Build challenges are nothing new to a game like Satisfactory, but Pass It On brings together content creators to collaborate on fascinating designs, just a few hours at a time. Then, they pass their file to another creator to add their design. From this kind of collaboration, some truly fascinating and inspired galleries come to fruition. The community does this multiple times a year, but the most recent (December) was the first time since the game entered its full release.
Game Rant spoke with Satisfactory streamer DC Wan Kenobi, as well as community managers Snutt Treptow and Mikael Niazi, about the December 2024 Pass It On and when to expect one in 2025.
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Satisfactory’s Build Challenge
Q: Where did the idea for Pass It On come from?
DC Wan: Back in 2021, I had a conversation with another community member. Having taken part in build battles/competitions in different games (Minecraft, Satisfactory, CS:Source) and combined with the idea of a raid train, the idea came to fruition. The original idea was to pass a save file between streamers with the end goal to complete the game. Each streamer would build for their time/stream working on something new or continuing from the previous person.
This changed for two reasons. Shortly after a call with Jace (he loved the idea for Pass It On), dedicated servers were announced. He knew but couldn’t say anything about this at the time. I decided to put the idea on hold. The reason for the save file being passed around and not using a dedicated server is performance, where the server would be located, as people participate all over the world. The best performance is local! Also, Update 5 launched which introduced Beams and Pillars. This changed Satisfactory building in such a way that allowed much more creativity and freedom of building.
Finding inner creativity and having an outlet for this is something I am very passionate about. I’ve always wanted to bring creativity out in people that they never knew they had inside and have a community spirit of bringing people together while meeting like-minded people with common interests. I have been involved with events most of my life, back in Counter-Strike: Source, Rust, and more. Making maps for said games, plus Portal 1/2, building levels in the Unreal Engine.
Q: What’s the history of the event?
DC Wan: It was originally titled Pass It On Near, shortened to P.I.O.near. The first event took place back in October 2022 and came with many challenges. I rallied together a number of content creators and back then we used Doodle and Google Sheets for timetabling/scheduling. The Pass It On event has come a long way since then and, as a web developer, I built the Pass It On event website – this is being updated and improved when I have the time, gathering feedback from the community.
CSS has been involved from the start. Snutt was the very first ever participant in the first event. Jace also took part in the first and many others since, with Mikael also taking part in the most recent. The Blueprinter was introduced in Update 7, but this had to be removed later due to abusive usage and large object counts. We are planning to bring these back for the next event with some restrictions. A game update dropping mid-event was fun. We started the event on Update 7, but Update 8 was released a day or so into the event. We decided to stick with Update 7 and the community rallied together finding a way to run the game standalone.
Q: What are some of the coolest builds you’ve seen come out of it?
DC Wan: That is a very difficult question. Everyone always brings their A-game when taking part in these events, whether they have 15 hours or 15,000 hours in the game. Ochi’s sign build, T4c0’s Commodore’s build, The SpongeBob SquarePants being the first beam-only build are the first to come to mind. Having seen many returning Pioneers to the event, I have genuinely seen an improvement in people’s skills and seen them grow with their building over the duration, not just in the event.
Treptow: There are too many to count. I really enjoy the ones that are like dioramas, where you can walk around and notice all the little fine details that people somehow manage to squeeze in there in such a short amount of time. The builds that are semi-functional are also really cool, and the builds where they manage to use the materials in the game in really creative ways make me appreciate how cleverly creative folks are in the community.
Niazi: There’s way too many to count. Other than my bias towards builds that refer to some of my favorite media or things in general, I love builds with moving parts, be they logistically functional or purely for visual spectacle or hypnosis.
Q: Did anything this time catch your eye?
DC Wan: The moving snake was very clever, and the Portal builds side-by-side are just some of the awesomeness that took part in the recent event.
Treptow: I can’t pick a favorite. There are too many!
Niazi: I’d be hard-pressed to pick a favorite this time around. I can think of several, but the first thing that comes to mind is a collab effort between Lawofthejungle7 and ShinnieKeyboards referring to Portal 2, which made me applaud!
Q: What makes Satisfactory such a good game for this kind of creativity?
Treptow: Honestly, I didn’t think Satisfactory would be such a good game for this kind of creativity. For sure, it is a sandbox game with a lot of possibilities for creative building, but it’s first and foremost a factory-building game and the build pieces you have are somewhat limited compared to a lot of other sandbox games. This makes it extra exciting for me to see just how far folks are able to take it!
Niazi: This is just a hunch of mine, but I think a lot of the initial hurdle to experiment and fool around with building BIG is removed by certain options available directly in the game, without mods or glitching. Options that could be considered cheats such as god mode, passive creatures, no build cost etc., are included in Satisfactory so that players can embrace playing exactly the way they want to because there is no wrong way to play. I can’t recall many games giving you such leeway to break much of their innate balancing. Of course, I’ll never understand what makes the people who build logistical, functional, and productive mega or even giga factories without these settings tick!
Passing It On After 1.0
Q: This Pass It On was during FICSMAS. Does that add anything to the experience?
DC Wan: Some builders have used FICSMAS trees in their builds, some presents and the snow blowers were fun until we had to remove them from the save mid-event for performance. Likely due to mods though.
Q: Has anything introduced in 1.0 made a difference in the designs this time?
DC Wan: Mk 6 belts for their colors and prettiness, portals were used in a Portal build to build an actual playable Test Chamber and new materials for the color variation. All awesome!
Q: What’s been the community reaction to the 1.0 release?
Treptow: It’s been great! We worked hard on making sure that the 1.0 release encapsulated the core of what makes Satisfactory the game it is and it seems like the version that we released resonated with our community! There are for sure more features we could add and a few bugs here and there that would’ve been nice if would’ve been able to get around fixing them, but for the most part, our community has enjoyed the 1.0 version of the game.
Niazi: It’s been fantastic. Full transparency, I still struggle to believe the game killed it the way it did across Steam and Epic on launch. The numbers were amazing and very humbling. I’m very happy that the additions brought by 1.0 seem to feel like even more of the natural Satisfactory experience, even though a few aspects of the game definitely got slightly crazier with the launch. I’m stoked to see where we can take this even further down the line!
Q: Any idea when the next Pass It On will be?
DC Wan: The Plan is for either the 6th or 27th March or in April 2025 – check our website. We aim for 3 Satisfactory events per year. We’re planning to do PIO for other games as well.
Q: Anything else you’d like to add?
DC Wan: I’d like to thank the team behind this who helped run the event, Coffee Stain Studios for all the hard work they put into, not just the game, but the community! They didn’t just make a game; they brought a large number of people together. Friendships have been forged and meetups have occurred across the globe. A big thank you to Game Rant for this opportunity. We have dipped our feet into Valheim and will do more Pass It On in the future. I do also have plans for Minecraft and some other games are on my radar. Watch this space and the website…
The last event broke all kinds of records. I hope we can keep this silliness, giving people some quality entertainment that runs for days going for a long time to come. Organizing bigger events and meeting other creative people who share the same passion and goals! Being able to put on such an amazing event, watch the Pass It On event grow. Observing participants’ growth and creativity as they become more comfortable while improving their building has been a wild and wonderful journey that warms my heart.
Treptow: It’s so cool to see our community organize events like these. It sort of takes this thing we created and makes it come alive in ways we didn’t expect, and I hope to see more in the future!
Niazi: My favorite games are what they are because of the gaming experience I came for, combined with the friends I made and stayed around for. That’s why I’m incredibly proud of and grateful for the Satisfactory community for being as open-minded, welcoming, and fun as they are. Events like Pass It On and others right next to it are the culmination and manifestation of how the community wants to come together and share something they love dearly. I’m reminding myself constantly to not take this passion for granted, and I want to thank each and every player for breathing life into Satisfactory.
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- Released
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September 10, 2024
- ESRB
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M For Mature 17+
- Publisher(s)
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Coffee Stain Publishing