- Thank you, Discord - 21 September 2026
We want to say a big thank you to our Discord community for all the support, passion and play time they've dedicated to The Legend of California. We couldn't do this without you all. Until the next one - we love you guys. Every shot in the video came from you. See the screenshots, clips and the players behind them on the Alpha 4 community recap.
- Alpha 4 Patch Notes - 16 September 2026
Alpha 4 is here! Here is everything that changed since the last playtest. Sangre Élite Invasions The tides of war are upon us. The tyranny of Legión Sangre has been growing unchecked for too long. Now General Guerrero’s most seasoned veterans, the Sangre Élite, are on the offensive. Elite and extremely difficult Legión Sangre forces known as the Sangre Élite will begin invading and occupying Strongholds after the server has been up for a period of time. As time progresses, the invasions will strike Strongholds in Tier 2 and Tier 3 as well and also become more numerous. Sangre Élite enemy units are considerably more difficult than normal Legión Sangre enemies. The invasions last approximately 5 hours before the Stronghold reverts to its previous state. During each Stronghold invasion, players can loot a special Elite Stronghold Chest. This chest is lootable independent of the normal Stro…
- Alpha 4 arrives September 17 - 15 August 2026
The Alpha playtest comes back online in September, and this time it runs an extra day. Here's the schedule: Start: Thursday, September 17 at 10 AM PT End: Monday, September 21 at 10 AM PT Everyone who played in the previous Alpha is automatically welcomed back when the servers go live, and we'll be inviting more new players from the Steam signup list. We're excited to share new content and features that we've worked on since the last Alpha. Here are a few of the highlights (with more in progress): New stronghold: Rattlesnake Junction Many new cosmetic customization options for clothing, furniture and tents Whole stretches of coastline rebuilt (Big Sur, Monterey and Mendocino) The start of some of our endgame systems Sangre Élite now invade and occupy Strongholds throughout the map, including lower tiers Item quality: improved items available at end game Added new legendary and rare item…
- Dev Livestream - 15 August 2026
Jeff Kaplan & Tim Ford are ✨streaming live✨ and playtesting The Legend of California. Come hang out for Q&A and check in on the game's progress.
- Dev Livestream - 4 August 2026
Jeff Kaplan & Tim Ford will be streaming live, playtesting the game and they have an ✨important date✨ to share. Stop by and check out to see what we've been working on.
- Dev Livestream - 18 July 2026
Jeff Kaplan & Tim Ford are playtesting the Legend of California live. Come hang out for Q&A and see what we've been working on.
- Dev Livestream - July 18th - 17 July 2026
Jeff Kaplan & Tim Ford will be streaming live, testing high tier content and talking about the development of The Legend of California. Stop by to ask questions, hang out and take a look at what we're working on now.
- Dev Update: Peak California - 18 June 2026
Our latest Alpha test concluded and the team collectively let out a sigh of relief. While our first Alpha in March was received well by our community, client and server performance fell short of our expectations. As soon as the March test ended, we made the difficult decision to keep the game in Alpha and work toward improving performance and stability. So you can imagine how great it felt to all of us when our most recent Alpha exceeded our technical expectations. Better yet, the game played really well and it was a super fun weekend on the Island of California.For those of you who joined us for the playtest, thank you for a wonderful weekend (and for the brackets). And for those of you who are still waiting for a chance to play; thank you for your patience and understanding – we’re working on increasing the number of players in future Alpha playtests.The day the Alpha shut down, we sh…
- The Legend of California Alpha 3 Playtest is Live! - 12 June 2026
EDIT (June 18, 2026): That's a wrap on Alpha 3. Thank you to everyone who played, watched, or showed up in Discord. We can't wait to do it again. Check out our Alpha Recap and highlight video here. We've made major stability and performance improvements, added two new Strongholds, Proximity Chat, and reworked cooking, fishing, death, hunger, and more.Read the full patch notes on our website We'll be keeping a close eye on stability and performance throughout the weekend, and may open access to more players as the playtest progresses. If you'd like to throw your hat into the ring, head to the main Steam store page and click the \ button (just above "Add to Wishlist"). This is still a small Alpha, and we know not everyone will get a chance to play. So, we’ll try to keep our Discord channel updated with highlights, streams, and screenshots, so everyone can stay connected. Thanks so much fo…
- The Legend of California Alpha Returns June 12 - 3 June 2026
We're bringing the Alpha playtest back online to test the performance and stability improvements we've been working on over the last couple of months. Here's the schedule:Start: June 12 at 10 AM PT End: June 15 at 10 AM PTParticipants in the previous Alpha will be automatically welcomed back when the servers go live. We'll also be inviting a limited number of new players as we gather more information on how the game is performing. We had a few reports of missing invites during the last playtest, be sure to check your spam folder. Keep an eye out here (or in our official Kintsugiyama Discord server) for more details.Even though we’ve been focusing on stability and performance, we have managed to sneak in a few new pieces of content (Presidio, new mines, animations, updated enemy and weapon models, and more). Check out Jeff’s Work In Progress blog for a closer look at what we’ve been buil…
- Two Hour Dev Livestream - 1 May 2026
Developers Jeff Kaplan and Tim Ford will be streaming The Legend of California this weekend!On the agenda: Chatting about the new stronghold and tech updatesTaking your questions from chatAnd maybe even some real-time game development The steam starts Saturday, May 2, at 10am Pacific. You can watch on Twitch or YouTube.(Note: This stream will likely only be around 2 hours. If miss it, don't worry. We'll share a VOD.) To learn more about what the team's been working on, check out our latest dev updates:
- Dev Update: Work in Progress - 29 April 2026
It’s been a few weeks since we provided you with an update on what the team is up to and how the game is progressing. As we mentioned in our last post (linked below), we realized that overall game performance was not up to our standards. Since then, we’ve focused the majority of our development on improving the performance and stability of the game experience. We still have a lot of work to do in that area but we’re also moving with urgency and focus.Here are a few highlights of our progress. I realize some of this might be too technical for some of you and not technical enough for others. The high-level goals here are getting a higher player count per server and having the play experience be as smooth as possible.We optimized our database persistence layer, reducing allocation counts by 95% and saving 20GB of memory for playtest servers. Refined our automation system to cover more play…
- Dev Update: Alpha Recap - 10 April 2026
Overall, it was a tremendous success. We went from complete stealth mode into a studio announce and game announce to running a public Alpha playtest all within the same month. We were also lucky enough to build a community of gamers who are as passionate about The Legend of California as we are. Highlights: The game played well, people had fun, and engagement was through the roof. The average tester in the alpha played for 9 hours… which is kind of crazy, in the best way possible.But was everything a success? Well, no.We came up very short on our concurrency and performance goals for the Alpha playtest. Even pre-Alpha, our internal stress testing revealed that our concurrency goals were too high. To make for a better Alpha experience, we tried to lower concurrency caps to 45 (players) per server. On some highly impacted servers, we lowered the concurrency caps even further to get perfor…
- The Legend of California Alpha Now Live - 27 March 2026
EDIT (March 30, 2026): The alpha has ended. Thank you to everyone who played, watched, or showed up in Discord. We can't wait to do it again.Be sure to check out our Alpha Recap post by Jeff Kaplan to see what we learned and what's next.We're officially in Day 2 of The Legend of California Alpha. Our servers have been running smoothly and holding strong for over 24 hours. Thanks to everyone who helped us get through this initial phase of testing. For the next phase, we'll be sending out more playtest invites in order to increase our server populations. If you signed up via Steam Playtest and are selected: You'll receive a Steam notification (as well as an email from Steam)The game client will be automatically added to your Steam Library From there, you can download and install the game to begin playingPlease join our official Kintsugiyama server on Discord to learn more about how to pla…
- 10 Hour Dev Livestream - 21 March 2026
EDIT (March 22, 2026): Thanks to everyone who watched live!If you missed the broadcast, check out the full VOD of this and other steams on YouTube. Last week, we did our first dev livestream for The Legend of California. Since then, we've had a ton of requests for another stream, so we're going to do one more today. As with our last stream, this one will feature two members of our development team, Jeff and Tim, playing the game and answering questions from chat. (They'll probably also do some live QA testing as well as share more behind-the-scenes insights and info.) Our goal is to stream for 10 hours. We'd love to see you there!When: March 21 starting at 10am PT Twitch: twitch.tv/kintsugiyama YouTube: youtube.com/@kintsugiyamaNOTE: This is not something we plan to do regularly, because we're so busy working on the game, but we love sharing with you, so we'll try to make these kinds of…
- The Legend of California Alpha Coming Soon - 18 March 2026
The enthusiasm we've seen since The Legend of California was announced has been overwhelming in the best way possible, and we appreciate that so many of you have shown up for the game so early on.We'll be hosting our first public playtest, The Legend of California Alpha, from March 26 - March 30 right here on Steam. This is an important moment for both the game and our studio, and we're excited to be able to share it with this community as well as welcome more players onto the Island of California.If you’re interested in joining the playtest, you can sign up by going to the main store page and clicking the \ button (right above “Add to your wishlist”). The playtest itself will be very small, so that means that not everyone who signs up will be invited to play. If you’re selected to participate, you’ll receive a Steam notification and the alpha client will be automatically added to your…
- Ex-Overwatch director reveals a multiplayer lovechild of Read Dead and Rust, which I hope boasts nude shootouts - 12 March 2026
That's cool, but can I whip out a six-shooter while my private parts dangle in the breeze and cause a rootin' tootin' ruckus that leaves my enemies with chills going up their spine whenever they see bare buttocks? This is the question I've found myself asking of The Legend of California, a multiplayer survival shooter that the studio currently led by former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan are releasing in early access this year. Read more
