inZOI Director Confirms Canvastown Multiplayer Mode as an Optional Social Hub, Says Core Life Sim Work Will Not Slow

inZOI director Hyungjun "Kjun" Kim has confirmed that an experimental multiplayer mode called Canvastown is in active development at KRAFTON's inZOI Studio, framing the social hub as a separate, optional way to play that will not divert resources from the main life-sim. The new details were published on the official inZOI Forum on September 11, 2026 in the latest installment of Kim's "Brainstorm with Kjun" developer diary, with major Western outlets including PC Gamer and PCGamesN carrying the news on September 12 and 13.

According to Kim's forum post, Canvastown is built around "the idea of you and I living together in a creator's village." Players will create or import a single Zoi avatar and a customisable home before entering a shared hub called AR Company, where "around 50 people can converse and interact in the same channel under mutual consent." The hub caps concurrent users at 50 to keep the social layer from becoming chaotic, with private sessions and invite-only channels being explored for players who want smaller, friends-only experiences.

The forum post doubles as a soft reset for inZOI's broader multiplayer roadmap. Kim says Canvastown was developed by "a dedicated few teams" working in parallel to the core life-simulation squad, and that the two groups will remain separate going forward so the main single-player feature work — careers, building, Open Catalog and the upcoming restaurant mode — is not slowed. Modding is part of the plan too: script mods will let creators wire up mini-games like kart racing or obstacle courses, mirroring design ideas borrowed from platforms such as Roblox and Second Life.

Kim is unusually candid about the mode's unfinished state. "Looking at the current build makes me sigh," he wrote. "There are so many lacking areas, and we have a very long way to go. But someday, I hope to bring this dream of mine to life." He also said the studio's TapTap Game Fest demo in Shanghai, where Canvastown is being shown off alongside the AR Company social hub, will determine whether the feature continues or is wound back: "I told the company that I would decide the future of Canvastown based on the event's outcome. It might go well, or many shortcomings might be exposed, but I believe it's a necessary process to move forward to the next step."

For existing inZOI players, the takeaway is that single-player is staying the centre of gravity while a parallel team keeps working on the optional online layer. The forum post explicitly addresses the community's biggest worry from the January 2026 multiplayer roadmap by reiterating that multiplayer is "an optional feature" and that core gameplay will continue to receive the majority of the studio's effort. KRAFTON confirmed the forum post is the canonical source for the feature in its own messaging, and outlets including PCGamesN and Sims Community are framing Canvastown as inZOI's first concrete step toward a "social MMO" experience layered on top of the existing life sim.