Will your progress be wiped in Early Access?
The developer has answered this directly, once, on 2026-07-17. The short version: they would rather not force wipes. That is a stated preference, not a promise — and the difference matters if you are about to invest a hundred hours.
Correct as of Update #6 · 2026-08-03
The developer states they would rather avoid forced wipes, and considerprestige — optional, player-chosen wipes — the more elegant solution. They describe having ideas in this direction, with no schedule and no commitment.
Confirmed on a first-party surface — the developer’s Steam announcements or the publisher’s support site.
Read that as a position, not a policy
There is a real temptation to compress this into “SAND has no wipes”. Do not. What exists is a dated statement of intent from a game six weeks into Early Access, with no mechanism shipped and no date attached. Intentions in Early Access move: on 2026-07-17 the same developer explained why they would not split matchmaking into more queues, and on 2026-08-03 they shipped a Duo only queue. Seventeen days, on their own feed.
So the defensible answer is: no forced wipe has been announced, the developer has said they would prefer to avoid one, and nothing rules one out. If your buying decision depends on a guarantee, there is no guarantee available.
What “prestige” would mean if it arrives
An optional wipe you choose, presumably in exchange for something — the pattern is familiar from other progression games. Nothing about how it would work in SAND has been described, so we are not going to describe it. When the developer states the mechanics, this section gets the details and a date.
The thing people actually mean when they ask this
Usually not “will a server reset happen” but “can I lose my stuff”. Those are separate questions, and the second one has a much more definite answer: yes, routinely, as the core loop. Everything you carry is at risk until extraction completes, and the Trampler can be lost. See what actually happens when you lose everything — the official recovery path is blunter than most players expect, and it has nothing to do with wipes.