TL;DR: This fall, Prosperous Universe has been in development for 10 years. A process we continuously documented in 500 devlogs. Now we are celebrating with the upcoming release of the long-awaited gateways, a State of the Universe livestream and a 15% discount on PRO licenses. Find all the details about these and a quick tour through PrUn development history below!
It's hard to comprehend how much time has passed, but Prosperous Universe has been in development for 10 years now! We already wrote about this fact in the 500th weekly devlog and elaborated a bit on why this devlog (#507) is actually the 500th devlog. Devlog numbering aside, there is no single day we can refer to as "the start" of development. So instead we want to start the 10-year-anniversary celebrations with this very devlog!
Upcoming: Releasing the gateways
If you have been reading our devlogs over the course of the past weeks, you surely noticed that the upcoming gateways release is almost done and currently in the testing phase. So it is our pleasure to finally announce its release date: November 26th, 2025. As usual, there is a forum topic with the release notes and further details. We'll answer your questions regarding the release there as well.
Birthday present: 15% off of PRO
Although we discounted PRO licenses with the recent Colonization release, we strongly believe that another discount for the celebrations is in order. PRO licenses will be discounted 15% starting today until November 30th.
Birthday party: Join for the livestream!
We also plan to host a live stream with the team on the day of the release. The livestream will be held in the evening hours CET, an exact time and link will follow. We want to talk about 10 years of development, the current state of the Universe and give an outlook on what is to come in the future.
A brief tour of 10 years of PrUn development
The first commit to the codebase dates back to September 28th, 2015. Martin and I had many conversations about restarting the Prosperous Universe project in the weeks and months before that. Yes, you read that right: restart! Martin prototyped Prosperous Universe years before I joined the company, but the prototype never saw the light of day. So in fall 2015 we started all over again, together.
Many months of programming and planning and designing followed. We lay the technical groundwork for everything to come. Here is the first screenshot I could find from that time. It shows the APEX interface. Back then, we already had floating windows, but no tiling system. The idea was that the maps (be it the universe, system or planet map) should always be visible in the background. A bit like EVE, if you will.
At that time, the only visible signs of life of the project were our weekly devlogs. At first, we just wrote them for us, as a kind of journal, but we were able to grow a small following via an email newsletter.
It took a while, but in 2017 we were able to start our first alpha version. This was a closed test of what we had so far, and we invited friends & family and a few players we knew from the AirlineSim community.
There were two more closed alpha tests in 2017 and two more in 2018. All of them were rather short-lived and focused on individual features that we added.
Our first public release happened almost exactly 7 years ago, three years into development. We called it "First Access", since we felt the game was still more an Alpha rather than an Early Access product. Devlog #156 has all the details. For the first time we allowed players to create an account via the website and join the game; in contrast to the invite-only alpha tests before. We also started to sell the supporter packs to help cover development costs.
In 2019 we switched the business model to free to play. While it was possible to buy the smallest supporter pack during the "First Access" phase to gain permanent access to the game, we knew that this wasn't going to be sustainable in the long run. Devlog #190 has more on that topic. The most important point for us is: free to play just means that the game is free to play, no further microtransactions, no pay to win game mechanics.
The switch to free to play was followed by many feature and maintenance releases: Prelude, Expanse, Presence, Populous, Ignition. We added the administration centers, elections, warehouses, shipping ads, population infrastructure, ship building and so much more.
It all culminated in 2021 with the game entering into its "Early Access" phase. We reset the universe, generated an even larger universe map than in the versions before and added the fourth faction: Antares Initiative. By the way, this is now the eighth universe, and since its start, there has not been another reset.
Not long after the start of the "Early Access" phase we went on Steam. Although the game is no natural fit for Steam, given it is a browser- and subscription-based game, we still dared to allocate a good chunk of our development time to make PrUn compatible with Steam. In the end it was worth it: we have increased visibility through the store page, and a significant number of sign-ups come from Steam.
After the Steam release we continued with the content releases: Convergence, Prestige, Liquidity, Realpolitik and Colonization. The Transmission release sticks out a bit: It didn't add a lot of new content but rather new localisations: We translated the game into German and set up the technical foundation for community translations. These have been a roaring success as we now have complete translations in Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Finnish, Spanish, as well as ongoing translation efforts in many other languages. These translations help with the visibility of the game and by forming stronger player communities. We are very thankful for all the effort the volunteers have been and continue to be putting in!
Wrapping up and looking ahead
So what’s next? As mentioned above, the release of the gateways is just around the corner. But if you’ve been following along for the past decade or so, you know that we’re not stopping there: Our roadmap is long and our plans are elaborate. We will discuss these in more depth in the upcoming State of the Universe livestream, so make sure to mark your calendars (reminder: November 26th, 2025, evening time CET, exact time to be announced). For now, all we want to say is…we’re looking forward to and are ready for the next 10 years of Prosperous Universe development!
As always, we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!