How to Fish Update Log & Patch Notes

Updated Sep 5, 2026 · official Steam announcement feed snapshot Sep 5, 2026; includes Patch 1.0.12

What's new in How to Fish? The game released Aug 20, 2026, Patch 1.0.4 landed Aug 21 (8-player lobbies, Pufferfish and Whale nerfs, achievement and save fixes), Patch 1.0.5 landed Aug 22 (private lobbies, QoL options and bug fixes), Patch 1.0.9 added difficulty options and save-file fixes, and Patch 1.0.10 (Aug 27) added item persistence, water cleaning and anti-grief fixes. Patch 1.0.11 (Sep 1) added Steam Deck Verified, GeForce NOW, save-file corruption checks and new control options; Patch 1.0.12 (Sep 4) added Steam Cloud saves, a voice-chat update and a balance pass — likely the last bugfix patch before content updates. On Aug 22, tracking data (SteamDB via Steam News) recorded a peak of 142,110 concurrent players — the developer’s earlier official announcement of 60,044 has been surpassed.

About This Page

The developer has not published a formal roadmap or feature plan, so this page is an update log: every official announcement, with what it changed and what it means for gameplay. We will not invent future plans — when the developer announces something, it goes here.

Sep 1, 2026 – Patch 1.0.11 "Steam Deck Verified, GeForce NOW & Stability"

A stability-and-platforms patch. Headline changes:

• Steam Deck Verified – the game is now fully verified for Steam Deck.
• GeForce NOW – How to Fish is playable through Nvidia's cloud service.
• New control options – toggle aiming, toggle sprinting, hold to attack and toggle nametags.
• Save protection – save files are checked for corruption before loading and automatic backups are kept.
• Weapon visibility – dropped weapons now show orange dots, dead players turquoise.

Also: you die from your own explosives even with friendly fire off; iron sight was removed as a purchasable (players only bought it by mistake) and its expensive attachments went with it; no downgrading from suppressor to compensator; the roulette table on island 6 moved slightly; item dots changed color. Fixes: joining players no longer turn invisible from an inventory bug; items must be held once before selling; drip parrotfish now cooks; hands no longer teleport to picked-up items. Restart Steam to update.

Sep 4, 2026 – Patch 1.0.12 "Steam Cloud Support & Final Bugfix Patch"

The developer says this is likely the last bugfix patch before they start working on content updates (coming next week). Headline changes:

• Steam Cloud saves – save files are now stored through Steam Cloud; play and exit once on your PC to upload them.
• Balance pass – piranha rebalanced, tuna nerfed slightly, and item velocity is limited so items are harder to lose.
• Voice chat update – MetaVoice updated to 4.3, fixing some voice-chat bugs.

Fixes: FishNet no longer overrides your max FPS when joining a lobby; music now preloads so buying the first radio doesn’t lagspike; the final boss takes damage from explosives even when landing on its tail. Restart Steam to update.

Aug 27, 2026 – Patch 1.0.10 "Fanart & Fixes"

The developer's biggest patch so far. Headline changes:

• Fanart channel – a new fanart channel was added to the official Community Discord (they'd love to see your art).
• Item persistence – items dropped on the ground are now saved between sessions (up to 64 total, prioritizing weapons, tools, quest items and creatures).
• Cleaning – weapons and tools now get cleaned from cooking when dipped in water.
• Anglerfish nerfed – slightly less health, after being "too annoying".

Fixes: beer no longer bleeds when punched; dying to a tuna / spawning as an albatross no longer blocks respawn; "Last played" now shows local time; rich-text chat removed (griefers were exploiting it); explosion velocity capped so items don't fly out of existence; a player + seagull grabbing the same item no longer breaks things; roulette no longer ticks infinitely at high values and the ball no longer clips through the wheel; the game version now prints to player.log; connection timeout extended to reduce instant disconnects; leaving mid-roulette no longer breaks the next session; equipping from inventory should no longer spawn items far away; the end-game screen no longer shows item dots; the misleading death X marker was removed from the radar; items should no longer fall through the level when loading a game or joining a lobby.

Aug 27, 2026 – Patch 1.0.9

Patch 1.0.9 adds selectable difficulty and more diagnostics. Easy mode gives creatures 25% less health and 50% less damage; Hard mode gives creatures 25% more health and 25% more damage. The default difficulty remains unchanged.

The main menu now includes a short Steam connection debug when initialization fails, and the developer says save-file corruption should be fixed. If a save still fails to load or the game crashes when equipping weapons, the official notes direct players to the Community Discord for recovery guidance.

Aug 24, 2026 – Patch 1.0.8

A tiny bugfix patch (official notes):

• Fix – PlayStation controller glyphs now display correctly.
• Fix – the linked-fire sizzling sound is now tied to the FX volume slider, so it actually changes when you change FX volume.

The devs note "more to come this week".

Aug 23, 2026 – "1 million fishermen in 2 days!"

Official milestone announcement: How to Fish passed 1,000,000 players within its first two days on Steam. The devs confirm more content and more bug fixes are coming. (For context, the launch-day peak was 142k concurrent; current online has since grown well past that.)

Aug 23, 2026 – Patch 1.0.6

A small bugfix patch (official notes):

• Fix – the game now checks the save file before trying to load it, so fake servers named "Game Name" no longer show up.
• Change – the game no longer saves the server or local world when the application crashes. It now saves when you press the Save, Main Menu or Quit button instead (still autosaved every minute, so you don't lose much even on a crash).

Aug 22, 2026 – Patch 1.0.5

A slightly bigger patch than the first, adding quality-of-life options and fixing bugs (per official notes):

• New options – invert the X/Y look axis, host a private lobby joinable only through invites, and change the session type from server settings while in-game (requires a restart to take effect). See the multiplayer guide for what private lobbies mean for co-op.
• Change – the minimum locked framerate was lowered from 50 to 30 FPS.
• Fixes – no more traveling to any island without unlocking them (sorry, speedrunners), slot-machine skins are visible again in 4K, the "find all drip creatures" achievement now unlocks on time instead of waiting for the next drip, and griefers can no longer instantly end the game when joining.

The drip-achievement fix matters for anyone going for Fishipedia (0.3% unlock rate).

Aug 22, 2026 – "How to Fish peaks at 142k players"

The developer's official announcement on Aug 22 confirmed a peak of 60,044 concurrent players (their own number, reached the day after launch). Later the same day, SteamDB tracking — surfaced through the official Steam news feed — recorded the peak climbing to 142,110 concurrent players within the release week. Both numbers are real; the latest reading is 142,110. For a $5 indie fishing game two days after launch, this is an unusually strong start.

Aug 21, 2026 – Patch 1.0.4

The first balance patch made four headline changes (per official notes):

• 8-player lobbies – the room cap went up from 4 to 8. See the multiplayer guide for what that changes.
• Pufferfish nerfed – the third boss was widely called overtuned; the patch tuned it down. The terrain strategy in our pufferfish guide still applies.
• Whale nerfed – the final-boss line got a similar balance pass.
• Fixes – the bare-hands final-boss achievement (Handyman) was repaired, and a save-corruption issue caused by overly long server names was fixed.

The developer also noted that feedback continues to be iterated through their Discord after updates.

Aug 20, 2026 – "HOW TO FISH IS RELEASED"

Launch day. The game released on Steam for Windows at a launch discount (38% off the ≈$5 price, which ran until Aug 27, 2026). The store lists 28 achievements, full controller support, save-anytime and family sharing.

What to Watch Next

Based on launch-week player reports (community, not developer-confirmed): second-island leech spawns, boss trophy hand-ins, and the volcano encounter are the areas players keep asking about. If a future patch touches those, it will appear here.