The Stars Reach Wipe: What Gets Deleted and What Survives

What the developers actually committed to

The commitment appears in the standard Steam Early Access disclosure, which is the most binding place a studio can make a statement of this kind, since Valve requires it to describe the planned differences between the Early Access and full versions.

Two things are stated there. First, a progression wipe is planned before the full release. Second, founder packs and purchased items persist through it.

What is not stated is a date. There is no published schedule for when the wipe happens, and the studio's stated expectation is that Early Access lasts at least six months from the 18 August 2026 launch. Treat the wipe as 'sometime after February 2027, probably immediately before 1.0', and treat any more specific number you see quoted elsewhere as speculation unless it links to an official post.

What survives, item by item

Why sandbox MMOs wipe, and what it signals

A wipe reads as bad news, and in a live game it would be. In an Early Access sandbox MMO it is closer to routine, and understanding why makes it easier to judge what this particular one means.

Sandbox economies are cumulative in a way that themepark ones are not. When every item in the game is player-crafted, as it is in Stars Reach, the total stock of goods and materials only ever grows. If the studio then rebalances resource yields, changes a crafting recipe, or fixes an exploit that let someone duplicate materials, the existing economy carries all of that history forward permanently. Early testers end up sitting on wealth generated under rules that no longer exist, and every subsequent balance decision has to account for it.

Wiping resets that. It is the only clean way to launch a player-driven economy on a level footing, and it is why studios building this genre almost always wipe before going live. The alternative is shipping 1.0 with a permanently distorted market and a founding class of players who cannot be caught.

There is a second, less discussed reason. A wipe lets the studio change fundamental systems without owing anyone compensation. If Playable Worlds decides during Early Access that the number of skills you can keep in practice is wrong, or that the atrophy rate needs to change, a planned wipe means they can simply change it. Locking progression in early would make the game harder to fix — which, given that fixing things is the entire point of Early Access, would be self-defeating.

How this should change the way you play

If you have bought in, the wipe is not a reason to stop playing — it is a reason to play differently.

Treat Early Access as an extended demo of the systems rather than as the start of your real character. Try the professions you would not normally pick. Dig the hole that might collapse. Test whether the classless skill system lets you build the hybrid you have in mind. Deliberately atrophy a skill tree to see how painful getting it back actually is. All of that is free right now in a way it will never be again, because none of it is a sunk cost.

What is worth avoiding is anything that only pays off over a long horizon: grinding toward a distant mastery, building an elaborate settlement you are emotionally invested in, or accumulating wealth for its own sake. Those are the activities the wipe punishes.

The practical upside is that this is the cheapest possible time to make mistakes, and in a game with an atrophy mechanic and a limited number of skills you can keep in practice, knowing which mistakes to avoid at 1.0 is worth something real.

A checklist for the pre-wipe period

If you are playing during Early Access, these are the things worth doing precisely because they cost nothing right now.

• Test the atrophy mechanic deliberately. Learn a skill tree, let it fall out of practice, then bring it back and see how long the recovery actually takes. This is the single most consequential mechanic to understand before you commit at 1.0, and it is expensive to experiment with once progress is permanent.
• Try the profession you would not pick. Most players will settle into one identity at 1.0. Early Access is the only time trying combat engineering or xenobiology on a whim costs you nothing.
• Push the mining hazards. Deliberately tunnel through soft material without supports and find out what a cave-in actually does to you. Learning that lesson with a permanent character is a worse way to learn it.
• Build something ambitious and then abandon it. Homesteading is one of the most developed systems in the current build, and the wipe means you can treat your first settlement as a rough draft.
• Write down what frustrated you. Feedback during Early Access is the one form of influence that expires — once the design settles, it stops mattering.

How to find out when the wipe is announced

There is no published date, so the practical question becomes where the announcement will appear first when it comes.

The Steam news feed for the game and the official build notes on the studio's site are the two authoritative channels, and a wipe of this significance would be announced in both. The official Discord typically carries operational announcements earliest, which makes it the fastest but also the noisiest option. MMO trade press tends to pick things up within a day, which is fast enough for a scheduled event that will be announced well in advance.

What we would not rely on is community speculation. Wipe rumours are a permanent feature of Early Access communities, and in a game that has already wiped once during pre-alpha, every server maintenance window generates a fresh round of them. Until it appears in the official build notes, treat any specific date as unverified.

We update this page when the studio announces, and the last-reviewed date below reflects the last time a human checked the official channels rather than an automatic timestamp.

What the wipe tells you about the studio's plans

A committed pre-1.0 wipe is a piece of information about intent, and it is worth reading as one.

Studios wipe when they expect to keep changing things that a preserved character would constrain. If Playable Worlds were close to finished, freezing progression now would cost them little and would buy goodwill. Committing to delete everything instead signals that fundamental systems — skill limits, atrophy rates, economy balance, resource yields — are still genuinely in play.

For a player deciding whether to buy in, that cuts both ways honestly. It means the game you play during Early Access is not the game that ships, so evaluating 1.0 on the basis of today's build will mislead you in both directions. It also means feedback given now can still change things, which is the entire argument for participating in Early Access at all.

Combined with the free-to-play 1.0 release, it produces the clearest possible statement of what this period is: a paid test with a self-selected group, ahead of a relaunch that is the one the studio is actually aiming at.