After more than ten years in Early Access, Scrap Mechanic hits 1.0 on 24 July 2026, alongside the long-awaited Drilling Thunder chapter. For a game that entered Early Access in January 2016, this is the finish line - and for co-op groups, it’s the biggest reason in years to get everyone back in the same world.

Here’s what’s landing, and the one thing about multiplayer that hasn’t changed.

Scrap Mechanic 1.0 Release Date

24 July 2026. Scrap Mechanic exits Steam Early Access on that date. The 1.0 update ships together with Drilling Thunder (Chapter 2), and Axolot Games has confirmed the update is free - not paid DLC - as a thank-you to the community that carried the game through Early Access.

The game’s price is expected to rise at or around the full release (reported at $29.99), so if you’ve had it on your wishlist, the days before launch are the cheap window. Existing owners pay nothing for the update.

What’s in Drilling Thunder (Chapter 2)

The headline is that Survival finally has a complete story, start to finish, with fully voice-acted NPCs. Around that:

  • The Underground - a new subterranean layer to explore and strip-mine, with its own points of interest.
  • Miner Island and Grow Labs - new regions on the surface to push into.
  • Drilling and mining vehicles - new parts built around underground excavation, plus drone-based loot systems.
  • Quests and interactive NPCs - proper objectives instead of self-directed sandbox play.
  • New enemies and a boss fight.
  • Fire physics that actually matter - fire now burns blocks and parts instead of being decorative danger.
  • The Claygun - a new way of shaping and sculpting terrain, available in both Creative and Survival.
  • New building parts, a graphical overhaul, Steam achievements, improved mod support, and a wave of optimisation work including better network responsiveness for connected players.

That last point matters more than it sounds: network responsiveness has always been the tax on Scrap Mechanic co-op, since every player is simulating physics-heavy contraptions.

What 1.0 Doesn’t Change: The Host Still Owns the World

There’s no official dedicated server for Scrap Mechanic, and 1.0 doesn’t add one. Multiplayer remains host-based - one player opens the Survival world, everyone else joins that session through the Steam friends list.

Which means the oldest co-op problem in the game survives into the full release:

  • The host is at work, asleep, or playing something else - nobody plays.
  • The host stops playing the game for a month - the base is frozen on their SSD.
  • The host reinstalls Windows without thinking - the world is gone.

Third-party providers will happily rent you a “Scrap Mechanic server” - a machine left running the game - for a monthly fee. For a group of three or four friends who play a couple of evenings a week, that’s a lot of subscription for a single .db file.

Back Up Your World Before You Update

Whatever else you do before the 24th: copy your Survival world somewhere safe.

Major chapter updates change world generation and content, and community discussion around the announcement suggests older Survival worlds may not carry cleanly into the new chapter - potentially needing Steam’s older-version beta branch to keep playing. Whether or not that turns out to apply to your world, a five-second copy is cheap insurance.

Your worlds live here on Windows:

%APPDATA%\Axolot Games\Scrap Mechanic\User\User_<your SteamID>\Save

Close the game first, then copy the .db files (and your Blueprints folder, if you care about your saved builds) to another drive.

Make the World Belong to the Group, Not the Host

If you’re starting a fresh Drilling Thunder Survival run with friends - and most groups will be, given the new chapter - this is the moment to set up sharing, before a hundred hours of base-building end up locked to one person’s machine.

SaveSync syncs the Scrap Mechanic world across every player in your group. After a session, the latest world is distributed automatically. Whoever’s online next loads it and hosts. No rented server, no manual file dragging, no “can you just log on for two minutes so we can play.”

It also keeps a snapshot history, which is worth having in the weeks after a major update when patches are landing fast.

Setup takes about a minute:

  1. Everyone installs SaveSync.
  2. Whoever has the world opens SaveSync, picks Scrap Mechanic, clicks + New Save.
  3. Share it with each friend by Steam username.
  4. Friends click Activate.

Full walkthrough in the Scrap Mechanic save sharing guide, or see what SaveSync is and how it works if you’re new to it.

Ten Years, One Launch, Zero Reasons to Wait on a Host

Drilling Thunder is the update Scrap Mechanic players have been asking about for years, and it’s arriving with a story, an underground, and a decade of returning players all logging in the same week.

Start the world right: SaveSync on Steam is a one-time purchase covering Scrap Mechanic and 45+ other co-op games, so the mechanic who’s online tonight is the one who hosts.