Sand publisher celebrates 300,000 copies sold: ‘We getting a half hour of air conditioning tonight!’

XA couple weeks after its early access launch, things are going mostly pretty well for the steampunk-mechs-in-the-desert game Sand: Raiders of Sophie. An update that rolled out on July 2 caused some surprise headaches and had to be rolled back, which isn’t great, but on the brighter side the game looks to be a legitimate hit, too.

“300K copies for Sand sold,” Alex Nichiporchik, CEO of publisher TinyBuild, wrote today on X. “We getting [a] half hour of air conditioning tonight!”

(Image credit: Alex Nichiporchik (Twitter))

The second update for Sand: Raiders of Sophie went live on June 2, but caused connection problems that forced the developers to pull the plug. The plan was to figure out what was happening and redeploy the update later in the week, but fortunately developers were able to get it squared away fairly quickly.

The re-rollout of the new update, and no doubt the coming of the weekend—a long one for gamers in the US—has helped push Sand to its highest concurrent player count yet on Steam at just over 40,000. That’s good enough to put it in the middle of Steam’s 100 most played games chart, between Farming Simulator 25 and Helldivers 2 (PC gaming is so wonderfully diverse) and while it’s nowhere near the six-figure counts of the real big boys, bear in mind that Sand is not free to play—at $20 a pop with its launch discount, that adds up to not a bad little chunk of change.

The full patch notes for Sand: Raiders of Sophie update 2 are below.

Update #2 changelist:Fixed an issue that caused servers to become unavailable, and players were stuck on the “Connecting” screenBecause of thіs issue, we reverted yesterday’s updateImproved BattlEye behavior to decrease false-positive bansOcclusion changes that will have a minor positive effect on game performanceAdditional improvements to the character movementImprovements to the trampler collisionsDecreased the number of shakes and glitches during the collision between tramplersPossibly fixes issue when character would fly in the air after the collision between tramplersPossibly fixed the issue that trampler parts would be invisible but you would still be able to interact with themLet us know if you will still encounter this issue after the patchFixed oversaturated boxes and props in the lobbyFixed that trampler stability didn’t affect speedFixed energy rod selling price on the contract platforms from 450 to 50Fixed the issue where a character’s body may remain in the air after deathFixed the issue that you could make additional shots from autocannon by pressing the right mouse buttonAnother round of improvements to the character controller. Including but not limited to:Fixed issue with getting stuck on difficult terrainFixed several issues with parkourFixed different issues with movementFixed issue with flickering names on the landing cutsceneImprovements to the hit registrationImproved occlusion for the compartments on the tramplerThere are still some cases where compartments might occlude, and we’ll fix them in the upcoming updatesGrenade pin no longer gets pulled automatically in Outlaw controlsImproved upiors’ behaviorNow has collision with playerTheir movement is now less twitchyThe overall behavior is more responsive and more naturalUpiors can now use cannons (except shotguns)They will leave the cannon when the player gets close to themAdded a gas giant next to the SophieImproved design for some of the pop-upsFixed issue for some of the crew compartments where character would respawn outside of the compartmentFixed exploits where items could be duplicatedFixed the issue when some doors may be restored improperly after fixing the Compartment with a Repair kitFixed the issue where, visually, the door is displayed as broken after being fixed with a repair kitFixed the issue where the expedition will end for the player even though their teammates are still alive. This would also cause issues with receiving the loot after the expeditionFixed the issue where players could get into the compartments by sliding on the entrance group ladderFixed the issues where Toggle and Combine Sprint settings didn’t work as intendedFixed the issue where matchmaking preferences were not saved between ExpeditionsFixed the issue where incorrect crew sizes were shown during loadingBalance changes:Increased Recoil for 80mm CannonsIncreased T3 80mm cannon reload time from 2.5 to 3 secBase and low recoil 40mm ammo now have slightly better range (150m/s -> 200m/s and 100m/s -> 150m/s)Added 20% more projectiles for regular 70mm Ammo (42 -> 52)Decreased siege damage of regular 70mm Ammo by 20% (30 per pellet -> 25 per pellet)Added 5 more meters before the damage starts decaying for regular 70mm Ammo (35m -> 40m)Decreased fire rate of Triple Barrel shotgun by 30%Projectile amplifier radius decreased from 15m to 5mManually loading turret from the container now transfers shells from the container into the turret’s inventory instead of actually loading it (thank you for the tip Peanut)This is now called “Transfer Content” instead of “Load Turret” to avoid confusionLoot containers will spawn slightly less pneumatic partsIncreased Canned Sea Deer XL sell price from 100 to 500Decreased MedKit sell price from 50 to 20Increased Sell price of Small Valuables and Valuables by 1 crown (3 -> 4, 6 -> 7)Ironclad Crate slot changes (12M -> 1L and 11M)High-tier resources orbital stack size increase (50 -> 75)Known issues:Character can get stuck at the top of the ladderCharacter may become transparent in Spectator mode in some casesCharacter cannot crouch while carrying the Repair KitThe Character cannot enter the Expedition if the Invite has been accepted at the Tutorial pop-up backgroundCharacter may become invulnerable to melee damage while interacting with turrets or the steering wheel

About