Dev History

Naval Action has been in active development for a decade, and it shows: the game you sail today has been wiped, rebuilt, expanded, and rebalanced many times over. This page is a high-level map of that journey — the milestones that actually changed how the game plays — rather than a log of every patch (there have been well over six hundred developer announcements). If you have just arrived, it explains why veterans talk about "the old days" so much; if you are returning, it shows what you missed.

Before Steam — origins (to 2015)

Naval Action was taking shape well before it reached Steam. By 2014 the developers were already running an open development forum and posting work-in-progress art of the ships that would become the game's backbone — among them HMS Pickle, the USS Rattlesnake, La Renommée, a 74-gun HMS Bellona, and the 64-gun Ingermanland. From the outset the project was deliberately collaborative: the forum's own founding rules called a free exchange of ideas "essential in development of the game and community," and many features that shipped — and many that were cut — came straight from player feedback. That ethos carried into Early Access and is still visible in how the game is run today.

2016 — Early Access begins

Naval Action arrived on Steam Early Access on 21 January 2016, built by the Ukrainian studio Game-Labs around a sailing-and-gunnery model many players still consider the best in any game. From the very first announcement the developers set an open-development tone, asking players to file in-game F11 reports and warning, in as many words, to expect the rough edges of early access.

That first year filled in the open world piece by piece. The 9.x patches added the sailable Caribbean and its ports ("Land sighted"), then crew management and resource production, fishing, officers and fleets, national alliances, and successive reworks of conquest and trading. The shape of the game — sail the open sea, craft and trade, fight for ports — was set here. A separate cooperative PvE server was also running by early 2016, the ancestor of today's Peace server.

2017–2018 — The rework years

This was the era of big, disruptive change. In March 2017 the developers ran the game's first full asset wipe, resetting everyone's ships and materials — the first of several resets that would punctuate Naval Action's history. It was followed by "Mega patch 10.00" and a rapid run of numbered patches: Patch 11, Patch 12: Caribbean Invasion, Patch 13, and the experimental Patch 14 series that pushed for more realism in ship behaviour.

Through 2018 the patches marched toward a finished product: a testable tutorial (Patch 15), a "mega patch" adding patrol missions and PvP loot drops (Patch 19), a new open-world user interface (Patch 25), and a sweeping Patch 27 that reworked the port interface, streamlined the economy, and introduced insurance and new currencies.

2019 — Out of Early Access

After Patch 30 ("Ships of the Line — Rulers of the Sea") and Patch 31 (port investments and release preparation), Naval Action left Early Access on 13 June 2019. The launch announcement thanked the community for years of feedback and bug reports, and ended on a promise that would become a running joke among players:

"No more wipes or resets!"

The first post-launch "Treacherous Waters" seasonal update arrived that October. (The no-wipes promise, as the rest of this page shows, did not entirely hold.)

2020–2021 — Welcome to the Caribbean

The multi-part Welcome to the Caribbean updates (early to mid-2020) added new ships — among them Le Suffren / Redoutable and Le Duguay-Trouin / HMS Implacable — and continued tuning the world. Later in 2020 came a notable sailing change: a wind-shadow update paired with the decision that a ship's cargo hold no longer slows it down, plus buy/sell contracts for the market.

2021 brought a ship maneuvering and turning overhaul that changed how every hull handled, and a major year-end update introducing the Bravery perk and universal upgrades. Alongside the big patches, the developers settled into a rhythm of recurring weekend loot events that continues to this day.

This era also saw a change in where development happened. In August 2020 the team moved their patch notes and announcements from the original Naval Action forum to Steam, consolidating developer communication where most players already were, and launched an official Discord soon after. That handoff is why this timeline draws on the older forum archive for everything up to 2020, and on the Steam announcement feed from there forward.

2022 — Free-to-play and seasons

The biggest structural change since release came on 19 October 2022, when Naval Action went free-to-play. A new "Caribbean" server launched as the free experience, and with it the game adopted a seasonal model: periodic resets and leaderboards rather than one permanent world. Season One began that December. Earlier in the year a major patch had reworked port investments, and an economy rebalance had targeted the long-standing problem of players using alternate accounts to dominate trade and conquest.

2023–2024 — Safe zones, combat, and "Reborn"

In May 2023 a major update introduced Safe Zones — green protected areas around most ports where players cannot be attacked, giving newcomers room to level up — along with a rebalanced combat model that tied gun damage to cannonball weight, and a weekly solo ship race. Seasons continued to turn over through 2023 and into 2024, with patches themed around combat improvements and a "War on Grind."

In May 2024 the developers announced a forthcoming large update under the banner "Naval Action Reborn," signalling the ambitious overhaul that would land the following year.

2025 — Materia Prima, the great reset, and the Peace server

2025 reshaped the game again. The long-running War server was closed in late February and its experience merged, and a sweeping Gunpowder / Materia Prima update was tested and then deployed on 10 April 2025 — billed as the "Final Last Wipe and Reset," overhauling resource supply and the economy.

Crucially for this guide, the Peace server reopened on 11 April 2025 with a fresh start after the reset. It is not a new idea, though: Naval Action has offered a cooperative, PvE server since its earliest days — a dedicated PvE server was already running in 2016, and the "Peace server" name was in use by 2019. It is the server Naval Gaming sails on and the one this guide leads with. The same period introduced NPC Raiders and raid port battles (which later came to the Peace server), and added the Galeon as a DLC ship. Further large updates followed through the summer and autumn, including an August major update and a broad October patch.

2026 — The latest chapter

Recent updates have concentrated on sailing and combat feel: an open-world ship-speed and gun rebalance in late January, then the April 2026 update adding the Spanish ship of the line Montanes (launched 1794), a reworked combat pass, and a return of the Rules of Engagement toward their 2016 principles — battles open to both sides for 45 minutes so allies and clanmates can join. The Montanes also arrived as a DLC ship, and the months since have brought a steady stream of sailing, carronade, and engagement-distance tweaks.

Who makes Naval Action — and who owns it

One reason the game's history feels so eventful is that the company behind it has changed hands more than once. Naval Action has had, in effect, three custodians:

• Game-Labs (from 2013) — the Ukrainian studio that created Naval Action and developed it through Early Access, full release, and the move to the Caribbean. It is also known for the Ultimate General and Ultimate Admiral series.
• Stillfront Group (from 2021) — in May 2021 the Swedish games group Stillfront acquired Game Labs, bringing Naval Action under a much larger corporate umbrella.
• Bermuda Computer Club, Inc. (from late 2024) — development and support of Naval Action then passed out of Game-Labs again, returning to the game's original creators, and it is today owned and operated by Bermuda Computer Club, Inc. The official site now carries its copyright, and the community forum lives at forum.bermudaclub.net — the same source much of this page's earlier history is drawn from.

The constant through all of it is the original team. Game-Labs was co-founded in 2013 by Maxim Zasov — previously a business director at Wargaming — with partners he had met, fittingly, while playing the Age-of-Sail MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea. Convinced they could build a better maritime game, they assembled a small distributed studio (Naval Action's crew based largely in Ukraine) and set out to model sailing and gunnery more faithfully than anyone had before. Zasov has described a deliberately research-heavy approach and a preference for adding content over endlessly rebalancing what already works:

"Fear the man who practiced one kick 10,000 times."

Following development yourself

Naval Action is still actively patched, often several times a month. The developers post every change to the game's Steam announcements, and that feed is the source this page is built from. Because the game moves quickly, treat any specific numbers elsewhere in this guide as current to its "last verified" date — and when in doubt, the live game and the official feed win. For more on how we keep up, see How This Guide Is Made.