DEFCON has received a complete overhaul with the new 20th Anniversary Edition, now available on Steam.

DEFCON is a minimalist real-time strategy game by Introversion Software in which players wage global thermonuclear war as one of several superpowers, forging and breaking alliances along the way; the game regularly costs €11.79.

Exactly 20 years after its original release on 29 September 2006, Introversion Software has shipped a completely rebuilt version for all platforms. The graphics and audio engines were rewritten from the ground up, adding support for High-DPI displays, ultrawide and multi-monitor setups, and HDR. Players who prefer the old build can still switch to the Legacy Version.

Twenty years ago on this day, the 29th September 2006, Introversion Software released their third game DEFCON, and our lives were never the same again. What started as a 24 hour game jam (and love letter to WARGAMES) rapidly turned into our most successful game yet, as tens of thousands of players flooded our servers and waged global thermonuclear war upon each other day after day, year after year, racking up civilian megadeaths with inhuman abandon.

In celebration of DEFCON’s ongoing legacy and popularity stretching over two decades, we have today released the 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION, a brand new build for all platforms with some much needed updates.

Detailed change list

• Graphics APIs completely updated to modern standards - DirectX 11 on PC, ANGLE and OpenGL ES 3.0 on MacOS, OpenGL CORE on Linux.
• System update to C++ 23, SDL3, and latest Steam API (major security/reliability boost)
• Audio engine completely rewritten - fixing serious stuttering and quality issues (especially on MacOS)
• The Music, Ambience and SFX volume can now be individually controlled
• Massively improved support for modern resolutions and monitors: High DPI support, Ultra-wide monitor support, Multi-monitor support, HDR support, Game window resizing support, UI scaling to match any resolution or user preference
• Full support for MSAA and SSAA, across all platforms
• Heavily optimised graphics code, making the game run fast and efficient even on very old hardware
• New high resolution coastlines and country borders (can be toggled from options menu)
• 64 bit support on Windows & Linux, supporting much more intensive community mods
• Comprehensive sync compatibility testing framework integrated (Automatic logging of ANY multiplayer sync problems)
• Automatic crash reporting is now enabled on all platforms
• NAT Traversal much improved, and connecting to a game in progress is now much faster
• This new version is 100% sync-compatible with the outgoing legacy version

The 20th Anniversary Edition requires OpenGL 3.3+, Direct3D11, Metal, or Vulkan. A native Linux build is provided; if it causes issues, the Windows build can also be forced via Proton instead.

Source: Steam