Revision 13

Overview

inZOI launched as a single-player game in March 2025. The primary online component is Canvas, a built-in platform for sharing user-generated content. Full multiplayer is in active development under the name inZOI Online, with a phased rollout planned throughout 2026. Director Hyungjun 'Kjun' Kim has described inZOI Online as a new direction for the life-simulation genre, calling it 'largely uncharted' territory. The multiplayer system is being developed by a specialized internal task force alongside the base game. KRAFTON has emphasized that 2026 is a collaborative testing year where timelines and scope may shift based on development progress and community feedback.

As of March 2026, inZOI Online features remain in R&D validation. The March 26, 2026 update focused entirely on single-player improvements (multitasking, memories, new businesses, seasons, and over 1,300 new items), with multiplayer features continuing to progress behind the scenes according to the published roadmap.

Origins: From MMOs to Life Simulation Multiplayer

Director Kjun spent over 20 years developing Korean MMORPGs, including titles like Aion and Elyon, before transitioning to life simulation. He has described growing frustrated with MMO development's emphasis on competition and conflict. The shift to inZOI was partly inspired by his son, who asked why there were not more games like the life simulators they enjoyed playing together. That question motivated Kim to create something the two of them could cherish for years.

Kim's extensive MMO background proved directly relevant to inZOI Online's ambitions. His experience designing vast maps, managing large concurrent player counts, and building real-time social systems informed the technical architecture behind Canvastown and the dedicated server plans for Phase 5. When discussing the multiplayer vision, Kim has noted that the challenge lies in preserving the intimate, personal nature of life simulation while enabling the shared experiences that multiplayer provides.

The Presidential Meeting

In a widely reported meeting, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung visited KRAFTON's studio and spent more than 25 minutes with the inZOI team. During the visit, the president pulled Director Kim aside for a private discussion. Kim recounted that the president 'suddenly sat down' and began watching the game intently, ignoring other discussions. President Lee suggested that KRAFTON add multiplayer to the virtual world and place advertisements on in-game billboards to boost revenue.

Kim described the encounter by saying, 'It almost felt like I was getting talked to by the company's CEO.' While inZOI Online was already in development at the time of the visit, the presidential endorsement underscored the cultural significance of the project within South Korea's gaming industry. Kim confirmed that multiplayer was one of three major systems already in active production, alongside modding and AI NPCs.

Canvas (Current Online Feature)

Canvas is inZOI's content-sharing platform, available since launch. Players can upload and download custom Zois, outfits, room designs, and building blueprints created by the community. Canvas operates independently of the multiplayer system and does not require an inZOI Online account. See the dedicated Canvas article for details.

How Canvas Works

To use Canvas, players must register or log in to a KRAFTON account. This can be done using KRAFTON credentials directly or by scanning a QR code displayed on screen. Once logged in, players can browse, download, and upload creations.

Uploading Zois: Open the Create a Zoi menu, select a Zoi Preset, Face, or Outfit, and click 'Upload to Canvas' in the top right corner. Players can choose to upload the entire Zoi, just the face, or just the outfit. Adding relevant keywords (up to 15) helps other players find the creation.

Uploading and Downloading

Uploading Buildings: In Build Mode, click 'Upload to Canvas' on the left side. Property, room, and furniture presets must be saved before they can be uploaded.

Downloading Content: Click any creation to open its details page and press Download. Downloaded Zois appear under Zoi Presets in Create-a-Zoi. Downloaded lots appear under Property Presets in Build Mode. Downloaded rooms and furniture appear under their respective categories.

Play Together Referral Event

The Play Together event launched on March 28, 2025, and has no announced end date. It is a referral program rather than a multiplayer feature. Players generate a personal invite link through the KRAFTON website and share it with friends. When a friend accepts the invite, creates an inZOI account, and claims the reward, both players receive cosmetic items.

Rewards: The inviter receives a Kitty Outfit and a Kitty Headset. The invited friend receives a Kitty Headset. Each Steam account can claim one reward. Items may take up to five minutes to appear in-game after claiming. The event is only available to Steam users; Mac App Store users are not eligible.

inZOI Online: 2026 Phased Rollout

The multiplayer rollout follows five phases throughout 2026. Each phase builds on the previous one, starting with account infrastructure and ending with large-scale dedicated servers. All phases are R&D-driven, meaning specific dates may shift based on testing results. Director Kjun has stated that 'many unresolved questions must be validated through internal and external testing' before multiplayer's value can be fully confirmed.

The Fate Engine

Canvastown and inZOI Online are built on the Fate Engine, a new technical framework designed specifically for multiplayer. The Fate Engine's core philosophy is 'save and share': it lets players capture interesting life scenarios they have experienced and invite others to enter that exact moment and play it themselves. Director Kjun described the goal as preserving the genre's value while enabling players to save and share their 'good runs,' reducing the frustration of randomness-driven outcomes.

How the Fate Engine Works

At its core, the Fate Engine generates random 'life setups' for characters, providing structured goals and challenges within the sandbox-style gameplay. Players press a randomization button that shuffles world settings completely, producing unique starting circumstances. These might include becoming a billionaire's youngest son, discovering a paranormal family situation, or leading a large family through poverty. Kjun has described the philosophy as 'experiencing life through trials and hardships, one story at a time.'

The system is designed to remain completely optional. Players who prefer freeform sandbox gameplay are not required to engage with Fate Engine scenarios. The development team has explored possibilities including fate-based quests, challenges, rewards (traits, items, achievements), and player-edited or pre-selected fates as alternatives to pure randomization.

Fate Engine Integration Timeline

Canvastown

Canvastown serves as the primary world for inZOI Online. It is designed as a compact, performance-friendly environment built from the ground up for multiplayer. The smaller footprint compared to Dowon and Bliss Bay is intentional: it improves performance on lower-spec hardware, reduces network overhead for multiplayer synchronization, and creates a neighborhood where everything around your home is part of your playable space.

Technical Design

Canvastown is approximately one-eighth the size of Dowon. Director Kjun discovered that cities built entirely with Build Mode tools maintain excellent performance, which led to Canvastown's design as a Build Mode-constructed environment. The town is expected to support 40 to 80 plots while maintaining smooth framerates. Its compact layout reduces travel distances, eliminates traffic delays, and means Zois appear frequently around your home, creating a livelier atmosphere than a sprawling city might.

The Build Mode-only construction approach does introduce some limitations. Canvastown has a relatively small scale, limited natural visual expression compared to hand-crafted environments, and restricted space for vehicle content. However, the trade-off enables reliable multiplayer synchronization and lower system requirements.

KRAFTON has stated that the performance optimizations developed for Canvastown will eventually transfer to the existing cities (Dowon, Bliss Bay, and Kucingku), lowering system requirements and improving PC performance across the entire game.

Canvastown Versions

Kjun has discussed future plans to connect multiple Canvastown instances with minimal loading screens, introduce diverse architectural styles (including European and Korean traditional aesthetics), and develop terrain and underground editing tools.

Personal Zoi

In inZOI Online, each player creates a persistent, account-linked personal Zoi that carries over between multiplayer sessions. This Zoi is separate from your single-player save files and exists specifically for the online environment. The personal Zoi retains their appearance, personality, and progress across all multiplayer sessions. The system was introduced in Phase 1 (January 2026).

The personal Zoi is created through the same character creation tools used in single-player, but is stored on KRAFTON's servers rather than locally. This allows the Zoi to appear consistently regardless of which session or host the player joins. The 'My Zoi' social features introduced in Phase 2 provide an online profile for the personal Zoi, visible to other players through the web-based Plaza and Lobby interfaces.

Co-op Housing

Starting with Phase 3 (March 2026), players can decorate their own house within the online environment and save it to their account using cloud saves. Other players can then enter your house and play together cooperatively. This is the first truly interactive multiplayer feature, moving beyond the social infrastructure of Phases 1 and 2 into shared gameplay.

House decoration in the online environment uses the same Build Mode tools available in single-player. The key difference is that online houses are saved to the player's KRAFTON account rather than a local save file, allowing them to persist across sessions and be accessible from any device. When a friend visits, both players can interact within the space, use furniture, and engage with each other's Zois in real time.

Host Tools and Mod Support

Phase 4 (June 2026) introduces session management for hosts, giving room operators granular control over their multiplayer experience:

Multiplayer Modding Roadmap

The modding system for inZOI Online follows its own development timeline that intersects with the multiplayer phases. KRAFTON plans to gradually expand what modders can create and share in online sessions.

The October 2026 milestone is particularly significant for online play because it marks the first official testing of mods within the dedicated server environment. Lua script modding, arriving in December, would give modders the ability to create more sophisticated gameplay modifications that function across multiplayer sessions.

Large-Scale Multiplayer

The most ambitious phase targets October 2026. KRAFTON aims to introduce dedicated servers supporting hundreds to thousands of concurrent players per server. Players will explore cities, meet others, and form connections in a persistent shared world. This phase coincides with the Canvastown #2 expansion, providing the physical space for the larger player population.

The dedicated server infrastructure represents the long-term vision for inZOI Online. If successful, it would make inZOI one of the first life-simulation games to support massively multiplayer shared worlds. Director Kjun's two decades of MMORPG experience inform this phase directly; the challenges of handling thousands of concurrent users in a shared environment, managing server loads, and preventing desynchronization are problems he has worked on throughout his career.

Shared World Experience

Players on dedicated servers will be able to explore the world, observe events happening around them, meet other players organically, and build social connections. The experience is designed to feel like living in a shared city rather than joining a traditional game lobby.

AI NPCs

AI NPC systems for the online environment remain in ongoing research and development. These would be AI-driven characters that populate the multiplayer world alongside real players, maintaining the feeling of a living city even when player counts are low. No specific release date has been announced for AI NPCs.

The AI NPC initiative is one of three major R&D workstreams alongside multiplayer and modding. KRAFTON has indicated that AI NPCs would help address a common concern with life-simulation multiplayer: that cities might feel empty during off-peak hours. By filling the world with believable autonomous characters, the team aims to preserve the vibrant atmosphere that players expect from a life-simulation game regardless of how many real players are online at any given time.

Community Reception

The announcement of inZOI Online generated significant discussion within the player community. While many players expressed excitement about the potential for shared life-simulation experiences, several concerns have emerged on the official inZOI forums and Steam discussions.

Supporters of the multiplayer initiative have countered that multiplayer servers operate on separate infrastructure and should not directly impact single-player graphics. They attribute visual changes to simulation and performance balancing adjustments rather than multiplayer optimization.

Single-Player Protection

KRAFTON has made several explicit guarantees about how multiplayer development relates to the single-player experience:

• The multiplayer task force operates alongside (not instead of) the team working on base game improvements.

• inZOI Online is being developed as an optional feature. Players who prefer single-player will not be required to engage with any multiplayer systems.

• The Fate Engine and Canvastown are designed to benefit both online and offline play. Performance optimizations developed for Canvastown will transfer to all existing cities.

• Community feedback during each phase directly influences the scope of subsequent phases.

Development Status

All inZOI Online features are classified as R&D initiatives. KRAFTON has been transparent that:

• Timelines and scope may change depending on development progress.

• Schedules may be altered based on mid-stage test results and the chosen service/operations model.

• The multiplayer task force operates alongside (not instead of) the team working on base game improvements.

• Community feedback during each phase directly influences the scope of subsequent phases.

• Multiplayer life simulation is 'largely uncharted' territory, and KRAFTON is approaching it as a collaborative testing year with the player community.

The development team has acknowledged that establishing the fundamentals of how multiplayer works in a life-simulation context requires extensive testing. Features that underperform during internal validation may be redesigned or delayed. Kjun has framed 2026 as a year for asking questions and testing assumptions rather than delivering a finished product, noting that the team plans to 'actively discuss multiplayer features with the community and continue shaping the mode together with players.'