It feels like it's been ages since I first started keeping up with The Repopulation, way back in the days before it was even open to the public and the promise of sandbox gameplay with a housing system was what had intrigued me. After several years of development, the company developing it, Above and Beyond Technologies, ran a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012, then another successful Kickstarter campaign two years later, and then the game was finally released on Steam Early Access on December 19, 2014, some five years after Above and Beyond Technologies was founded.

In an unfortunate twist of fate, the game was taken offline at the end of 2015 and removed from sale due to issues with Idea Fabrik, the creator of HeroEngine, the engine that the game was built in. Above and Beyond Technologies subsequently began remaking the game in Unreal Engine 4, all the while working on a spin-off called Fragmented so that backers would have something to play in the meantime.

Earlier this year, Idea Fabrik bought the rights to the game and promised that the game would be back in Q1 2017. While there is not yet an official announcement on the matter, a Steam user has confirmed that the game's servers have been online for at least 10 hours as of this writing.

For the time being, only those who previously purchased the game can play. It is unknown when the game will be up for sale again at this time, but the game is back online, which means that progress towards a return to sale is being made.