Satisfactory Goes Underground with Core Values, Its First Major Expansion

Satisfactory is heading underground. Coffee Stain Studios has officially announced Core Values, the first paid DLC and major expansion for its factory-building game.

Revealed during the Coffee Stain Big Break Showcase on September 29, 2026, the expansion will take Pioneers beneath the surface of MASSAGE-2(A-B)b with new environments, resources, flora, fauna, buildings and production lines.

Core Values is Satisfactory's first paid expansion

Until now, Coffee Stain has expanded Satisfactory through free updates and the game's transition from Early Access to version 1.0. Core Values marks a different step: it is officially described as the first paid DLC for Satisfactory and a major expansion.

Instead of simply extending the existing surface map with more land, Coffee Stain is opening an entirely new layer of MASSAGE-2(A-B)b beneath the environments players already know.

Pioneers will descend into the planet's crust and develop what the studio describes as an underground factory network.

Underground factories will have their own production systems

The most interesting part of the announcement is that the underground will not simply serve as additional building space.

Coffee Stain specifically mentions a different setting with new resources, alongside new production lines and factory buildings. That suggests Core Values is designed to create new logistical problems rather than asking experienced players to repeat exactly the same production chains below ground.

For a game built around optimizing increasingly complex factories, this distinction matters. New resources and manufacturing processes can potentially affect how players organize logistics between surface factories and the new underground network.

Why Core Values matters for multiplayer servers

Satisfactory is particularly suited to persistent multiplayer worlds. A group can spend dozens or even hundreds of hours developing the same factory, expanding production chains and progressively transforming large sections of the map.

Core Values therefore represents much more than a traditional content update for established communities. It adds an entirely new environment and progression layer to a game where existing saves can represent a considerable investment of time.

This immediately raises several questions for players running dedicated servers.

• Will existing saves automatically gain access to the underground areas?
• Will dedicated servers require a specific Core Values server build or configuration?
• Will every player joining an expanded world need to own the DLC?
• Will vanilla Satisfactory clients still be able to connect to a server using Core Values?
• How will existing mods interact with the expansion?
• Will server administrators need to perform any migration before enabling the DLC?

Coffee Stain has not answered these questions yet. Server owners should therefore avoid making assumptions about compatibility until the studio publishes the expansion's technical and multiplayer documentation.

Core Values does not have a release date yet

Coffee Stain has already opened the Steam page for Satisfactory: Core Values, but the expansion currently has no announced release date.

The Steam listing simply gives its planned release date as “To be announced”. Pricing has not been confirmed either.

More details are therefore expected before launch, particularly around progression, multiplayer behavior and the technical requirements for dedicated servers.

A major new chapter for persistent Satisfactory worlds

Core Values is already shaping up to be one of the most significant additions to Satisfactory since the game's 1.0 release.

New environments alone would provide fresh exploration opportunities, but combining them with new resources, production lines and buildings gives Coffee Stain room to expand the game's automation systems rather than simply increasing the available map area.

For multiplayer communities, the next important milestone will be Coffee Stain's explanation of save compatibility, DLC ownership and dedicated server deployment. Those details will determine how easily existing persistent worlds can make the transition to Core Values.