Planet Zoo 2

Hayo Zookeepers.

Earlier today we launched Update 1.0.6, which contains a wealth of fantastic fixes addressing a number of high-priority issues. You can find the full list of fixes here, and we have already updated our Under Investigation article to highlight our next planned update. Our team are continuing to work on verifying your reports and implementing fixes, and we will issue regular updates and communicate our areas of focus. Thank you for your ongoing support, everyone at Frontier is working hard on ensuring all our Zookeepers can experience our game at its best.  

Unfortunately, following deployment of the update today (23rd October), we received several reports identifying issues when trying to resume a franchise save, preventing full use of the main menu, and creating concern that players’ saved games were lost. If you ran into these issues, please be aware that your saved games have not been lost. Do not delete your saves folder. 

For anyone who has installed Update 1.0.6, but is unable to download Hotfix 1.0.7, you can navigate around the issue with the following workaround: 

1) Restart the game  

2) Enter your chosen mode via the mode's button in the main menu. Do not use the ‘Resume’ button. 

Hotfix 1.0.7 addresses these issues. The update is available now on Steam

If you remain unable to access Franchise Mode servers, please ensure you are not running a VPN. 

We apologise for the concern which this has caused and thank you for your patience as we work to improve Planet Zoo 2 for all Zookeepers. Once we have worked to address these high-priority fixes, we’ll be sharing news on what future content players can expect, however right now our focus is on tackling those priority concerns. 

PATCH NOTES 

Fixed an issue whereby selecting the 'Resume' option for a franchise save would display a connection error and subsequently stop the player from loading into any game mode. 

Hayo Zookeepers!

Ahead of the weekend, Hotfix 1.0.6 is arriving on all platforms at 11:00 BST today (23rd October 2026).

Please note: This is not a full list of everything the development team are working on. If your issue has not been addressed in a previous patch you can report any bugs or issues using the link below.

ISSUE TRACKER

Under Investigation

Following the distribution of the hotfix, our team will be continuing to monitor for any raised issues.

You can see our high priority targets via the Under Investigation article, which will regularly update as we identify areas for additional support.  Please note that we anticipate the next update to that article to go live early next week (week commencing 26th October), following this weekend's monitoring. News of our next update will then be added to that article.

Ongoing Areas of Focus

These are specific areas which the development team have identified for regular ongoing improvements, due to the complex nature of Planet Zoo 2's simulation.

• Animals climbing, jumping, and pouncing will see ongoing improvements. 

• Some animals don't align with their enrichments correctly on occasion. 

• Animals sometimes erroneously escape from habitats during certain behaviours. 

• Further enhancements to core creative toolset. 

Please note: This is not a full list of everything the development team are working on.

Franchise Mode

As a reminder, we are seeing two core areas which have been limiting player access following our work to strengthen Franchise servers throughout the last week. If you are continuing to experience issues connecting to our servers, please check the following:

• Profanity Filter - Some usernames have been impacted by our profanity filter due to a banned word being present in the middle of a username, which can also display a server connection error. Yesterday, all affected users were emailed to make them aware, please check for emails from: noreply@mailer.frontier.co.uk

• VPN Usage - Please note that if you are using a VPN whilst playing Planet Zoo 2, particularly Franchise Mode, this may lead to connectivity issues. 

Key Changes

• We will be resetting any player zoo that has negative cash back to $0 as part of the resolution to the habitat roof repairs sometimes costing excessive amounts of cash, which would see rapidly increasing losses in player finances

• Balancing pass conducted on animal accreditation tier requirements targeting animals that did not feel like their unlock level matched how common or easy to keep they are. This particularly targets easy to keep exhibits and fish as well as bringing some more variety into the first tier of accreditation.

• We've lowered the Zoo and Wildlife Reserve requirements for Accreditation tier unlocks to make for a smoother progression.

• Accreditation 3 now only requires a 2 star Wildlife Reserve (was 3)

• Accreditation 4 now only requires 3 star Wildlife Reserves (was 4)

• Accreditation 5 now requires 1 less Zoo and Wildlife Reserve (was 2 Zoos and 3 Wildlife Reserves)

Profanity filter fixes - The game will no longer say that a display name is valid in the sign up and link account flow if it contains profanity

Resolved an issue which causes the Autosave timer to reset when entering the Planet Hub, preventing the autosave from triggering

Fixed Zoopedia hiding unowned DLC species regardless of the "Hide unowned DLC Species" toggle 

Fixed advanced move axis becoming misaligned when using multiselect - View on Issue Tracker

Reduced fertility rates for exhibit animals

Reduced the amount of boxing in aquariums

Fixed Exhibit animals sometimes being unable to be quick released from the animals management menu

Fixed animals being able to jump through glass tunnels

A number of fixes to areas of staff task delivery, such as improved access to cleaning and restocking feeders, fixing an issue causing staff to wander if their task was disrupted, and preventing staff from becoming stuck in the staff room.

Bug Fixes

Stability & Performance

• Various performance and stability improvements

• Fixed a crash linked to multi-select of grid pieces

• Fixed a crash linked to releasing animals into franchise wildlife reserves - View on Issue Tracker

• Fixed flickering when using DLSS Frame Generation with HDR enabled - View on Issue Tracker

• Fixed crash when selecting the recent colours in the flexicolour menu - View on Issue Tracker

• Fixed soft lock when using the path stamp tool

• Fixed soft lock when using a controller to tab from terrain tool to another tool

• Fixed crash caused by moving a group of grid pieces from one group to another group that does not have a grid

• Fixed an occasional crash when placing a powered education board 

• Fixed an occasional crash when deleting habitat staff gate

• Fixed a crash when resetting transport ride colours.

Career

• Resolved an issue in the Channel Islands scenario where sending exhibit species to and from storage would prevent them from counting against objectives

Franchise

• Fixed animals appearing in storage after being quick traded - View on Issue Tracker

• Fixed Conservation Credits from exhibit animals not being retained after reload - View on Issue Tracker

• Resolved habitat animals sometimes losing ability to be quick released

Sandbox

• Fixed Enable Animal Ageing and Birthing sandbox setting not working as intended  - View on Issue Tracker

• Fixed Enable Animal Plant Need sandbox setting not working as intended

• Fixed Enable Animal Predation and Fear sandbox setting not working as intended

• Fixed Enable Animal Defecation sandbox setting not working as intended

• Prevent exhibit colonies from forming new colonies when mating is disabled.

• Improvements and updates to save file panels in Sandbox hub

Animals & Exhibits

• Reduced fertility rates for exhibit animals

• Reduced the amount of boxing in aquariums

• Fixed Exhibit animals sometimes being unable to be quick released from the animals management menu

• Fixed animals being able to jump through glass tunnels

• Removed pronking behaviour from the Red Deer

• Improvements to Sunda Pangolin animations

• Improvements to Greater Hornbill animations

• Adjustments to African Wild Dog's howl - View on Issue Tracker

• Improvements to shoal animations

• Aquarium temperature is no longer affected by coolers/heaters. 

• Note: The aquarium temperature tooltips will still say that coolers/heaters affect the temperature.  This will be changed in a future update.

Resolved an issue where aquarium animals would sometimes not respond to extreme temperatures if those were caused by a heater or cooler 

Fixed water surface requirements being hidden for Eurasian Bittern in the Animal Info Panel

Added some missing exhibit animal colourmorph portraits to Zoopedia

Park Management & Construction

• Fixed an issue where with habitat repair causing extreme financial costs

• Fixed Exhibit animals sometimes being unable to be quick released from the animals management menu

• Added notification for staff facilities, exhibits, and habitat gates being disconnected from any other facility

• Added notification when mechanics and keepers are not available to clean or repair habitats

• Fix to an issue causing staff stuck in a staff room to rest indefinitely

• Species will no longer be pinned if all individuals of that species have been removed from the zoo

• Fixed an issue where the Forage Tray would incorrectly send a notification saying that it was inaccessible by keepers - View on Issue Tracker

• Adjusted liana vines' contribution to foliage requirement meters - View on Issue Tracker

• Fixed an issue where some education speakers would reset the assigned education topic when saving and loading into a zoo

• Fixed an issue causing the East Staff Room to be inaccessible - View on Issue Tracker

• Fix an issue where keepers did not clean suspended feeders

• Fix an issue where staff would be stuck wandering the zoo if the destination of their transport job was deleted.  Now they will drop the box on the path instead - View on Issue Tracker

• Fixed multiselecting paths incorrectly disabling the duplicate option

• Improved legibility of icons for font scenery pieces - View on Issue Tracker

• Added the regular guest spawner to the essentials tab in the object browser

• Fixed resetting not working in the track editor

• Fixed changing colours causing the track editor's colour popup to close

Workshop

• "Times Used" statistic will now update correctly on workshop entries

Settings

• Fixed Celsius being used in several menus when Fahrenheit is selected as the temperature unit in the settings menu - View on Issue Tracker

Localisation

• Various Localisation fixes

Misc

• Fixed inability to delete full verification code when creating a Frontier Account - View on Issue Tracker

• Pressing the ESC key will now bring the UI back after hiding it - View on Issue Tracker

Hayo Zookeepers, 

Welcome to our first post-launch weekend! We hope you’re all excited to play more and to expand those early zoo concepts into detailed builds! There are some incredible designs already on the Workshop, and as you become more familiar with the new tools we’ve introduced, we can’t wait to see how those designs continue to develop. We’ve been blown away by your support for Planet Zoo 2, with the volume of concurrent players, well above our expectations!  

Your support of the Planet Zoo franchise means a lot to us as a studio. Planet Zoo 2 is a milestone for the team that worked on the game, and your appreciation for our work is something we never take for granted.  

We apologise for the stability issues that some players have faced in Franchise Mode, and that general game stability has been below what we would expect. The complexity of simulation in our games often means that we see new issues arising as we see our biggest influx of players outside of significant internal testing and user research.  

We know that, like us, you want to see our game succeed and to continue to grow. You’ve had moments where the game has sparked the reason you fell in love with our franchise, and moments where you’ve simply been unable to achieve what you set out to create. We acknowledge those frustrations, and our sole focus is on addressing several high-priority areas, listed below. 

Alongside today’s Update, we also wanted to provide an initial status update on our current focus. Next week we will share an ‘under investigation’ news post, which will regularly update to highlight key issues from the Issue Tracker which the team are working on fixes for.  

Since launch, we’ve worked to address a number of high-priority fixes which were preventing access to Franchise Mode, improving stability and addressing key pieces of feedback to improve your experience.  This will continue over the coming weeks. 

High Priority Areas 

• Franchise Mode Stability 

• Resolving Crashes & Performance Concerns 

• Save stability, and negating the loss of CC 

• Re-engaging key quality of life features introduced in Planet Zoo which have not correctly deployed (Ie, edge scrolling and exhibit quick sell/release) 

• Animal behaviours and animations behaving erratically

Franchise Mode and Frontier Server Connectivity 

Since launch we've resolved several key issues specifically linked to Franchise Mode, including; 

• Increasing the balance between Male and Female animals being added to the animal trading market from Frontier’s Zoos for cash. (Included in today’s Update) 

• Improving the balance between male and female births within Franchise mode. (Included in today’s Update) 

• Extending the login window to reduce the risk of server time out while connecting (Included in today’s Update) 

• Increasing the volume of animals being added to the animal trading market. 

• Increasing server capacity. 

Franchise Mode remains a key priority for our focus. In order to support us in resolving remaining issues, we encourage you to submit tickets on these issues via the issue tracker. Some usernames are also being impacted by our profanity filter due to a banned word being present in the middle of a username, which can also display a server connection error. If this is affecting you, please raise a ticket with our support team.

Please note that if you are using a VPN whilst playing Planet Zoo 2, particularly Franchise Mode, this may also lead to connectivity issues.  

Update 1.0.5 Notes

Ongoing Areas of Focus

These are specific areas which the development team have identified for ongoing improvements, due to the complex nature of Planet Zoo 2's simulation.

• Animals climbing, jumping, and pouncing will see ongoing improvements.

• Some animals don't align with their enrichments correctly on occasion.

• Animals sometimes erroneously escape from habitats during certain behaviours.

• Animals are being boxed more frequently than usual, including when migrating in wild areas.

• Investigating feedback on core creative toolset.

• Monitoring Franchise Mode stability following fixes.

Key Changes

• Improved stability when loading a franchise zoo, especially for newly created zoos and flat zoos

• Resolved issue where a Wildlife Reserve would sometimes be randomly selected as the sculpted terrain option when creating a Taiga sandbox or franchise map

• Added option for "Edge Scrolling" in Keyboard and Mouse settings

• Resolved issue where several settings were not saved after closing and relaunching the game

• Fixed Zoopedia incorrectly marking DLC animals as inaccessible for DLC owners

Bug Fixes

Stability & Performance

• Various performance and stability improvements

• Improvements to texture streaming to reduce pop-in

• Fixed occasional crash when choosing an Ecosystem Brush in the Tanzania Reserve Wildlife Reserve

• Fixed crash caused by setting multiple commands to the same key in the keybinding settings

• Resolved error not clearing when attempting to create a new save with no save slots available

• Incorrect complexity warning no longer appears when loading into a 100% complexity zoo

• Item browser filters and sorting will now reset on level load

Career

• Fixed career notifications appearing on the main menu when exiting career after certain objectives

• Fixed softlock caused by deleting the Moon Jelly Exhibit in the Nordic Fjords before the relevant objective by adding it as a placable item

• Fixed softlock in the Great Rift Valley career scenario by disabling the ability to "Quick Release" Giraffes which removes them from storage and makes them unable to be placed

• Fixed softlock caused by opening the Animal Trading menu while Alys is talking about adopting a Shoebill in the East Africa career scenario

• Resolved boxed animals appearing in the Sumatra Reserve career scenario when loading into the level

Franchise

• Resolved Wildlife Reserves costing the incorrect amount of Conservation Credits

• Increased the split between Male and Female animals becoming available for cash in the Animal Trading Market

• Improved the overall balance for animals born in Franchise mode to be male or female

Sandbox

• Resolved "Terrain Only" option not functioning when exporting a career scenario to sandbox

Animals

• Updates and corrections added to the Zoopedia

• Fixed adult career animals being sometimes incorrectly flagged as juveniles

• Initial improvements to animal climbing animations

• Fixed Meerkat textures not loading for the albino variant

• Resolved fish getting stuck outside of an aquarium when moving the habitat

• Resolved shoals not using new space when an aquarium is expanded

• Fixed big splashes occurring when animals land on wet beams

• Fixed African Penguins being able to walk on water

Park Management

• Resolved an issue where inspection reports were only giving 4 stars when all aspects were rated 5 stars

• Resolved vet staff getting stuck removing deceased animals from aquariums

Park Construction

• Resolved Basic Vet Surgery unintentionally moving when being placed

• Fixed incorrect tooltips displaying in Wildlife Reserve Ecosystem info panels

• Fixed focus staying in the Object Browser search bar after selecting out of it

• Fixed width setting in path panel functioning incorrectly when using "Feet" as the measurement

• Fixed ESC hotkey occasionally not functioning after using a nature brush

Workshop

• Featured workshop creations now correctly show in the item browser

Settings

• Adjusted HDR calibration image

Gamepad

• Fixed gamepad sometimes being unresponsive in the "Edit Media" panel

• Fixed issue with Move action being performed when trying to Advanced Move using gamepad

Localisation

• Resolved duplicate text appearing during career introduction when playing in specific languages

Platform Specific

• PC (Steam)

• Fixed inability to connect to server on Steam Deck Proton 11 and newer