Click here to see how to join the Unstable branch.

Changes

• New 3D models for heat pump, wind turbine and battery

Fixes

• Fixed companies cancelling player distribution deal when they didn't have any to begin with
  
• Fixed employees holding up food queue after already having had food
  
• Fixed furniture editor not working properly with furniture that doesn't have a base
  
• Fixed not being able to place buildings along road on north or west side of the map
  
• Fixed out of stock message going away after a couple of seconds
  
• Fixed AI IP deals not taking add-ons into account and having negative values for products not making profits yet

Changes

• Added ability to mute issue notifications
  
• Capped crunchtime hangover at 1 year

Fixes

• Fixed fire alarm not shutting off after fire when restoring rooms
  
• Probable fix for employees randomly getting stuck going into car, until reload
  
• Fixed game breaking when undoing replacing furniture
  
• Fixed broken furniture still applying room boosts
  
• Fixed furniture mods breaking due to having sub transforms with the same name as the furniture, which could make lamps break game
  
• Fixed not being able to place furniture outside if there were any pillars present on map

Changes

• Added lead designer inspiration warning
  
• Added creativity progress bar when hovering over applicable design tasks
  
• Reduced creativity impact on sales for easy and medium difficulty
  
• Reduced publisher marketing efforts to a point where they can make a profit
  
• Added ability to see all specialization stars in employee window
  
• Added development progress of all specializations to peer review window at time of review start
  
• Separated Food and Coffee bills

Modding

• Removed furniture UpgradeFrom variable, you only need to define UpgradeTo now

Fixes

• Fixed active users doubling every month if product has any add-ons
  
• Fixed active users gained from add-ons and active user loss modifiers not being scaled down by days per month
  
• Fixed bug introduced in recent patch where notifications would collapse after 5 seconds when interacted with, instead of cancelling collapse action
  
• Fixed furniture being placed on wall behind the closest wall for furniture that can be moved vertically
  
• Employees will no longer neglect hunger and bladder while chatting away at the water cooler

Changes

• Added links to wiki in mod editors if there are no mods to edit
  
• Moved contract alpha phase Promote button to match design phase

Fixes

• Fixed cases of employees ending up with 5 traits
  
• Fixed game showing education available for specializations that haven't been unlocked yet
  
• Added build menu categories to default localization
  
• Fixed lead designer's Active Projects count being misleading, as it wasn't updating every frame
  
• Fixed getting errors about furniture not fitting anywhere because the modded furniture it was placed on was not loaded
  
• Fixed being able to place cubicle walls up against a wall in such a way the game wouldn't register as inside the room

Changes

• Added warning about no applicable lead designers
  
• Changed reviewer score weighting a bit, so who's who and trend won't hurt the player's feelings as much
  
• Changed how reviewers determine level of marketing to account for company reputation

Fixes

• Fixed GLTF importer having flipped UV map, hardware designs in mods will need to have thier UVs flipped after this patch
  
• Fixed getting furniture assignment error when changing team name
  
• Fixed placing outside only furniture giving player wrong error message when trying to place in room or fenced area
  
• Fixed game breaking when firing lead designer from demand selection
  
• Fixed infinite loop of leader tutorials being spawned when opening company detail window
  
• Fixed game breaking when trading IP with archived products that are lead designer owned
  
• Fixed not being able to upload .obj files to the workshop for hardware designs
  
• Fixed localization generation from console not working
  
• Fixed game breaking when firing a lead designer who is currently working on a contract
  
• Fixed furniture not being visible from upper floors when it pokes through the outer wall and walls have been lowered

Fixes

• Fixed not being able to rename software in development
  
• Fixed game breaking when calling temporary staff with subway nearby causing them to spawn before the AI was initialized
  
• Fixed bugs with personality and trait selection when switching between founders
  
• Fixed watch being saved with founder
  
• Fixed old saves breaking when game would try to archive old products
  
• Fixed map position in main menu when there are no save games
  
• Made boxes wait 0.25 seconds before going on a pallet instead of going on because it was blocked for a single frame
  
• Fixed new deterministic RNG resulting in bad randomness, like employees getting sick all the time or never
  
• Fixed salary staying at $0 when rehiring a founder as lead designer after buying them out
  
• Fixed issue where a mod could not have the same path as another if the first part of their root folder names matched

Fixes

• Fixed support doing working animation when they are waiting for reports
  
• Fixed 10% speed boost tip on specialization stars not disappearing when moving mouse
  
• Fixed update task SCM description
  
• Fixed capitalization of names in reviews
  
• Fixed getting IP owner error when promoting to alpha with a lead designer that has the IP owner demand
  
• Fixed issue where merging a room into a room which had an elevator could cause some issues down the line that would break the game
  
• Fixed staff accidentally reserving computers when subways are present, making them unavailable for employees, until computer is re-assigned or replaced
  
• Fixed market analysis window being bugged for a year in old saves
  
• Fixed digital add-on sales not being summed properly causing player digital distribution share to get over 100%
  
• Fixed game breaking when releasing a product or finishing a contract with a lead designer that has since been fired

Fixes

• All code mods will need recompilation on launch to avoid old mods crashing the game because they are no longer compatible

Click here to see how to join the Unstable branch.
Alpha 11 saves are compatible but will not take full advantage of new features.


You can now release products for your products, for maximum productivity!


The utility system has been massively improved with more options to generate and store electricity.


Your workers will now be able to bike to work and smell bad in the process.


There's a new class of employee in the game, which has huge effects on your products and your HR.


You no longer have to imagine what your products will look like in the hands of your customers.


It's now much easier to find the exact employee you want, but also harder to find tons of them. Plus each employee have unique quirks.


You no longer have to start your company off alone.


No more run-on sentences, you get 3 simple sentences to sum up your product, but with a little more flair than before.


You can now drag walls and plop down room prefabs in existing rooms.


Notifications are now grouped and easier to manage.


Upgrade the tech of your products and manage patching schedules.


You can now edit furniture mods using an in-game visual editor.

Changes

• Added add-ons, which are extra products that can be developed and sold for a software or hardware product
  
• Added software updates, which allows increasing the tech level of a product to extend its life, and updates are now required to release bug fixes
  
• Added subscription-based software
  
• Added lead designers
  
• Added hardware design system, so each hardware product's look can be customized and randomly generated, also moddable
  
• Overhauled hiring with a limited hiring pool that refreshes every month and paying to filter applicants, instead of unlocking more information
  
• Overhauled employee traits, there are currently 30 traits and the game picks 2 good and 2 bad or 1 good, 1 neutral and 1 bad based on employee personality
  
• You can now have up to 4 founders when you start a new company
  
• Overhauled utility values and prices, added details in finance window, added more ways to generate and store electricity and added gas for the central heating unit
  
• Overhauled product reviews, you now get 3 reviews from various reviewers that focus on specific aspects of the product and company
  
• Added new product launch window for easy overview of reviews and post release actions
  
• Improved rectangle room building and added wall dragging tool
  
• You can now place single room blueprints or duplicates inside existing rooms and it will automatically be split if necessary
  
• Overhauled notification system and look, issue messages now stick around until they are fixed
  
• Made it prohibitively slow to make large scale products with very few employees
  
• Added bikes, body odour and bathing
  
• Added firefighters
  
• Perishable prices have been adjusted to account for each portion representing one month's worth of portions
  
• Drastically increased cost of renting
  
• Drastically increased dividend percentage
  
• Product loss has been renamed to expenses
  
• Added expenses breakdown for player products in product detail window
  
• Gross product revenue is now calculated correctly by not subtracting royalties, distribution cuts, etc. which is now included as expenses
  
• ISP and server electricity costs are now calculated as an expense
  
• Improved character customization UX
  
• You can now view what each difficulty setting does in the new game screen
  
• Removed follower cap when marketing in design and alpha phases
  
• Level 3 developer specializations now adds a speed increase
  
• Close window shortcut now works on all windows with an X button, instead of just non-modal windows
  
• Added error message if printers or assemblers are sending components to the wrong place
  
• Improved incompatible assembly line message
  
• Assembly line grouping can now cross pallet connections, though components still aren't valid on pallets
  
• Added automatic component assembler load balancing at the receiving end, so sending components to assemblers at different rates won't back them up as easily
  
• Founder's effectiveness is now affected by more things
  
• Added button to duplicate a team
  
• Added ability for HR to auto-prioritize specializations based on active tasks
  
• You can now scroll to zoom in manufacturing graph
  
• Added ability to deactivate distribution deals on demand
  
• All companies will now start selling stocks, instead of only companies in need of funds
  
• AI companies going bankrupt before acquisition by the player will now try to course correct
  
• Some employee moods now decay when they are home as well
  
• Products are now archived (still viewable) after 10 years with no activity, to improve performance and reduce save file size
  
• Solar panel now generates income from surpluss production
  
• Added right side garage port
  
• Improved performance of manufacturing overlay
  
• Added level 3 game feature "Reverse Uno"
  
• Lowered volume of UI reverb when placing stuff in bad acoustic environments
  
• Bunch of optimizations

Modding

• Added an in-game editor for furniture mods
  
• Added warning about modded furniture with highly detailed models in Mod Window (Also modded furniture can now have LODs using LOD1 and LOD2 in Models table)
  
• The SoftwareType.Category label has been removed from the game
  
• Specialization features can now be forced for a subset of software categories and while having an unlock date
  
• Company names now contain a randomly generated word, and split up computer, console and phone name generation
  
• Added mod loading times to mod window in main menu
  
• Added the % modulo operator to SIPL

Fixes

• Fixed pillar to room tool clicking through UI
  
• Improved precision of wall curve tool and fixed it breaking on very long walls
  
• Fixed being able to profit off digital distribution even if server capacity isn't there
  
• Fixed patent work being invalidated if another company researched tech that was older than the one being patented
  
• Fixed rooms being marked as not accessible if you had to cross the same room twice to get there, due to blocking furniture
  
• Fixed language combo not refreshing immediately when loading language from Localizor
  
• Fixed it being almost impossible to get level 3 Service specs when hiring
  
• You no longer lose reputation by not working on a support or marketing deal accepted after 8 AM on the first day
  
• Fixed grass not updating immediatly after placing, moving or destroying furniture that should remove the grass
  
• Fixed AI porting their products to operating systems that have unrealistically high license prices
  
• Fixed employee being assigned to unreachable furniture error popping up on load because team assignment graph hadn't finished generating
  
• Fixed cases of burglars getting stuck if they had decided on something to steal but their path was reset in the meantime for whatever reason
  
• Fixed cases of fire inspectors requiring fire alarms or sprinklers in outdoor areas
  
• Fixed employees beeing too picky about when to wait in line and when to use a neighbouring object, causing them to wait too long for a toilet
  
• Fixed quaterly and yearly report not summing up correctly depending on current date
  
• Fixed AI releasing products right after 00 on the last day of a month causing the game to show their sales as if they were from 1 month in the future
  
• Rooms that are inaccessible due to team assignment will now show error outside of build mode as well
  
• Pallets will now complain about being unreachable if they are blocked in and have no conveyor output
  
• Fixed rotation of corner carpets when flipping rooms, but this time remembered to actually save changes to carpet prefabs
  
• Fixed "Infinity" being a valid price for products
  
• Fixed employees not aging in thumbnails
  
• Fixed splitting and merging rooms while nav mesh was rebuilding causing race conditions
  
• Fixed programmer+artist employees working slower on features that only require one or the other, if code and art still needed work in other features
  
• Fixed new blueprints not working when downloaded from steam workshop
  
• Fixed company's stock reaching 0% or less due to rounding error
  
• Fixed employee thoughts not being updated at same rate as they were affected, causing them to flicker with many active employees
  
• Fixed cases of printers continuing to print components from tasks that have been unassigned from their assembly line
  
• Fixed game breaking when mirroring cloned rooms with roofs attached
  
• Reduced 2x SSAA + SSR effect on GPU
  
• Fixed interaction triggered furniture sound effect players having the wrong distance setting, making them audible from further away

It’s been about 6 months since I started development on Beta 1, so it seems the latter part of my initial guestimate of development taking 3-9 months was correct. At this point all planned and unplanned mechanical parts are in place, greased up and interlocked, now the whole thing just needs a lick of paint, i.e., bug fixing, some balancing, localization support, and content, like how is a joystick made? What does a DLC contain? And what should a review say for a product designed by a visionary lead designer? "… Lead designer?" I hear you mutter.


So, this was the feature I teased in the last progress update as a "maybe if I have time", and I decided that I did have enough time.

Each project (Not including add-ons, contracts, and deals) will now require a lead designer, who is in charge of deciding how a product should work and feel. Lead designers will have 3 stats which determine how well their ideas turn out for a project:

• Their creativity, which is innate and is revealed as they expand their portfolio.
  
• Their inspiration, which drains during a project and replenishes during downtime.
  
• Their skills. Every time you release a product, the lead designer(s) will gain experience with the software (or hardware) type in question.

Lead designers will require extra resources in terms of salaries and custom demands, each presenting unique gameplay challenges.



How do you find great lead designers? You might be lucky and find some out-of-work lead designers, or you can poach them from your competitors, but by far the least expensive option is hiring young designers and hoping to find a prodigy.


You'll now be able to start your company as a joint venture. You can start with up to 4 founders, and each founder gets an equal share of the company (excluding the main founder, i.e., yourself), which you cannot absorb until some years have passed. Note that dividend rates have been heavily raised in Beta 1, so extra founders do not come cheap.


When using the rectangle room tool to split a room, I made some big assumptions on how those splits would look, making its use very limited. I have now made the rectangle room tool split algorithm way more generalized to handle virtually all split tasks and some merge tasks. I then combined the rectangle room tool with the merging tool to create the wall dragging tool.


This generalized room split algorithm also made it possible to "stamp" single room clones into existing rooms, like copying an entire toilet and pasting it inside a room without first having to carve out space for it.

The verdict on save compatibility is still out. It's currently working, but Alpha 11 games won't play very well in Beta 1.

I'm reading through all your feedback and bug reports, and I've gotten a ton of important fixes in so far. Keep 'em coming, but also note that there's a good chance stuff has been fixed already.

A snippet of changes since the last progress update:

• Fire fighters will now move out to help save your headquarters from going up in flames
  
• Difficulty values are now displayed in the new game screen
  
• I made it a lot easier to pick colors for your founders' clothes and stuff
  
• The follower number when marketing is no longer hard capped
  
• The manufacturing graph is now zoomable
  
• You can now disable distribution deals on a per company basis
  
• Some employee moods now decay while they are at home
  
• Bunch of main loop optimizations, should improve performance of the office simulation

My self-imposed deadline dictated that I release Beta 1 before the start of April, and I'm fairly confident I can make it before then, but I was also confident this update wouldn't take more than 6 months… So, let's just agree to say, "Beta 1. Probably sometime before April".

Thank you for your patience. Can't wait to see what you think!

It’s been exactly 3 months since I released the last patch. Since then, I’ve finished 50% of my planned tasks for Beta 1. However, since each task vary in complexity, I’m probably not 50% done yet. But let’s get on with what I have done so far.


I’ve added the ability to design how your hardware products will look and Lasse has been hard at work making it work and look great. This system will be fully moddable and hopefully it will add a bit of life to all the endless text-only lists of products and make them feel a bit more tangible.


Ignore the unintended Dexter reference.

Traits have moved from independent/social, fast learner/hard worker and lazy/stressed to individual traits that are determined by an employee’s personality, sprinkled with some RNG. Additionally, there is no longer an infinite pool of employees lined up to be hired or deallocated, but it’ll be much easier to filter through applicants as the hiring system is moving from pay-to-view to pay-to-filter.





Notifications have been somewhat unhelpful up until now, mainly because it was hard to tell important from trivial messages, causing people to ignore them altogether, but also because issues would stick around even if they had already been fixed. This has changed in Beta 1 and I’ve added more complex interactions, making them super extra helpful.



I’ve overhauled the final review system, combined the post-release marketing and printing prompts, and merged it all into a single flashy release dialog, to make releasing new products a bit less anticlimactic.



You’ll now be able to release DLC for your games, or joysticks for the most popular console on the block, to milk each product for all they’re worth. With subscription-based software, releasing content for your products will also help bring back old customers, to gain those sweet extra monthly payments.





Bugs are no longer magically transported to your customers devices as soon as you fix them, you’ll now have to develop and release patches, which will also present an opportunity to upgrade tech levels, for even more subscription-based income goodness.

I'm not sure I can guarantee save compatibility with Alpha 11 currently. I have not yet broken compatibility, but engine-related issues might force my hand later down the line. In any case, Alpha 11 should still be available, even after Beta 1 is out officially, so you can keep playing old saves, and a lot of the new mechanics in Beta 1 wouldn't be accessible from Alpha 11 saves anyway.

• You can now get a detailed breakdown of expenses for products you have developed
  
• HR can now auto-prioritize specializations based on active tasks
  
• Assembly lines can now cross over pallets connections
  
• Fixed a bug causing AI to buy OS licenses from player for porting, even if OS license was ridiculously expensive
  
• Fixed it being almost impossible to get level 3 service employees when hiring
  
• Tons of other fixes and improvements

I also have another super secret mechanic planned, which will involve a new class of employee. I will reveal more when I get there.

As for when you'll be able to play it: I'm still on track with my initial estimate of 3-9 months. With the progress I've made so far, that estimate is narrowed to 3-6 months from today, as long as there aren't any major roadblocks.

Thanks for sticking around! Hope you’re as excited as I am :D

This should be the last patch before work on Beta 1 starts.

Changes

• Added ability to see what competitors are researching
  
• AI will now prioritize researching tech that hasn't been researched in a while and isn't currently being researched by a lot of other companies
  
• Added more errors when employees are assigned to furniture in rooms they are not allowed in
  
• Feature tooltips are simplified in simple design document mode to avoid confusing new players

Fixes

• Fixed AI having higher chance of doing research with more days per month, making patents more difficult to obtain
  
• Fixed rotation of corner carpets when flipping rooms
  
• Game will now remove submarket values below 0 from mods, to avoid breaking game

Changes

• Added car model LOD to improve performance with many cars on screen at once
  
• Updated main font, to make period and comma clearer, and monospace current time and money, to avoid jittering
  
• Ability to refill refillable furniture from the bottom left info panel
  
• Assembly line window now lists the effectiveness of printers and assemblers in each group

Fixes

• Fixed last column in finances window cutting off data if looking at a previous date in yearly or quaterly mode
  
• Fixed outdoor navigation mesh not refreshing after undoing curving wall on ground floor, potentially causing issues navigating until something else changes
  
• Fixed cases of furniture not being reachable even though it should be
  
• Fixed bug that could cause burglars to break if they entered a room with an elevator and a security guard in close proximity

Changes

• Added nav mesh building as a step in game loading to avoid starting up with blocked areas for big saves on very slow PCs
  
• Added ability to see how long current vacation is going to last for selected employee
  
• Added window to analyze competition in product detail window
  
• Modded furniture can now snap to multiple different types of snap points at a time
  
• Ability for furniture mods to group snap points together, so only one can be used at a time, by assigning an ID to the Group record of a snap point
  
• Added EXPORT_FURNITURE_POINTS command to export snap and interaction points into modded furniture file

Fixes

• Fixed issues with snapping furniture in basement
  
• Fixed OS showing up in port window while already being ported to, if it was fully released in the meantime
  
• Fixed pallet points not connecting up reliably at angles due floating point precision
  
• Fixed game breaking on rented maps with player owned pillars, because game tried to generate grids inside them as if they were rooms
  
• Internal rotations for snapped furniture are now reset on load to avoid incorrect rotations when duplicating rooms and furniture

Fixes

• Fixed furniture rotated the wrong way when cloning after last update (also rotates chairs back to face table in borked saves)
  
• Fixed competition analysis window having wrong max number on y-axis label

Changes

• Research now provides a 10% development speed boost to applicable features
  
• Added custom tooltip to features in design document detailing market targeting and speed modifiers
  
• Added submarket analysis window to visualize saturation of markets over time
  
• Licenses are now paid per employee per project instead of per company
  
• Added overview of tool licensing to product detail window
  
• If map seed starts with "NOLAKES", no lakes will be generated
  
• Rebalanced employee weighting of waiting to use furniture vs walking longer for it
  
• Added diagonal interior highlights to selected rooms
  
• Better handling of errors in level 3 feature scripts from mods
  
• Increased starting capital of hardware based companies to reduce chances of bankrupting early

Fixes

• Fixed instances of assembly lines not being updated correctly after undo or putting in inventory
  
• Fixed bug causing all rooms to become inaccessible to a team after renaming it, if no room on the map was assigned to any teams
  
• Fixed converting room to pillar deleting valid items on the other side of walls
  
• Meeting rooms no longer need to be assigned to a team
  
• Fixed not being able to manage parking spots above pre-built roads in city and town maps
  
• Employees will now discard reservation of computers as soon as they go to leave, to avoid making them unavailable for employees just arriving
  
• Furniture will now discard employee reservations immediately if they are unable to approach them
  
• Fixed snow on top of pillars in basement
  
• Added shadows to road elements when "More shadows" is enabled
  
• Garage ports can no longer be placed facing fenced areas, as it would break pathfinding

Changes

• Added option to disable diagonal room highlights
  
• Halved license costs for player on easy difficulty

Fixes

• Fixed saves breaking if they already had garageports facing fenced areas before 11.7.55
  
• Fixed burglars sometimes being able to skip past guards at full game speed
  
• Fixed assemblers not correctly assesing recycler access in particularly snakey assembly lines
  
• Fixed cleaning staff refusing to clean the room they are currently idling in, if it gets dirty after they finished cleaning it

Fixes

• Fixed case of burglars getting stuck
  
• Various other fixes

Fixed bug causing performance to degrade slowly every time an object had been highlighted

Changes

• Increased how far employees will travel for canteen to 75 meters from 50
  
• Made impossible difficulty a little easier
  
• Pillars will now say they are pillars in the info panel when selected
  
• Made data overlay list scrollable

Fixes

• Fixed being able to change game speed while save was loading
  
• Fixed grass not refreshing when undoing road changes
  
• Fixed reputation changes from deals not applying correctly with more days per month
  
• Fixed undoing moving furniture sometimes breaking stuff, if what they were moved from was deleted in the interim (Would often give harmless error messages about snap points when save was reloaded)
  
• Fixed overwriting old save file not changing its days per month setting until game was restarted
  
• Fixed blueprint groups re-appearing after deleting them and not being able to delete them again
  
• Fixed snow and grid z-fighting in some instances
  
• Fixed verified bug count when restarting support on a product that already had bugs fixed
  
• Fixed multiple chained conveyor ramps and box elevators not correctly picking which way boxes should go

To continue playing alpha 10, you should switch to the "Legacy" branch in steam, click here for example.
During the development of alpha 11, Lasse, who made the current character model, joined Coredumping and increased the company size to 2 people. He’s already begun improving the art style and creating new art for the game. Here are some of his massive upgrades over the previous programmer art:



I finally caved to the most demanded feature request and added hardware manufacturing to Software Inc.

To be honest, I just decided to add conveyor belts to improve the product printing aspect of the game and hardware was a simple shoe-in at that point. Hardware adds an entirely new layer to console and phone development, and greatly improves the potential of mods.

Software inc. has gotten fairly big in terms of game mechanics over the last couple of…*checks date*… Many years! So, to avoid people only seeing a small part of what the game has to offer, I’ve added a new reward system to guide you through the game’s mechanics. The rewards are not gating any major features, can easily be unlocked and persist through all save games. I’ll definitely be adding more as I come up with ideas for rewards…


Picking the colors and materials of your software mansion has become a lot easier with the style panel. I’m hoping this change will result in a lot less default grey rooms in your screenshots!


You can now stretch walls into circular shapes and smooth over any hard edges.


Building your office in Software Inc. brings forth new challenges for you to plan around and overcome.

The new temperature regulation system means you can build rooftop ACs and distribute cool air throughout your office through inconspicuous floor grills and/or plop down electric radiators in every single room until your electric bill explodes.

Just make sure you don’t watch it all go up in flames due to poor fire safety and lax security systems. Or just get it insured, maybe, I don’t know.

You may also notice a slight echo when placing down the first table in your new office. Big empty halls will now be a horrible place for your employees’ ear holes, but luckily, it’s easy to combat with some well-foamed walls or well-furnished spaces.



The development system has been completely revamped to promote creativeness, make research more interesting and make interdependencies clearer. This change will also have a huge impact on the "update"-update, which you can read more about below.

This change adds the notion of tech levels that are researched over the years to unlock better technology for existing features. Target demographics are now simulated in the form of submarkets, which will impact which features you should pick for your software. Frameworks have been added, which allow you to speed up development by reusing old code or licensing it from competitors. Finally, special features have been added to the game, which contain small scripts to alter the simulation in unexpected ways, fully moddable!


Your employees' educational specializations are now split up into 3 stars, which limit which features they can work on, and their base skill in each role now fully controls their effectiveness and how much quality they can add to a product. You can easily send multiple employees out for education and you'll finally be able to queue up several courses at a time.

Your development staff aren't the only ones with fancy degrees anymore, as leaders now have their own specializations, which control which managerial tasks they can perform, and the Support role has been split into Support, Marketing and Legal, each with their own specialization level.

You can now get help with funding, marketing and distribution through the use of publishers, if you're willing to part with a percentage of the profits.

After keeping up with support for this release, I'll start working on the "Update"-update. This update will include the ability to release updates and extra content for already released software and, in extension, the ability to sell your software as a subscription service. My plan is to push this update out as part of Alpha 11. Which is to say it shouldn't break save compatibility, but I can't guarantee anything at this point.

I expect this update will take a while, as it touches a lot of core systems, which was written anywhere between now and 5 years ago, and it will include a lot of new UI work/rework. So there'll likely be the usual major-alpha-testing-release 3-9 months radio silence.

When the "Update"-update is out officially, the game will move into beta, which means no more large mechanical overhauls and more focus on polish and balancing. The first mechanics I want to tackle in beta are research, subsidiaries, project management and digital distribution. The research and digital distribution mechanics still have some work to go before being completely done and the subsidiary and project management mechanics seem like the usual suspects, when it comes to gameplay issues I see raised in the community.