Dual Universe Will Be Taxing Territories Come The Demeter Update

Dual Universe’s upcoming Demeter update will be making significant changes to how land ownership works in the space simulation sandbox.

Once the update goes live, territory owners will be required to pay a weekly upkeep tax of 1 million quanta per territory to keep them functioning. Failure to pay the tax will result in the territory going offline and all mining and industry operations will be stopped.

Should the tax remain unpaid for two consecutive weeks, the player will lose ownership of the territory which can then be claimed by a new player. The former owner will be given two weeks to remove any static constructs on the territory. Ownership of any remaining constructs will automatically be transferred to the territory’s new owner after the two-week period.

Players will be able to designate up to five territories as their headquarters, all of which will remain their property even if taxes remain unpaid after the two-week grace period. This only applies to player-controlled territories and will not be available to organization-owned ones. Novaquark says that they will monitor how the new system develops and may remove the headquarters state for unsubscribed players in the future.

The Demeter update will also introduce the ability to transfer ownership of territories to another player or organization via tokens. Once a territory is tokenized, it will be frozen and all construction and terraforming operations will be disabled. Existing mining and industry units, however, will continue to function as long as the upkeep taxes are up to date.

“Territory upkeep presents two benefits from a design standpoint: it should help prevent infinite land grabbing by introducing a constant financial constraint to massive land owners as well as provide a resource sink to help keep the economy in check,” the devs explained.

“We looked at different options to bring some form of balance in the control of territories. For example, the current setup for organizations, that allows infinite nested organizations, ruled out a progressive tax system, as nested organizations with one territory each can be created to only benefit from the lowest tax level,” they added.

A release date has yet to be announced for Demeter, but the update is now live on the public test server for those who want to give it a whirl. The update’s release will also mark the beginning of the studio’s new pricing and plans for new subscribers. You can learn more about that here.