy silence for a two-person team working in their spare time alongside full-time jobs, their most recent posts were consistently forward-looking, with an unshipped major update (0.9.0) explicitly in progress at that time. There has been no communication indicating development has concluded or that the 0.9.0 update has shipped. The game remains unfinished by the developers' own description, and the announced content has not yet been confirmed as delivered.