Factorio is going to get a big paid expansion - and not a sequel
It's going to take more than a year to make, though
Factorio, the conveyor construction sim, is going to get a big expansion - although not for at least a year. This was discussed in a development update post marking the release of 1.1, the last major update for the base game.
While bugfixes and minor tweaks will continue for the base game, the development team have turned their attention to what's next. The forum post gives a frank assessment of the various options, from releasing free updates, making a sequel, or producing small DLC packs. The team prefer a fourth option, "one big expansion pack."
This seems to fit the best. We could focus purely on extending what we have and make new content, which we want to do so dearly! It would be one well-defined product that would be significant enough to recapture peoples attention, and it would be compatible with our workflow. Technically, it would be "just" a new version of the game, so all the infrastructure of mods being updated, multiplayer etc. would just work the same as it worked until now.
It's too early for discuss any plans for what the expansion pack would contain, except that they have lots of ideas and "we don't think that it will take less than a year to develop."
I like expansion packs, and they're too rare, these days. I'd rather seasoned developers built wild ideas on top of the hard work they've already done, than start over with a fresh slate for a sequel, or delivered smaller ideas via DLC.
And Factorio has taken plenty of hard work already. The end of the post delivers a set of stats, including that the game has been worked on for 3233 days. That's a little less than nine years. It's had 411 public releases, contains 87,703 different sprites, and has sold over 2.5 million copies.
If you want to extend Factorio yourself without waiting for the expansion, check out our list of the best Factorio mods.