20th Anniversary Edition

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. This update has come from the community - and we are proud to now make these updates official. We would like to personally thank Keiron McPhee (KezzaMcFezza in the community) for his incredible work in making this update possible. We would also like to extend our thanks to Jasmin Brumme for her work on the Audio system of the game, massively improving the quality for everyone, especially on MacOSX. And thank you to the community for helping us beta-test this update in the run up.

New High-resolution coastlines, built on completely revamped and updated graphics API The core gameplay of DEFCON remains unchanged. Our aim with this update is to bring DEFCON up to modern standards, to enable it to run flawlessly for another 20 years. This meant completely replacing its ancient graphics and audio systems, and bringing in support for the huge range of modern desktops - High DPI screens with UI scaling, ultra-wide monitors, multi-monitor setups, and HDR screens.

Hi resolution coastlines Make a huge difference to certain small islands around the world UI Scaling One of the most common requests for DEFCON is proper support for modern desktop resolutions. A lot has changed since 2006! As part of this update we now offer full UI scaling, as well as support for High DPI displays, Ultra-wide monitors, and HDR support.

Game UI scaling, as well as High-DPI support, Ultra-wide monitor support and HDR support

Hardware requirements / Legacy version

The 20th Anniversary Edition requires support for either OpenGL 3.3+, Direct3D11, Metal, or Vulkan. For older systems that don't support these technologies, the Legacy Version remains available, and will remain available indefinitely. To access the legacy version, run the game from Steam and select "Play Legacy Version".

Linux users may want to note that while we are providing a Linux-native build of the game, the Windows builds of the game are Proton-compatible, in case the Linux-native build breaks for any reason. If needed, to force enable Proton, right click on the game in your Steam library, click Properties > General > Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool, and select the desired version.

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 Significant performance improvements 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.