Frontier Developments shipped Update 1.0.5 for Planet Zoo 2 on October 16, 2026, three days after the management simulation launched on Steam for Windows. The patch concentrates on the areas players flagged hardest over the launch weekend: Franchise Mode stability, career-mode progression blockers, and a run of settings, texture, and animal fixes.
The studio was unusually direct about the state of the launch in the official notes. Frontier wrote that concurrent player numbers were “well above our expectations,” then acknowledged that general game stability “has been below what we would expect” and apologized for the worst of the Franchise Mode problems. The studio attributed the issues to the complexity of the simulation colliding with the largest influx of players the game has seen.
Franchise Mode receives the most substantive changes. Frontier increased server capacity and the volume of animals entering the trading market, and it rebalanced the market and new births so male and female animals no longer skew lopsided. A longer login window is meant to cut down on server timeouts, and loading a franchise zoo is described as more stable. The notes also flag two connection errors that are not network faults: a username containing a banned word can trip the profanity filter and surface as a server error, and VPN use can interfere with the mode’s connectivity.
Quality-of-life fixes restore features that shipped incorrectly. An Edge Scrolling option returns to the Keyboard and Mouse settings, and a bug that dropped several settings after closing the game is fixed. DLC owners no longer see their animals wrongly marked inaccessible in the Zoopedia, and texture streaming improvements reduce pop-in for sandbox and creative players. Crash fixes cover the ecosystem brush and keybinding conflicts.
Career players get three specific softlock fixes: the Moon Jelly Exhibit in Nordic Fjords, the Great Rift Valley giraffe Quick Release, and the East Africa Shoebill adoption. Wildlife Reserves were also costing the wrong amount of Conservation Credits, now corrected. Animal fixes include climbing animation improvements, albino Meerkat textures, fish stuck outside aquariums, African Penguins walking on water, and vet staff freezing while removing deceased animals.
Frontier said it will publish an “under investigation” news post next week to track key issues from its Issue Tracker. The 1.0.5 fixes are live now, while broader behavior and stability work continues.
Sources
- Reporting source: Planet Zoo 2 Update 1.0.5 Fixes Franchise Mode and Restores Edge Scrolling
- Primary patch notes: Planet Zoo 2 | Update 1.0.5 (Steam News)
