Update history

Every public build of Antivirus Survivors 2003 Professional so far, in order, with what actually changed in each one. The demo has been the whole game's proving ground since February, and reading the changelog in sequence explains why the current build plays the way it does.

February 2, 2026 — Playtest

The first public playtest, intended for around 100 signups. It ballooned past 1,000 signups with over 1,000 players, which set the tone for everything after.

Boss fights, cursor classes and meta progression upgrades were deliberately switched off for the playtest, so the developer could get a clean read on base difficulty numbers. The plugin and key systems were the new headline feature being tested for the first time.

February 13, 2026 — Demo launch

The demo arrived with the changes that came out of the playtest response:

• Collision detection tightened on the player, so hits register properly.
• Longer invulnerability frames after being hit.
• Opening a Safe Folder now genuinely makes you safe.
• Five protocols added, with Protocol I retuned as a gentler entry point after the playtest build proved harder than intended.
• Meta progression and the Beanz currency added, with upgrades that multiply stats.
• A deeper stats screen and better tooltips across the board.

This is the build that made the game's reputation: 6,000+ players came through the demo in the first weeks, over 500 of them played more than three hours, and wishlists more than doubled to 13,000 around Steam Next Fest.

May 2, 2026 — Warmfix (Demo 1.1)

A quality-of-life pass, nicknamed a warmfix because it was a hotfix that took a while to arrive. The list is long and most of it is small, but four items changed how the game feels:

• Animation speed option added, plus the ability to hold click to speed up BigWave and plugin installers — the same input as the boot sequence.
• Luck now affects the success rate of zip and RAM files.
• Meta upgrades renamed from "Levels" to "Ranks", to stop confusion with player levels.
• A sound bus limiter, added specifically because blowing up several Mines at once with vapor.exe was deafening.

Also in this build: keygen music, PlayStation controller light support tied to your health, rarity colours on BigWave upgrades, plugin installer tooltips, refunded keys on skipped installers, cursor containment fixes, RTL language UI fixes, and correct end-of-run weapon stat displays. The damage_level_scaling plugin moved from Epic to Legendary.

The accompanying post announced 38,000 wishlists — well past the developer's 30k target — and credited coverage from content creators, including a trailer feature that passed roughly 250,000 views.

July 14, 2026 — Demo 1.2 "Drag and then also Drop"

The largest content update to the demo, and the one that reshaped combat.

Two new weapons: Bubbles, a floating screensaver that damages over time and stacks Infect, and Paint, which draws and fills circles that damage over time and stack Lag.

Status effects: Heat, Lag and Infect were added as stackable effects that resolve every half second and decay by 20% per tick. Heat damages, Lag slows and can freeze, Infect does half of Heat's damage but makes the target take more damage from everything. The stats page covers the details.

Weapon Power replaced Repel. Power now raises both the number of stacks applied and knockback strength. Default knockback values were made meaningful, Pinball was called out as the hardest-hitting and AVD the weakest. Firewall started applying Heat.

Drag and drop arrived, with the developer's own examples being to move a vapor.exe away from a Defrag Collector and to park two lemwire.exe files together so they process at once.

Localization landed: Croatian, Russian and Indonesian were added with help from Discord community members, and the system was built so anyone can mod in a language by adding a file.

Also: a new enemy, AVSN Messenger Buddy, a near-stationary ranged attacker whose smileys knock you back; an animated UI character; a redesigned level-up screen with an SH Docs look; a spreadsheet-styled Stats Manager accessible from the level-up screen; and a minimap with fog of war and colour-coded file blocks.

September 10-11, 2026 — Release date announced

A new trailer and a firm date: September 28, 2026. The post detailed the full launch roster — 24 weapons, 50 drivers, 33 file types, 62 plugins, 15 policies, 81 wallpapers, 8 themes, six bosses and 200+ tasks — and introduced the key economy changes: cracked installers that need no keys, legendary installers that cost three, and a keyBuy store inside the Safe Folder where leftover keys can be sold.

September 18, 2026 — Steam Deck Verified

Valve marked the game Verified. The developer's note was personal: the Deck has been his favourite way to play since it was announced, which makes AVS03's verification a small but real milestone for the project.

September 28, 2026 — Release

The launch build. The two systems arriving with it are the six bosses and the fifteen policies — bosses were switched off during the playtest because the developer was not happy with them, and policies are the closest thing the game has to user-defined difficulty.

Expect this page to grow quickly after release. Balance passes on a build this systems-dense usually start within the first fortnight, and the numbers on this site will follow them.