: This was a golden era for modding. Large-scale mods like Frackin' Universe were fully mature by 2020, and many players used specific build backups (like the one in your .rar file) to ensure compatibility with their favorite mod setups before any potential (though rare) official patches. Why Archive Specific Builds?
: By early 2020, the game was highly stable. Most of the game-breaking bugs from the early beta years had been ironed out.
: Because Steam automatically updates games, players often manually zip their "Steamapps" folder to preserve a specific version. This is crucial if a new update breaks a complex mod list. Starbound Build 03232020.rar
The existence of a .rar file for a specific date usually points to a few specific intentions within the gaming community:
By March 2020, Starbound had been out of early access for nearly four years. This particular build represents the game in its late-stage development lifecycle. At this point, the core "1.4 Bounty Hunter" update (released in mid-2019) was the primary content set. : This was a golden era for modding
: Starbound saves are stored locally. If you run this build, it may attempt to read your current save files, which could cause corruption if your current saves are from a newer version.
: Always scan compressed files from unofficial sources for malware. : By early 2020, the game was highly stable
: You can typically extract the contents and run starbound.exe from the win64 or win32 folder without a formal installation.