Overview
- Hello Games released The Swarm as patch 6.40/6.040 on Wednesday, May 27, 2026, and the free update is available to current players across platforms.
- The update introduces the Hive of Glass, a huge mothership that spawns hundreds of drone ships and can fire a planet‑threatening laser, creating what the studio calls the biggest space battles in the game so far.
- Players are split by a personality test into three factions — Royal, Sage, and Weaver — that must cooperate and compete in a community expedition where the top team is memorialised in the in‑game Space Anomaly.
- Expedition Twenty‑Two runs for about eight weeks and uses three mission types (Purge, Restoration, Sabotage) to build a Prismatic Core that unlocks the final assault while offering Direwasp‑themed rewards including a six‑piece suit, a flightpack, and a multi‑tool rifle.
- Hello Games has begun rolling out follow‑up hotfixes (6.41/6.42) to address stability and platform rollout problems and players have reported issues such as mission progress resets and cosmetic bugs while questions remain about whether Swarm’s systems will persist beyond the limited expedition window.