inZOI lost 96% of its players, but big modding updates are on the way
The rise, dip, and hopes of inZOI. The modding roadmap looks solid, but it needs more than that.
inZOI's been out in Early Access for over a month now, and while it kicked off strong with over 87,000 people curious about this upgraded take on life sim genre, the numbers have been steadily dropping since. Mod support is on the way, just like they said in the roadmap, but the real question is: will that be enough to bring players back or draw in new ones?
The state of inZOI's Early Access
Losing over 90% of players a few months after an Early Access launch, especially when the game starts off strong, isn’t really unusual. It happens all the time. A bunch of people check it out, see what it’s about, and either shelve it until it's more complete or refund it if it’s not their thing.
Source: SteamDB
In inZOI’s case, the drop-off felt really fast, maybe even too fast. There could be a few reasons for that: the game’s might be too demanding for the average player with a mid-range PC, or it didn’t deliver what people were expecting, or maybe there just haven’t been enough updates to keep gamers hooked during Early Access.
But here’s the thing, no dev team can realistically drop a massive update just six weeks after an Early Access launch. At that point, most of the focus is still on fixing bugs, smoothing out technical issues, and tweaking some aspects based on player feedback. And to be fair, the inZOI devs have been solid on that front. They’ve been really responsive and active in the community, especially on their official Discord. The way they communicate and engage with players is honestly a great example of how it should be done.
Source: Krafton
They’ve already made some solid changes, like cutting down on those weirdly awkward conversations, and improving the shading system as it was causing the characters to look kind of creepy at night. Plus, they finally added an option to turn off aging, which pretty much everyone was begging for. And as promised, with big updates coming every two months, mod support is set to drop in mid-May, according to today’s announcement from inZOI Studio.
Modding is coming soon, but what about new content?
ModKit kicks off in May with tools for customizing outfits and furniture, plus a new UI that makes tweaking game data a lot easier. September’s update takes it further – we’ll be able to modify character features like faces and hair, and customize building elements. It also opens the door to creating interaction-based content like dialogues, voice lines, rewards, and animations (so I’m guessing we’ll get even better mods than those strange ones from Nexus). By December, most outfits will be moddable, and we’ll have access to interaction script editing and localization tools.
The devs plan to keep collecting player feedback to improve modding, starting with a ModKit-themed AMA and a new feedback channel.
Source: Krafton
According to the roadmap the devs shared back in March, we should be seeing some new features soon, like in-game cheat codes, an adoption system. And then in August, the long-awaited swimming pools, freelancer jobs, and other upgrades.
They’ve added more outfits and furniture recently, which is nice, but I feel like people are really waiting for a big chunk of new content to dive back in. The modding tools are definitely exciting and something a lot of us want to mess around with, but I think most players are more hyped for the DLC coming in August. At the end of the day, the game just needs more things to do to really keep players engaged.
- Baby kidnapping in inZOI sparks a problem that is probably waiting to be patched up
- Realistic life sim was eating its own tail, devs had to intervene. No more long sleep and funny difficulties with childbirth inZOI
- inZOI characters no longer look like they came from a nightmare. That's thanks to realistic shadows and lighting, which players have been asking for
