Why is 0,15 experimental on Steam?

[seePyou]

Hello,

I was just wondering why the 0.15 and all its branches are considered experimental on Steam. I started the client first believing that the game would have been updated but it was 0.14 again.
Tried some things but it took some time to see that the 0.15 branch was in the Allow beta option.

Any special reason this is set like this?

[Koub]

Because ... 0.15 is still experimental .
It may sound like Captain Obvious just poped by, but that's actually the case : as long as a version is not declared stable by the devs, it's experimental.

[Kelderek]

The devs set a pretty high standard for themselves for their stable releases. 0.14 went all the way up to 0.14.22 before it was declared stable (it went to 0.14.23 only in preparation of 0.15 things). So if you play 0.15 you may encounter bugs, so that is why it is still experimental, but in my experience so far it seems mostly bug free -- certainly nothing majorly broken happening in my games.

[aober93]

And so you missed the release date. A pity

[seePyou]

Thank you all for chiming in! I was apparently confused by some statements (not saying they were official or blaming anyone, don't even remember exactly where I heard it) that made me believe the 0.15 was going to be the actual release version for the game, as in, now we are gold kind of thing and not early access or... anyway. I'm rumbling! Thank you all again!

[Tekky]

No, the devs have stated several times that 0.16 is going to be the final version before leaving early access. As soon as 0.16 is declared stable, it will get 1.0 as the version number.

However, I really hope that development on Factorio will continue even after 1.0. I will certainly buy all DLCs/expansion packs.

[sparr]

I was just wondering why the 0.15 and all its branches are considered experimental on Steam. I started the client first believing that the game would have been updated but it was 0.14 again.

As soon as 0.16 is declared stable, it will get 1.0 as the version number.

Over the past few versions, it has taken a month or three to get from the .0 experimental of a new release to a stable release. So I would expect stable 0.15 in a couple of months, and I would expect 0.16 to be experimental for at least a couple of months before 1.0 comes out.