Steam destroyed 0.18.47 today!

[cancer352]

I was playing factorio 0.18.47 on Steam and not the newest version for to prevent Steam's mod-destroying updates ! Most mods run on 0.18 perfectly, so I really needed this version 0.18.47 because every change leads to many mod incompatibities and destroys the existing game.
Even though I tried to prevent Steam's forced updates by this adjustment, Steam deleted 0.18.47 today and updated to an unwanted newer version and all mods don't work anymore.
WHAT THE HECK DOES STEAM THINK to destroy gamer's games by their forced updates ???
Folks, if you have the same problem with steam then download a version from this factorio.com and try to play factorio without Steam.
Hope that will fix the problem and saves hours of your spent work with this game.
Happy gaming.

[Loewchen]

There were no mod API changes between 0.18.47 and 1.0.0., if your mods worked before they would work now.

[valneq]

There were no mod API changes between 0.18.47 and 1.0.0., if your mods worked before they would work now.

This is unfortunately not true. Some mods from before 0.18.47 had no crashed ship to deal with in Freeplay. Adding it broke a handful of mods. Seablock comes to mind.

[Zavian]

0.18.47 is still available from https://www.factorio.com/download/archive. I suggest using the .zip version as that is fully self contained, and won't get automatically updated. (Assuming you haven't updated mods/re-saved the game with 1.0, you should be able to just copy your existing setting, mod folder and saves into the unpacked directory, sync mods with the save (make sure you also sync startup settings) and that should work).

(More generally for any game, not just Factorio, if you are worried about updates breaking mods/save games, then you should attempt to use a version of the game outside steam control).

[Termak]

There is a mod to disable the crashed ship cutscene, i had to install that to get the tinystart mod working which im using.

[wosthisdo]

Mod to get rid of cutscene and allow, e.g, Tiny Start to work: "No Freeplay Cutscene"
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/NoFreeplayCutscene

[5thHorseman]

It's not as important now that updates are less frequent, but let me use this post as another chance to stress...

IF YOU CARE WHAT OLDER VERSION YOU ARE ON STOP USING STEAM

Steam will eventually wipe out old versions as Wube posts new ones. There is no alternative to this for them, so it is up to you to download the version you want from the Factorio website and use that.

[ickputzdirwech]

Here is an explanation from Klonan from a while back:

Steam only allows us a certain number of beta versions, eventually we need to free up the slots.

Also we have never recommended or supported users sticking on old experimental versions, and we make no guarantee that we will make them available in perpetuity.
If you want to not worry about 'forced updates breaking things', we would recommend staying on Stable versions of the game.