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Terraria’s final update, Journey’s End, arrived in May 2020—except its actual final update came out several months later, in October 2020. Ah, but then “unfinished business” resulted in the Labor of Love update in 2022, something developer Re-Logic said “we needed to do before we could feel fully comfortable moving on.” But then instead of moving on, another “definitely final update” was announced in 2022.
That update, 1.4.5, is currently holding as the final final Terraria update, but only because it’s not actually finished yet. It was supposed to be out in 2023 but that didn’t work, and neither did 2024. It’s getting there, but the choice was to crunch to make a 2024 release, or to just let it go and get it out sometime in ’25, which the studio eventually opted to do.
“We are sure that will not be welcome news for many—but we remain committed to being a quality-first studio, so we will take the time necessary for each update to feel ‘just right’… and we think that once the update is out, everyone will appreciate that time and care,” Re-Logic’s Ted “Loki” Murphy wrote at the time. “Apologies for this one taking so long for sure, but it will be well worth it.”
Ah, but there’s another, secret reason Re-Logic won’t stop working on Terraria: Life itself. “Terraria will never die as long as there is one last final update,” lead developer Andrew ‘Redigit’ Spinks said on Bluesky (via GamesRadar).
He also revealed his ultimate long-term plan for Terraria, which isn’t just to make a really great, unforgettable videogame, but to achieve immortality: “Before I die, I will upload my consciousness to Terraria, there I can troll the players for the rest of eternity.”
Hey, it’s good to have a goal, although I rather strongly suspect Spinks isn’t being entirely serious here. He does, however, have a history of trolling Terraria fans: In 2022, for instance, nine years after announcing Terraria 2, Spinks changed the location on his Twitter bio to “Terraria 2 – A New Age,” which caused a big stir among fans until Re-Logic confirmed that he (and a bunch of other people at the studio) were just having some “good fun” with fans.
Re-Logic gets away with it because it is all good fun, for one thing (Spinks also recently announced a new refund policy for Terraria: No questions asked as long as you can defeat him in single combat), but also because Terraria is a genuinely great game, holding an “overwhelmingly positive” rating across more than 1.3 million user reviews on Steam. That’s a staggering number, and the fact that it continues to draw in thousands of concurrent players every day, 14 years after its initial release, is equally impressive.
The situation has become something of a running joke among the Terraria community over the years—Re-Logic just can’t quit working on it—but I don’t think that’s an inherently bad thing, either. It’s a lot like Eric Barone and Stardew Valley, really: We’d love to see them do something new, but if they want to keep hammering away on the old stuff until the sun goes cold and the mountains crumble to the sea, that’d be great too.
Unfortunately, Spinks offered no indication as to when Terraria’s 1.4.5 update will go live. He did, however, commit to getting it done: “We are back to work tomorrow and I’ve got one single mission: releasing the final update. My game face is on.”
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Kurt Indovina
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