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Early Access and Roadmap - Version 16 vs Version 17
Sep 16, 2026, 04:48 AM
Rewrote roadmap status after the September 2 roadmap refresh: Cosmetic Store, controller support, voiceovers and salvaging shipped; guilds, Auction House and Mecha Titan moved to Q4 2026
Sep 17, 2026, 03:32 AM
Added 3 gameplay images (2026-09-16)
11Soulbound: Online launched into Steam Early Access on July 21, 2026 for PC. It is a paid game that costs $14.99 USD. A launch discount ran for the first seven days after release. A free demo ran during Bullet Fest and Steam Next Fest ahead of launch and ended on July 14, 2026. The studio is releasing in Early Access as a work in progress and intends to keep building the game using player feedback, so the launch build is a foundation that grows across the Early Access period rather than a finished release.22Release At A Glance44ItemDetailEarly Access dateJuly 21, 2026PlatformPC (Windows)Price model$14.99 USD, paid; a launch discount ran for the first seven daysDemoFree demo ran during Bullet Fest and Steam Next Fest; ended July 14, 2026Development approachWork in progress, shaped by player feedback66Price And Monetisation77Soulbound: Online costs $14.99 USD on Steam. A special discount ran for the first seven days after launch and has since ended. Regional pricing follows Steam's recommended regional prices so the game stays affordable across different markets. All characters were reset at the Early Access launch, so every player started fresh.99The studio has said the game is not pay-to-win. The Cosmetic Store opened in early September 2026, several weeks after launch as promised, and sells character cosmetics, pets, emotes and furniture for a premium currency called SoulBits. It sells no stats, gear or progression. The team has also said it is exploring a premium subscription and other options, none of which will be pay-to-win.1111Progression Will Not Be Wiped At 1.01313Before Early Access opened, the studio said version 1.0 would start fresh and leave Early Access progression behind, so that everyone reached the new content on level terms. It reversed that decision in the second week of August 2026 after players said clearly that they did not want progression wiped, with many already fifty to a hundred hours into their characters. The studio apologised for the original plan.1515What that means in practice: characters created during Early Access carry into 1.0, and progression, items, cosmetics and achievements are not reset at the 1.0 launch. You can keep playing the same character afterwards. The studio has said it is still working out how to give players who arrive after Early Access a fair start, and that it will keep tuning items, balance and the economy in the meantime. This does not undo the reset that happened at the Early Access launch itself, which cleared the earlier browser build's progression.1717The First Weeks Of Early Access1919Launch did not go smoothly. The studio came out of the gate severely under capacity: a set of bugs capped how far each server environment could scale, so far fewer players could get in than planned. Six new player-facing environments were deployed in the days afterwards and the capacity of each individual environment was raised. A serious fault in the achievement system was found from player reports and the system was temporarily switched off, with the studio saying it would be switched back on very shortly. The studio's own framing was that every MMO gets a stormy launch and this was its turn, and that the incident forced a rethink of how it runs and scales servers.2122Fixes have shipped constantly since. Two of the most damaging early problems, players losing items and players getting stuck in place, were resolved within the first days, the second of them more than once as new variants surfaced around Virelda. From the end of July the studio split its release naming: scheduled updates are called patches, and out-of-band fixes keep the hotfix label. A running summary of what each one changed is on the Update History page.2324Shipped Since Launch2526Several items that were sitting on the roadmap as targets have since landed. The roadmap page was refreshed on September 2, 2026, its first update since it was published in June, and it now carries its own change log recording what moved. The statuses below combine that refresh with the patch record.2728ItemStatusExpanded T5 and T6 gearShipped. Tier 6 weapons and the level 5 smelter that feeds them are in the build.Legendary effects on gearShipped. Rarity 5 dungeon drops carry triggered legendary effects. Crafted gear briefly rolled Legendary in mid-August 2026, and that was reverted the following week, so crafting still cannot produce a legendary effect.RaidsShipped. The Abyssal Raid is live for parties of up to five. The Spectra Raid, a four-plus-player raid with two difficulty levels, was added to the roadmap on September 2, 2026 as a new third-quarter target and has not opened.Language localisationPartially out. The roadmap update of September 2, 2026 described the first languages as in progress, and dedicated Chinese and Japanese fonts for dialogue and tutorial text shipped on September 3. Japanese, Spanish, French and Brazilian Portuguese are named as the first full pass.Partial voiceoversShipped, and marked as shipped in the roadmap update of September 2, 2026. In late July 2026 the studio put voiceover coverage at over 45 percent of the game and said it was recruiting more voice actors. The figure has not been restated since.Ten-player co-op dungeonsIn testing. Would raise party sizes beyond the current three-player dungeons.Region character transfersNot yet supported, and the region list has changed twice. US West 1 was folded into US Central 1 and EU West 3 into Europe West 1 on September 3, 2026, then six new servers opened across the United States, Europe and Japan on September 10. Moving a character between servers is still impossible and still planned. See Servers and Regions.Instant gear crafting and station upgradesShipped. Weapon and armor crafting takes five seconds at every tier and station upgrade timers are zero, so upgrades finish instantly. Generators produce twice as much power at every tier, and the Charged Cell fuel from Tier 4 to Tier 6 hacking nodes gives three times the power of coal. Ore smelting times were not changed.Combat logsShipped as an opt-in setting. Real-time combat logging writes files to the local game data folder for you to parse with your own tools, and a simpler in-game metrics interface is planned.2930ItemStatusCosmetic StoreShipped. Listed as launching in the roadmap update of September 2, 2026 and open in the days after, selling rotating and permanent cosmetic collections for SoulBits.Unofficial controller supportShipped. Marked as shipped on September 2, 2026, with gamepad aim for primary weapon attacks in dungeons arriving in the patch of August 27.New crafting systemShipped. Added to the roadmap on September 2, 2026 as a third-quarter target and delivered a week later: gear forged at the Gearforge Station and Weapon Station now rolls a random rarity and stat line across 103 recipes.Item salvage systemShipped. It was moved up from the first quarter of 2027 to the fourth quarter of 2026 on September 2, then arrived on September 9, months ahead of its original slot. Tammy in Arcadia breaks gear down into materials for a gold fee.Performance improvementsShipped. Added as a third-quarter target on September 2 and delivered on September 4 as a dedicated overworld performance patch.AchievementsShipped. Relaunched on August 27, 2026 after being switched off during launch week, then repaired twice more in the following fortnight, including retroactive grants for work done while the system was down.3031Planned During Early Access3132The studio has outlined the kinds of updates planned across Early Access. Specific dates have not been given, so treat these as direction rather than a fixed schedule.3334Live events and seasonal contentNew dungeon tiers and additional raidsExpanding world zones in the overworldMore life skills and crafting depthBalance changes, new quest lines, and quality-of-life improvements3536From Browser To Steam3738Soulbound began as a browser and Discord-native game. The Steam release is a rebuilt, standalone version, and earlier production builds are being retired ahead of it, with prior progression reset for the relaunch. The Steam version does not include blockchain, tokens, or NFTs. More on the team is on the SpiderWare page.3940Road To Launch4142Ahead of Early Access, the game ran two free Steam demos: a first stress-test demo during Bullet Fest (June 9 to 15, 2026) and a second, larger demo for Steam Next Fest from June 15, later extended to June 29. Progress was wiped between the demos. The Next Fest demo offered around seven hours of gameplay and covered the first few chapters of the story.4345Interest climbed quickly during this period: the game passed 50,000 Steam wishlists in under four weeks, reached 55,000 around the Early Access announcement, topped 75,000 by late June, and passed 100,000 in early July. After Next Fest the studio published a public roadmap covering the next twelve months; it is summarised below.4547Confirmed Coming Soon4749Some features are explicitly planned for after the initial release rather than at launch:4951Guilds and shared guild basesCosmetics for stations and furnitureExpanded crafting modules and trade-focused base building5153Base automation, meaning robots that carry out tasks in your home while you are offline, does not belong on that list. The studio has said it is keen to bring automation to the world, but there is no roadmap card for it and no date. The nearest scheduled item is Deeper Base Building in the fourth quarter of 2026, which is about furniture and station bonuses rather than robots.5355Demo dates and wishlist figures come from the studio's announcements. The studio's public roadmap groups planned work by quarter and was refreshed on September 2, 2026, with a change log on the page itself recording what moved. Dates are the studio's stated targets and may shift, since Early Access development is shaped by player feedback.5557Published Roadmap5759The studio's public roadmap groups planned work by quarter and tracks features moving from planned to in progress to shipped. It was published in June 2026 and refreshed on September 2, 2026. The two pre-launch demos sat in the second quarter of 2026 and the Early Access launch itself closed out the third quarter's original list.5961What the September 2026 Refresh Changed6163The roadmap now carries its own history log. The entry dated September 2, 2026 records the following.6366ChangeDetailMarked shippedPartial voiceovers, and unofficial controller support as partial support allowing aiming.Marked launchingThe Cosmetic Store.Marked partially outLanguage localisation, with the first languages in progress.Added to Q3 2026The Spectra Raid, the new crafting system, and performance improvements across the overworld and dungeons.Moved earlierRelationship NPCs from Q4 2026 to Q3 2026. The item salvage system from Q1 2027 to Q4 2026, where it was marked in development.Moved laterGuilds, the Auction House and the Mecha Titan Raid, all to Q4 2026.Added to Q4 2026A Halloween event.6568Third Quarter 20266669Everything below was targeted for the quarter that ends with September 2026.6871FeatureStatus And DescriptionEarly Access LaunchShipped July 21, 2026.Far Point Reach ExpansionShipped. More to explore in Farpoint, with extended dungeon and task content.Everdune ExpansionShipped. More to explore in Everdune, with extended dungeon and task content.Legendary Effects On GearShipped. Powerful legendary effects that can roll on your gear, each one changing how it plays.Expanded T5-T6Shipped. Two gear tiers above the previous T4 ceiling.RaidsShipped. Large-group raids across live-event and in-game raids.Weekly Live EventsShipped, and running daily as well as weekly.Cosmetic StoreShipped. A store with a rotating selection of cosmetics, furniture, emotes and pets.Unofficial Controller SupportShipped. Partial controller support for aiming and navigating some menus.Partial VoiceoversShipped. Many quests already feature voiced NPCs, with more to follow and localised voiceovers later.New Crafting SystemShipped September 9, 2026. Crafted gear has a chance to roll any of its stats, so no two crafts come out quite the same.Performance ImprovementsShipped September 4, 2026. Performance and framerate improvements across the overworld and dungeons.Language LocalizationPartially out. A first pass covering dialogue and interface text, beginning with Japanese, Spanish, French and Brazilian Portuguese, rolling out across the quarter.Spectra RaidAnnounced, not open. A raid against Spectra for four or more players, with two difficulty levels.Relationship NPCsAnnounced, not shipped. Long-term NPCs you build a real relationship with, whose moods and emotions shift per player as you take on their tasks over time.7073Fourth Quarter 20267174FeatureDescriptionItem Salvage SystemShipped early, on September 9, 2026. Break down unwanted items into crafting materials.GuildsForm a guild with friends, claim a shared identity, and take on the world together. The first release covers guild creation, rosters and ranks, and a shared home base.Auction HouseA player-driven marketplace where you can list, browse and trade items with the entire server.Mecha Titan RaidA new raid boss, the Mecha Titan.Expanded Steam Deck SupportThe game already runs on Steam Deck. This pass makes it play better, with a more controller-friendly interface, readable handheld text and performance tuning. It is not official Steam Deck Verified support yet.Endless DungeonsA new endless dungeon mode that keeps scaling the deeper you push.High-Risk Dungeons with Bag or Gear LossNew high-risk dungeon modes that pay out extra loot, but you lose your gear or bag if you die.Gun Main-Hand WeaponA new gun main-hand weapon type, joining staff, sword and heavy.Gear and Weapon Modules and ChipsetsSlot modules and chipsets into your gear and abilities to customise their stats, effects and augments.Abilities and Weapons ExpansionA wave of fresh abilities across every role, with new tanking tools, healing options and support skills.High Roller ModeA high-stakes mode where dying means losing all of your gear. It takes high-tier gear to clear and pays out exclusive cosmetics, pets and rewards.Seasonal EventsLarger themed events tied to the calendar, each with limited-time content, cosmetics and rewards you can only earn while the season runs.Halloween EventA limited-time Halloween event with themed content and rewards, added to the roadmap on September 2, 2026.Deeper Base BuildingA bigger apartment builder with more ways to shape your space. New furniture types grant stat bonuses, and stations gain complementary furniture that boosts what they produce.73762027 And Beyond7477QuarterFeatureDescriptionQ1 2027Furniture and Station CosmeticsMore furniture and cosmetics, many earnable through weekly live events.Q1 2027The Foundation ExpansionA major story expansion with new questlines, dungeons and world-building centred on The Foundation.Q1 2027Foundation Assault CourseA new mini-game in The Foundation: hack and solve puzzles to earn experience.Q1 2027Lunar City ExpansionA full expansion opening the Lunar City zone with a new questline, enemies, gear and storylines.Q1 2027Guild BasesTurn your apartment into a shared guild base with a physical location in the world.Q2 2027Mac Steam ClientNative Mac support through the Steam client.Q2 2027Full Steam Deck SupportVerified Steam Deck support with a controller-first interface, readable text at handheld size and performance tuned for the device.Q3 2027New Ways to Level Life SkillsNew ways to level life skills such as fishing, hacking and mining.
