RimWorld Climbs Steam's Weekly Chart After Ditching Unity: What Update 1.7 Changes

RimWorld climbed from 91st to 75th on Steam's weekly most-played chart in the week after Ludeon Studios announced update 1.7 on Steam on 12 October 2026. The update moves the colony sim from Unity to Waylith, the studio's own engine, and Ludeon says it runs two to four times faster, with saves and most mods intact. It is playable now on an opt-in beta branch.

This article is built on Ludeon's announcement, Steam's public chart, player and review data read on 19 October 2026 at 06:42 UTC, and reporting from PC Gamer, GamingOnLinux and Game Developer. Performance figures are Ludeon's own; we have not run the update.

What does RimWorld update 1.7 change?

On the surface, nothing: Ludeon says the game "looks and plays exactly the same". Underneath, Waylith replaces Unity entirely. In the studio's stress test of a late-game colony, 1.7 ran 2.2 times faster than 1.6, and a modpack of 1,500 mods loaded in six minutes instead of 14. Ludeon also lists faster startup, map and world generation, and higher ticks per second, and adds that results will vary with each PC and mod list.

Do my saves and mods still work?

According to Ludeon, you do not need to do anything. Saves move freely between 1.6 and 1.7 in both directions, and the vast majority of mods run without changes from their authors. A mod marked in yellow as "potentially unsupported" is flagged only because the version number changed; Ludeon is asking modders to test and republish their mods as 1.7-compatible so the warning disappears. Modders also gain access to the latest C# language features.

The one group that may lose out is players on old hardware. Ludeon warns that 1.7 may not run on PCs more than 10 years old and asks affected players to report it on the official development Discord. A post on r/RimWorld from a player in exactly that position drew 2,462 upvotes and 344 comments by 19 October.

How do you try RimWorld 1.7 now?

1. In your Steam library, right-click RimWorld and select Properties.
2. Open the Betas tab and choose the branch "unstable".
3. Restart Steam if the game does not update, and pick "Play 1.7 Unstable" if Steam asks.

What do the Steam numbers show a week later?

RimWorld is eight years past its 1.0 release, yet it moved up Steam's weekly most-played chart in the week after the announcement. In the week to 18 October it rose 16 places, from 91st to 75th, with a peak of 45,129 players at once. On Monday morning, at 06:42 UTC, 22,904 people were playing.

Reviews tell a similar story. We counted every Steam review posted in the 7.7 days before the announcement and the 6.6 days after it, across all languages: the daily rate rose from about 58 to about 97, an increase of roughly 69%. The share of positive reviews barely moved, from 98.0% to 97.6%, and the all-time score stays Overwhelmingly Positive.

The chart cannot say why players came back, and the announcement was not the only event that week: 17 October was the eighth anniversary of 1.0. Interest outside the usual community was real, though. A post about the switch on r/gaming reached 14,430 upvotes and 879 comments, and Ludeon's own post on r/RimWorld passed 9,600 upvotes. Whether the climb lasts is the real test: in our analysis of Steam's biggest autumn risers, free updates produced gains that held for a month, while sale spikes faded.

What is BRUTAL, the framework behind Waylith?

Ludeon credits RocketWerkz, whose BRUTAL framework "helped make Waylith possible". As GamingOnLinux reported on 16 October, BRUTAL is not a full engine but a C# framework, released by Ahwoo with RocketWerkz. It is free and royalty-free, but source-available rather than open source: its licence requires a logo before gameplay. It already powers six projects at three studios, including RocketWerkz's Kitten Space Agency.

Both companies are led by Dean Hall, the creator of DayZ, who told Game Developer that frameworks, not engines, are the future of game development. His pitch, quoted by GamingOnLinux, is short: "You are only as independent as your tools are."

What we don't know yet

• When 1.7 reaches the main branch: Ludeon has not given a date.
• Anything about the new game: Ludeon says only that RimWorld "isn't the only game on Waylith" and that details may take a while.
• How the Mac and Linux versions are affected: the announcement does not cover them separately.

We will update this article when 1.7 leaves the beta branch. For the wider picture of what Steam players are doing this month, see our report on Steam's 43.5 million concurrent user record.