What Changed Since Launch

Why this page matters

Moon Sweepers released on 23 October 2026. Within 48 hours it received 1.0.3 and 1.0.4, both of which changed rules rather than just fixing crashes. Upgrades became crew-wide. J.O.O.N.A.S. got roughly twice as fast. Saves started repairing themselves.

That means most launch-week guides, including several still ranking well, contain statements that are now false. The most common stale claim is that brush capacity upgrades are personal. They are shared.

Patch 1.0.4, 25 October 2026

The headline is J.O.O.N.A.S. becoming genuinely autonomous, plus a set of quality-of-life changes that mostly affect long sessions.

J.O.O.N.A.S. rework

• Cleans one hex at a time, outside in, until it is 100% complete.
• Fires capsules to the nearest Capsule Catcher while moving, with no dock trips.
• Keeps cleaning when no players are nearby.
• Navigates around buildings and skips hexes it cannot reach.
• Shows which sector it is currently cleaning.
• Gauge flashes red when full.

New gear and map tools

• Night Vision Goggles, a $350 suit upgrade. Press N to cycle helmet lamp, goggles, off.
• Improved Moon Map: right-click to set waypoints, focus or teleport. All robots appear with their current activity.
• Teleport Panel to view and teleport between discovered stations.
• Suit HUD icons for lamp, jetpack boosts and gravity boots.
• Capsule Catcher now shows its contents and holds up to 100 kg.

Saving and backups

• Saving a large cleaned base takes a fraction of a second instead of up to half a minute.
• Quitting no longer hangs on the saving message.
• Each save slot keeps up to five automatic backups, taken a minute into each session and then every 30 minutes, stored outside Steam Cloud.
• Damaged saves are repaired from backup on load, and after a crash on next start.

Multiplayer and fixes

• Ground synchronisation reworked, so dust no longer reappears on other players' screens.
• Any crewmate can place splitters and mergers on belts built by other players.
• Mergers now alternate between inputs.
• Fixed machines pausing with "Could not pack a capsule" despite power and materials.
• Fixed players falling through the Moon, including after teleporting.
• Fixed capsules falling beneath foundations after removing belts.
• Fixed freezing when switching tools while many robots are working.
• Steam Deck / Linux: fixed startup on older Proton versions.
• Windows / AMD: DirectX 11 is now the default to prevent AMD GPU crashes. Add -force-d3d12 to launch options to override.

Patch 1.0.3, 24 October 2026

A smaller but more consequential patch, because it changed the multiplayer economy.

The upgrade change

Upgrades are shared. The whole crew uses the host's upgrade matrix, and anyone's purchase upgrades everyone. Older saves keep the highest level anyone had bought.

Everything else

• Host controls added: kick and ban from the crew menu.
• Roughly 20% higher frame rates on large bases in the developers' own tests.
• Heavily cleaned saves that looked corrupted now load normally.
• Saves self-repair from a backup when loading.
• Vehicles work at every garage and can be recalled from any of them.
• Demolishing a garage no longer deletes the vehicles kept there.
• Splitters and mergers built by crewmates now function.
• The deposit intake pays exactly what its screen shows.
• Machines can span several foundations, so large buildings fit on square tiles.

Launch and the developer statement

Moon Sweepers released on 23 October 2026 at $8.99 with a 15% discount to $7.64. The next day, the two-person team published a statement acknowledging that the launch had not been smooth:

"We've seen your reports about crashes, performance issues, multiplayer bugs, lack of automation and progression balancing. We completely understand how frustrating these issues can be."

The statement listed what they had already fixed (shared multiplayer upgrades, performance optimisation, save fixes, host controls, automation fixes) and what they were still working on: J.O.O.N.A.S. units stopping, remaining crashes, automation reliability and progression balancing.

Both 1.0.3 and 1.0.4 followed within a day of that message, which is unusually fast for a two-person studio.

Known issues

Based on the developer statement and the patch notes, these were the areas still being worked on after 1.0.4:

• Remaining crash and performance reports on some hardware.
• Automation reliability and production edge cases.
• Progression and balance tuning.
• Steam Deck remains unverified rather than officially supported.

If you hit something, the official Discord is where the developers collect reports. It is linked from the Steam store page and from our footer.

Save compatibility

Going forward, backup files are the safety net: five per slot, every 30 minutes, stored outside Steam Cloud so a cloud sync problem cannot destroy them.