Official patches, milestones, and community talk β from launch and the million-player milestone through v1.046 / the 8-20 world reset / v1.0.10. Events and data per official Steam announcements.
"FANART & PATCH 1.0.10": up to 64 dropped items now persist across sessions (with priority order); water cleans cooked weapons and tools, so skin display survives the grill; Anglerfish health reduced; roulette fixes for repeated skins; longer connection timeout; Radar X removed; item-position fixes. The studio also opened a fan-art channel on Discord.
In one week the review count climbed from ~6,000 to 27,028, holding "Very Positive". GameBrief scores it 7.6/10: the physics comedy and Trick Shot economy genuinely work in co-op, but boss health does not scale for solo and the core loop thins out after a few hours β "recommended, mostly for groups".
Dazed Games announced on Steam: "WE HIT 1 MILLION FISHERMEN! THANK YOU ALL!" In the same post the studio answered the obvious follow-up β "Yes, we'll be adding more content!" β without detailing what that will include.
The launch weekend peaked around 340,000 concurrents and climbed to 373,971 by 8/26. For context, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's free beta the same weekend drew roughly 115,000. For a small indie co-op game, that made it one of August's breakout Steam releases.
Difficulty is now selectable from the main menu and in-game. Easy: creatures have -25% HP and deal -50% damage. Hard: +25% HP and +25% damage. The patch also adds a Steam connectivity debug readout in the main menu and fixes corrupted save files. Solo players stuck on a boss finally have an official out.
1.0.4 raised the lobby cap from 4 to 8 players and nerfed the Pufferfish and Whale. 1.0.5 added invite-only private lobbies, in-game session-type switching (needs a restart), removed fake "Game Name" servers, stopped griefers from joining and instantly ending sessions, added X/Y axis inversion, and dropped the minimum locked FPS from 50 to 30. 1.0.6 overhauled saves: autosave every minute plus manual saves on Save / Main Menu / Quit.
Released 8/20 at $7.99, discounted to $4.95 for launch week. Solo is playable but several bosses (Albatross, Pufferfish) are community-reported as near-unbeatable alone β the game is designed around co-op. Windows only; no Mac or Linux build.
Big content drop: 30 new ocean fish expand the codex; Keke's new quest opens the route to the seaside; glowing fishing spots now have a daily chance to become rare spots; Yan Ruyu's shop gets an open-hours sign; you can pick up fish while holding the rod; the baseball bat can be sold to Su Kele. Plus localization, bobber-duplication, and NPC drink-counting fixes.
Tuned models for arctic char, ide, burbot, Atlantic salmon and bream; added a catch-screen hotkey (on by default); auto-selects the lightest fish for crafting; realism passes on the Nock, White, Sula rivers, Copper Lake and Norwegian Sea; spinning reel efficiency up. The headline change is the world data reset β fish habitats and bait/lure preferences may have shifted, so confirm the codex and bait table in-game.
Multiple Steam discussion threads now ask for cloud saves (not listed in the current store feature panel), and Steam Deck players report saves not syncing across devices. Other reports: 0x11C7 launch crashes, the post-1.0.10 "uncook" demand, and missing items after loading. A rumored Sniper Rifle nerf keeps circulating, unconfirmed by the developer.
The slot machines (one per island) are the new hot topic for collectors: the Spider Crab Reel was reported spitting out duplicate skins and odd low-rarity payouts, with odds unpublished. v1.0.10 addressed roulette issues. Full coverage of the machine, Z/C skin switching, and Drip collection is in our Reel of Fortune & weapon skins guide.
Kill multipliers for trick shots (aerial kills, no-scope spins, long-range headshots) are not published by the developer. The r/HowToFish subreddit has become the de facto data hub β GameBrief's review cites its player-tested values directly.
Reviews and Steam feedback converge on the same point: boss HP and damage do not scale with party size, so Albatross and Pufferfish are close to unbeatable solo. v1.0.9's Easy mode became the standard answer. Players also keep asking on the subreddit whether basic weapons need rebuying on later islands β most weapons and upgrades carry across islands.
Patches 1.0.4/1.0.5 removed the exploit that let players travel to any island without unlocking it β a direct hit to early speedruns. The same patch fixed 4K slot-machine skins going invisible. The community is waiting on rebuilt routes.