Hacknet

The UnHacknet Jam was the standout addition, centering Hacknet’s vanilla game on an unofficial, creativity-focused challenge. Its core cycle ran for one month in February 2026, with participants following restricted action rules and the Hacknet Community Code of Conduct.

• UnHacknet Jam: The unofficial event invited creators to build Hacknet extensions within the vanilla game’s constraints, with ongoing creative challenges supporting the core February cycle.
• Creative Challenge Rules: Participants used only the permitted StartingActions and followed the Hacknet Community Code of Conduct.
• Submissions and Recognition: Extensions were uploaded during the one-month event window and tagged #UnHacknetJam2026; standout work received Community’s Choice and Host’s Selection Highlights recognition.

Hacknet: Flagged was the biggest new addition, earning first place as a polished extension built around clever mechanics and scripts. Murder Room and HeartBeat also stood out among the strongest community-made releases, adding inventive investigations and creative design.

• Top extension: Hacknet: Flagged delivered a high-quality experience through smart uses of mechanics and scripting.
• Podium extensions:
  • Murder Room introduced murder investigations built around uploading clues and added new mechanics.
  • HeartBeat used creative design to evoke its intended player experience, despite minor issues.
  • Dans La Mer Du Son offered a well-written visual-novel extension with minimal errors.
• Honorable mentions:
  • System Rift explored artificial intelligence and digital sentience with strong mechanics.
  • Who We Are followed a story about waking in the year 2489 with an unknown entity inside the player’s systems.
  • Hexa added a working Jukebox and a Hardmode option for a tougher challenge.

Hacknet Labyrinths launched on March 31, 2017, adding a new 3–4 hour chapter, tools, programs, networks, secrets, UI themes, and a full soundtrack. Steam Workshop support and Hacknet Extensions then substantially expanded the game’s replayability through player-created campaigns and stories.

• Hacknet Labyrinths: The expansion introduced the Memory Analyzer for RAM forensics and the new The Kaguya Trials contract, which provided access to its campaign.
• Extensions and Steam Workshop: Hacknet Extensions added custom computers, missions, themes, and programs, while Steam Workshop made those player-created campaigns easier to browse, download, and play.
• HackerJAM: The creator competition produced three notable Extensions:
  • World.exe: The second-place entry delivered a large campaign comparable in size to Labyrinths.
  • Hacker Wars: The winning entry explored a multiplayer-style Hacknet experience without requiring Labyrinths.
  • Core: The third-place entry provided an original story built around Extensions-only features.
• Creator toolkit and gameplay systems: New tools broadened what custom campaigns could do:
  • FastActionHost: Added a more efficient daemon for hosting delayable actions.
  • ShowNode and HideAllNodes: Added direct control over revealing and hiding netmap nodes.
  • FTPSprint.exe and FtpBounce.exe: Made FTP-focused Extensions more accessible by removing Labyrinths’ requirement from FTPSprint and reducing FtpBounce’s runtime by two seconds.
  • HackerScripts: Added wildcard support, folder-wide scp * transfers, delete * commands, custom ISP servers, silent rank updates, and mission-completion checks.

Major Localisation Update brought Hacknet to German, Russian, French, Spanish, and Korean players in June 2016. Steam Workshop mod tools also became available to community creators, while gameplay changes refined timed missions and the Entropy campaign.

• Major Localisation Update: Added German, Russian, French, Spanish, and Korean versions. Follow-up work corrected French gameplay issues plus mistranslations and typos across the new languages.
• Mod Support Update: Released mod tools to community content creators, building toward Steam Workshop story downloads.
• Gameplay changes: Saving was disabled during critical timed events, early mission content was revised after being deemed unintentionally offensive, and Entropy mission wording became clearer. Improved tab completion also made command entry more forgiving.
• Campaign and save fixes: CSEC mission assignment issues were resolved, while the Junebug Error, the John Boorman save-file problem, and quickload failures were addressed. Local save backups also strengthened recovery from cloud-save problems.
• Platform and presentation additions: Alienware FX Integration added hardware-lighting effects, and the main menu gained an ambient drone.