Editorial Process

The core rule

AI organises facts. It never supplies them.

That single sentence governs everything below. Every factual claim on this site originates from a named, linkable source that a human read. Drafting assistance is used; fact origination is not delegated.

This is not a general principle borrowed from somewhere — it is a direct response to the specific risk of writing about a game released three weeks ago. Ask any language model about a brand-new title and it will produce fluent, confident, entirely fabricated detail: characters who do not exist, mechanics that were never implemented, item names invented on the spot. Players spot it immediately. Search engines spot it more slowly and more permanently.

Source hierarchy

Not all sources are equal, and for a game in active development the hierarchy has an unusual wrinkle: official does not automatically mean current.

1. The live build and its store listing. The Steam page is authoritative for pricing, specifications, review scores, and the Early Access commitments including the wipe and the free-to-play transition.
2. Official design posts and build notes. Playable Worlds publishes detailed design material. These are the best available source for why a system works the way it does, and for mechanics that have not changed.
3. Launch-build creator footage. Video from the current build is how we verify that official documentation still describes the live game. Where the two disagree, current footage wins on terminology and numbers.
4. Established trade press. Used for developer statements, patch coverage and independent hands-on assessment.
5. Community wikis and forums. Used to find leads and to corroborate, never as a sole source for a factual claim.

The stale-official problem

This deserves its own section because it is the single most common way Stars Reach guides go wrong, including guides written in good faith.

Playable Worlds published excellent, detailed design deep-dives during 2024. Those posts remain the clearest explanation of the advancement philosophy anywhere. They also refer to the mining tool as the “extractor”, while the live build calls it the Terraformer. A writer quoting the official source faithfully would produce a guide with the wrong tool name.

Our rule is a split: official deep-dives govern design rationale and mechanics that have not changed; the Steam listing and footage from the last thirty days govern terminology, numbers and tool names. When we rely on an older official post for something that may have drifted, we say so on the page.

The two-source rule

Two independent sources agreeing is the minimum bar for stating something as fact. One source is a claim — we may still publish it, but we say where it came from.

A worked example: the Haven tutorial sequence on our beginner guide names Mayor Bob Howard, Clint Rockford, Bruna and Gahgrum. That sequence is documented in community field-guide material and visible in launch-build creator footage. Two independent confirmations, so it is stated plainly. Had only one existed, it would be attributed rather than asserted.

What we do when there is no answer

Often the honest answer is that Playable Worlds has not published it. Our policy is to say so, in the place where a reader is looking for it, rather than fill the gap.

Currently undocumented and marked as such across the site: the complete playable species roster and any mechanical differences between species; tool quality tiers and their effects; weapon statistics and a full weapon list; the crafting station list; the mechanics of claiming and contesting planetary governance; full-loot rules for PvP; a planet count or map; and any dated roadmap, wipe date or 1.0 date.

Every one of those has a confident-sounding answer circulating somewhere. We could not trace any of them to a primary source, so we do not publish them. A page that says “this has not been documented” is more useful than a page that guesses convincingly.

Separating fact from inference

Some of the most useful material on this site is analysis rather than reported fact — for example, our conclusion that switching combat aiming modes mitigates server desync, or that a thin population pushes players away from crafting professions in a self-reinforcing loop.

Neither is stated by the developers. Both follow from combining published facts. Where we do this, we label it: pages carry an “Our own workings” note explaining what the original analysis was and what it was derived from, so you can judge the reasoning rather than take it on trust.

Updates and the “last reviewed” date

Every page shows a last-reviewed date. That date changes when a person re-reads the page against the live game — not automatically on every deploy.

This distinction matters. A build timestamp regenerated on every publish tells you nothing about whether the content is current; it just makes stale pages look fresh. If a date on this site says a page was reviewed on a particular day, a human read it that day.

Pages covering fast-moving subjects — server status, player counts, the news summary and the buying verdict — are reviewed most frequently, because they are the ones most likely to go wrong quietly.

AI disclosure

Articles on this site are researched with AI assistance and written, edited and fact-checked by Sukie before publication. AI is used for drafting, structuring and research support. It is not used to originate facts, and no page is published without a human having verified its claims against the sources listed on it.

We disclose this because it is the honest thing to do, and because a reader deciding how much to trust a page deserves to know how it was made.

Corrections policy

Errors get fixed. If a patch changes an answer, or we simply got something wrong, the page is corrected and its last-reviewed date updated.

Where a correction materially changes advice we previously gave — for instance if our buying verdict shifted — we note the change on the page rather than silently rewriting history. You can report an error through the contact page, and pointing at the source that contradicts us is the fastest way to get it fixed.