They Are Billions began with a Campaign meant to be its main attraction and a smaller randomized Survival mode intended partly for fun and testing. When a backer beta made Survival unexpectedly popular, Numantian Games changed course: it released that mode first on Steam Early Access, then spent the next stretch balancing public feedback and support work with the unfinished Campaign. The game reached version 1.0, with its Campaign, on June 18, 2019.
What was the original plan for They Are Billions?
Numantian Games announced They Are Billions on May 31, 2017, as a steampunk real-time strategy game about building a colony against an infected threat. The studio described two modes: randomized Survival runs, in which players developed a colony against infected for 100 days, and a larger single-player Campaign with research and mission choices. Campaign was presented as the main experience; Survival was one part of a broader game.
The announcement hoped for an Early Access launch in fall 2017 and suggested the finished game might follow after only a couple of months. Those were early projections, not a reliable schedule. Numantian’s announcement captures the ambition before public interest in Survival reshaped the release plan.
Why did They Are Billions launch in Early Access with only Survival mode?
Before a broad release, Numantian gave supporters access to Survival as beta testers. The studio had considered Kickstarter versus direct support through its own website, and used that supporter campaign to distribute beta keys. The beta served as a feedback channel, but it also revealed more demand—and more technical support needs—than the small team had initially encountered.
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A small test became a large audience
In a November 2017 developer account, Numantian said it had tested its custom engine on only a few dozen PCs before the beta expanded dramatically. Compatibility problems surfaced alongside thousands of forum posts and crash-report emails. The studio reported 10,000 players testing at the same time. Jesús Arribas later told PC Gamer that the original 10,000 beta keys had run out and the team could not get more until the Steam release.
That combination made the original wait-for-both-modes approach harder to sustain. Numantian first considered delaying Early Access until Survival and Campaign were ready, because it worried Survival alone would not contain enough material. It then saw people asking to play, while the beta-key supply had become a bottleneck. The studio chose to release Survival by itself on Steam Early Access rather than keep access restricted while the Campaign remained in development. The studio’s November update describes the beta’s growth and the decision-making around it; PC Gamer’s December 2017 interview adds Arribas’s account of the keys and the early launch.
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What the trade-off meant
| Release approach | What it offered | What it cost or left unresolved |
|---|---|---|
| Wait for Survival and Campaign to be ready | More of the intended game could arrive together, addressing the studio’s concern that Survival alone might feel too limited. | Players eager to join after the beta would have had to wait longer; the Campaign itself was taking more time than expected. |
| Release Survival first in Early Access | More players could access the mode, and public play and feedback could inform continued improvements. | The Campaign was still unfinished, and the team had to handle compatibility work, bug reports, crashes and community expectations while continuing development. |
This is a comparison of the documented choices, not a controlled test of two release strategies. Arribas later said the game came out about six months earlier than the studio would have liked, while describing the Early Access launch as successful.
Why did Survival catch on?
The mode’s appeal fit the game’s central tension: build a settlement, plan defenses, and face an infected attack where mistakes could end a run. Numantian’s later account says Survival had started as a quick mode for fun and for testing and balancing, but players responded strongly to the preview, so the team kept expanding it. The mode was procedurally generated, and the studio emphasized the consequence of having only one opportunity in a run.
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Arribas also described a design aimed at strategic planning rather than command speed. In a 2018 GamesBeat interview, he said the team wanted an RTS with depth in constructing bases and colonies, and that the ability to pause was intended to encourage strategic thinking over control skill. The setting paired a post-apocalyptic infected threat with Victorian-inspired steampunk visuals; the infected were central to the game’s concept, not simply interchangeable enemies. GamesBeat’s interview with Arribas discusses those design goals and the studio’s account of the game’s appeal.
How did Early Access affect development?
Going public did not mean the team could focus only on adding content. Numantian’s account describes compatibility problems from the custom engine, incoming bug reports and crash emails, and the work of responding to a growing community. The release-period developer update said beta feedback had led to improvements and fixes, and that this process would continue during Early Access.
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Survival and Campaign shared the same foundation
In 2018, Numantian explained that the modes shared core systems, so work on either affected the other. That made the relationship more complicated than simply alternating between two separate projects: expanding and balancing Survival could influence the systems needed by the Campaign, while Campaign work competed for the same development time. The studio also said the Campaign was more time-consuming than expected.
The December 2017 release update still characterized Campaign as the main mode and projected 40–50 hours for it. That was a forecast made at the time, not a measured playtime. The later 1.0 announcement used a different developer estimate for the finished Campaign.
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The custom engine and the scale of the threat
Arribas said Numantian tried Unity but could not achieve its desired movement scale smoothly, so the studio built a custom engine. In the 2018 interview, the developers described iterating from 2,000 to 5,000, 10,000 and 20,000, eventually reaching a reported capability of as many as 30,000 zombies. Those figures are the developers’ account of the engine’s intended unit scale, not independent performance benchmarks.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.When did They Are Billions leave Early Access?
Numantian announced version 1.0 on June 18, 2019, marking the game’s departure from Early Access and the availability of its Campaign, The New Empire. The developer described the Campaign as containing 48 missions and offering more than 60 hours of gameplay. These are Numantian’s launch descriptions, not independent measurements of mission count or player completion time. The same announcement described a digital art book and a DLC soundtrack with 22 themes as extras. The version 1.0 announcement records what the studio said was included at launch.
What the game’s success changed
The clearest arc is not simply that a game went viral. A mode designed as a smaller randomized component gave players an early way into the project; their response persuaded Numantian to make it the public Early Access release. That bought access to a larger audience and ongoing feedback, but it also brought technical support demands and made Survival’s growth compete with the Campaign for time on shared systems.
GamesBeat reported in September 2018 that They Are Billions had sold more than 750,000 copies. That is a dated press-reported figure, not a current sales total. By the 1.0 release in June 2019, the Campaign the studio had originally described as the central experience was available alongside the expanded game.
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