(Image credit: Wube Software)

The whistle has blown. The belts have stopped. The furnace is silent and cold. After 14 years of continual development, Factorio has received its final major update.

Developer Wube Software revealed that update 2.1 would be the last significant patch for its genre-defining factory building sim back in May, with the team deciding the game had "reached a good place to conclude active game development". The decision comes two years after Wube released Factorio's remarkable Space Age expansion , which lets players take their industrialisation efforts into the stars and across four wildly different alien planets.

If you were hoping Wube might sign off on Factorio on a similarly spectacular note, you may be disappointed.…