Hi all!

Last week we made some exciting announcements regarding the new features that will be available in Beta 21. A highly requested community feature was the ability to set up a customer service / support department, which will be making it's way into the game. This won't be the only exciting new feature for Beta 21, as we're planning to reveal a bunch more in this Devlog!

You can click here to read the previous Devlog in which we also unveiled cool features for Beta 21.

Beta 21 will introduce a revised recruitment functionality. You'll now have to use a "Recruiter" (or your CEO) in order to find and headhunt new employees.

You'll be able to poach (better known as steal) employees from your competitors and negotiate salaries and signing bonus in order to persuade them to take you up on your offer.

The new feature also allows you to research the candidates demands.



A new and very important feature will be added to all employees: age. As time goes by, your employees will start to age. It won't affect performance (mood or speed), but once the employee reaches the age of 65 he/she will retire.

Note: All employees from existing save games will be set to the age of 25.



A highly requested and popular demand of the community was the ability to add the CEO to the game. Beta 21 will deliver on that promise and will allow you to introduce "yourself" to the game as the CEO (Chief Executive Officer).

The first time you launch Beta 21 you will be required to customize your CEO. All CEOs will have a personal "bonus" that affects the rest of the game (see screenshot for more details).

The CEO will act identically with the new "Recruiter" employee type, however uniquely for the CEO he won't require a salary or age at all (I know, it's unrealistic, but imagine the Steam reviews if I retire the player themselves).



Right now we're super busy fixing bugs and testing out the new features. They still need a lot balancing. The new office building is also in the making (we hope to be able to present it in next week's Devlog).

Finally everything needs to be translated and tested on all platforms. You should expect a release in 2-3 weeks if everything goes well :-)


All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game.

That's it for this Sunday!

Best,

Jonas & Robert

Hello everyone!

This week is an exciting week for us, as we're going to share some of features with you, which are planned for Beta 21.

It's always very interesting for us to implement new features and to see how the players will be managing and coming up with ingenious methods on optimizing everything. These new features will effect gameplay up to a certain degree where you'll have to manage another aspect in your Startup Company!

Beta 21 will introduce support tickets. These are basically questions and issues coming from your users that you will have to handle. It adds a whole new dynamic to Startup Company where you have to make sure that your users will be happy with the support that you provide them.



Tickets has to be handled within 36 hours. Anything later than that will decrease your Support Satisfaction.

Tickets come in 3 different complexities (difficulties): low, medium and high complexity. To solve them, you have to hire new employees for a brand new role: Supporter.

As with any other employee type the Supporter comes with various degrees of experience such as Beginners, Intermediates and Experts.

However, unlike the other "production" employees the Supporters should be paired with matching ticket complexity. For example: Expert Supporters will be slower at resolving low complexity tickets than Beginner Supporters.

To overcome this challenge, you'll be able to set up Support Teams which will limit its members (employees) to the selected complexities.



If you fail to handle support tickets in time, it will directly impact your website's overall satisfaction.

The support dissatisfaction is working a bit different from Features as the decrease is subtracted directly from the subtotal of your current website satisfaction.



All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game.

We'd love to know what you think about the new features that are planned for Beta 21, make sure to leave a comment!

That's it for this Sunday!

Best,

Jonas & Robert

Hi everyone!

Beta 20 is now available. Restart Steam to get it right away!

It’s official, Beta 20 is the first Beta to hit in the year 2019! Because Beta 19 was heavily focused on optimization for the future of Startup Company we were able to add lots of cool new features for everyone to explore in the current Beta. In 2019 we’ll continue our promise to listen to ideas and feedback from the community!

With each Beta release we just want to make sure that you’re aware of the fact that there might be some bugs. Jonas is standing by to make sure anything that might go wrong will get "hotfixed" as soon as possible.



The new Research Tree is replacing the current tier system and is now live in Beta 20. You will be able to unlock exactly what you want. This means that you don't have to wait anymore for tiers to unlock, you're now completely in control.

All the features of Startup Company are unlocked via the Research Tree and not only items that used to be limited by old tier system.



Note: If you were higher than Tier 5 you will get 2.000 Research Points (RP) when you're upgrading to Beta 20.

We’ve implemented the Centralized Clockrate Controller (CCC) in Startup Company, which is a highly requested feature by our community.

This new unit can control the clockrate for up to 500 servers. A practical example would be: if you reach 90% overall CU usage, the CCC will change the clockrate from 50% to 100%. We're looking forward to see how everyone will make use of this new feature!

Together with the new and improved XServers you'll now be able to ensure your company is ready for the future - especially when you're being DDoS'd or get a viral boost!





With the release of Beta 20 two new server types are now available: the Small and the Large XServer. These new servers are a lot bigger compared to the existing servers. The servers also generates a lot of heat and a higher energy consumption per throughput. The XServers are a great choice to combine with the CCC to keep expenses low, while still having the power to overcome increased traffic.





If you have been playing with 100+ racks, you probably know that the game starts lagging when you click a rack or navigate around the server room. We've been able to make this piece of code 80% faster. Hopefully this eliminates lag for most setups.

As always, we're dedicated to make sure everything runs smoothly by fixing potential issues, listening to the community and continue the development by working towards Beta 21. In case you're wondering what's coming up in Beta 21 make sure to take a look at our updated roadmap from January 4, 2019.


Best,
Jonas & Robert

Wow! I don’t think words can describe how amazing this year has been for us. We celebrated our one year anniversary (in August 2018), added tons of new features, fixed bugs, built up an even bigger community and also set some clear indicators as to where we want to take Startup Company in 2019.

In this post, we wanted to look back at the year and see what new features we added, what mechanics completely changed the game and also tell you about our plans for Startup Company in 2019.

We started the year strong with Beta 14 which added tons of new features. Some of them are no longer in the current version but features such as the tracking stock prices, the activity log and product functionality are still present in the game.

After Beta 14 there were many changes and fixes that Jonas worked on within the timespan of a few days, a promise that he’s dedicated on keeping. Once all the bugs were fixed it was time to move onto Beta 15.

Beta 15 revolved around adding more personality to the game, giving it a stronger startup-feel and focusing more on the new players. The game became a lot more appealing and user-friendly, which was something that we noticed in the comments on the forums and Discord at that time.



We simplified the infrastructure tab and changed a lot of wording to make everything more clear. We also fixed a LOT of issues and bugs that we had back in that period, making the game a lot more stable and fun to play.

On June 25, 2018 we released Beta 16. It had been a while since Startup Company had seen any big updates on the default branch where the majority of the players are playing from. For Jonas it was the biggest update he worked on. So as you can imagine, he was very proud of that achievement!

Beta 16 completely rewrote how the hosting functionality worked by introducing the hosting buildings. We not only added the buildings, but we also added the functionality for racks and servers.

Jonas also needed a new and more immersive way to display all these new buildings. That is how the ‘City Map’ was born:



Other things such as acquiring competitors, receiving investment offers, milestones and a bunch of fixes were also introduced in Beta 16. This Beta version was incredibly big compared to all the previous ones!

Just 13 days after we celebrated the first year anniversary (release on Steam) Jonas launched Beta 17 for everyone on the default branch. Beta 17 added the most complicated mechanics ever seen in the game, and he was very nervous (but also excited) on getting feedback from all the players.

The marketing functionality had been completely rewritten. You no longer had to constantly restart campaigns. Instead, Jonas was inspired by the real world, where your campaign’s success will be based on your ability to correctly target the relevant audience.

Beta 17 also introduces a new variable to your products: Satisfaction. You’ll now have to improve features based on user feedback.

Maybe the most significant change has been that Jonas changed how Features for your product worked. Features of your product are no longer just for increasing your “potential users”. They are now also for creating new revenue channels. You’ll be able to choose between Text Ads, Banner Ads, Video Ads and Subscriptions. Basically you started earning money from selling ads and no longer from completing contracts, which was removed completely. This might have been the most discussed change by the community we’ve ever had!



Releasing new features is always exciting, as players get to experience the game on a whole new level. It’s especially exciting when we’re introducing features that are requested by actual players, so we’re always keen to receive feedback so that we can further improve Startup Company and make it as fun as possible! Beta 18 was such an update. We introduced the highly requested queue feature, making the early game less of a chore. We also implemented lots of handy features such as the contract expiration bar, random events (DDoS attacks), viral boosts and more.

Beta 18, for the first time ever in Startup Company, allowed you to ‘’beat’’ the game. Once you've completed everything there is to do in Startup Company you will now be awarded a high-score, which lets you measure yourself up against other CEOs playing the game!

Beta 19 released earlier this month and was focused on improving a lot of stuff that will prepare Startup Company for 2019. You can now employ a lot more employees (from 180 to 260) and this limit will be increased in the future.

We also added some new overlays, improved the clickable area and added a bunch of new items to decorate your office with. You can read all about it in our Beta 18 release on Steam here.

We can’t wait for 2019 to start. We’re going continue developing Startup Company according to our updated roadmap from December 7, 2018 but also include highly requested features/fixes from our players.

We’re currently working very hard on Beta 20, which will introduce a Research Tree, new X Servers (more info about it in Devlog 32) and various UI optimizations. We hope to ship this update to everyone as soon as possible.

In the future we’re going to add a bunch of new features such as:

- Website Support. You will have to manage customer service and handle complains/questions from your customers.
- A new hiring system that will allow interviews, negotiations and more.
-Addition of CEO to the office
- UI and QOL Overhaul. Everything will be improved with a focus on usability and “quality of life.
- In-game help system. Helping new players find their way around the game more easily.


We wish you all a Happy New Year and we’re looking forward to bringing you more amazing updates for Startup Company in 2019!

All the best,

Jonas & Robert

https://store.steampowered.com/app/606800/Startup_Company/

Hello everyone!

Christmas is coming up and the New Year is just around the corner. For Startup Company that means a new year of exciting updates, but also some other cool features that we've got planned for the next Beta.

In addition to that, Startup Company is on sale with 35% off during the Steam Winter sale. It's the perfect time of the year to potentially gift Startup Company to one of your friends and let them become CEO of their own company!

The new Centralized Clockrate Controller is done. The main purpose of the CCC is to help you defend yourself against DDoS attacks and viral boosts.



Here's a sneak preview of the new interface. In this example I've created a small cluster of racks that can be used to defend yourself against a DDoS attack.

Normally the clock rate is at 0% (Top left corner), but I have created a rule that triggers once my website's server usage reaches 100%.

It will then speed up the servers' clock rate to 100%. Once the attack is over and server usage is back at below 50% the servers will shut down again.



The new XServers has been added and you can finally check out it's specifications. The new servers are super expensive and extremely powerful.



If you have been playing with 100+ racks, you probably know that the game starts lagging when you click a rack or navigate around the server room. I've been able to make this piece of code 80% faster. Hopefully this eliminates lag for most setups.

In the last few days of 2018 Bruno has been super busy designing the last office for Startup Company. In terms of size you can compare it to the largest hosting building. The building comes with two floors, and will be able to seat 500 employees! Another cool things about the office, it's not completely square!

Here's a very early work in progress image of the new office building:


All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game.


That's it for this Sunday! We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

All the best,

Jonas & Robert

Hi there!

This week has been a crazy week for us. Not only did we release Beta 19, which optimized the entire game and included some new features, we're also working very hard on bringing you Beta 20 very soon!

We've talked about this before, and now it's finally done, except from some final balancing to make it perfect!

The new Research Tree is replacing the current tier system. Instead you will be able to unlock exactly what you want. This means that you don't have to wait anymore for tiers to unlock, you're now completely in control.

All the features of Startup Company are unlocked via the Research Tree and not only items that used to be limited by old tier system.



We plan to release Beta 20 very soon. It will contain the following new features:

• The new Research Tree
  
• The X Servers (more info about it in Devlog 32!)
  
• Various UI optimizations

It's a small release, but as the Research Tree is changing a lot of things, we don't want to overwhelm everyone with too many changes. Next week we're starting with the localization and play-testing. We're planning the release just after Christmas. If you want to join the play-testing of the new upcoming Beta, make sure to join our Discord group for more info!

All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game.

That's it for this Sunday, thanks for reading!

Best,

Jonas & Robert

Hi everyone!

Beta 19 is now available! Restart Steam to get it right away!

Beta 19 is now live, which mainly focused on optimizing the game - making sure it’s ready for the future of Startup Company! We fixed a lot of issues and listened closely to what the community had to say.

As always, we’re incredibly excited to hear your ideas, while also being nervous at the same time - since new Betas are always scary for developers!

With each Beta release we just want to make sure that you’re aware of the fact that there might be some bugs. Jonas is standing by to make sure anything that might go wrong will get hotfixed as soon as possible, but it should be a smooth sailing with this release since we tested it a lot.



Since the Early Access release Startup Company hasn't been the most optimized game and everyone who had 180 employees know what we're talking about.

The main reason for the bad performance has always been the way the office was rendered (DOM elements). This was a decision we took early on, as Startup Company at the time wasn't that "big" of a game. People usually had 10-20 employees.

Now as the game has progressed, it's time to move on to WebGL and something called canvas. This is all geek talk, but what it really means is the game is going to be incredible efficient compared to the latest Beta 18.

Here's some early stats showing the improvements (all based on i7 7700K and a GTX1060):


The maximum desks in the skyscraper has been increased from 180 to 260. We plan on increasing the limit even more, as more performance improvements gets introduced in the future.

We’ve added two new desks to the game, one that is perfect for managers and one that grants your programmers, SysAdmins and designers an amazing setup! Here are the images of these setups:

The executive setup


The ultimate setup


We’ve included new overlays which shows a lot more information in a much cleaner way!




It has been a pain to move certain items, especially when you had a bigger office with more items in there. We've now significantly improved the clickable area from where you can select items that you previously placed on the office floor. This will allow you to remove and/or change items in your office a lot easier.


The location where mods are stored has been changed. In addition to that, when you’re upgrading to a newer version of Startup Company mods will automatically deactivate. You will need to manually enable them again in the mods section in the game itself.



Beta 19 feels much slower than Beta 18. Shouldn’t it be faster?
This can be the case if your setup is below our minimum requirements. Beta 18 was relying mainly on the CPU. Beta 19 is different and is now utilizing the GPU instead. Make sure to play the game with a dedicated graphics card.

Is there a way to upgrade existing racks to the new 42U rack?
Unfortunately not at this time. It’s on our radar, together with a ton of other features.

The toggle overlay and the new desks are missing translations. Is this intended?
Yes, as Beta 19 almost contained no new translations, we have postponed translation of some strings until Beta 20.

As always, we're dedicated to make sure everything runs smoothly by fixing potential issues, listening to the community and continue the development by working towards Beta 20. In case you're wondering what's coming up in Beta 20 make sure to take a look at our updated roadmap from December 7, 2018.


Best,
Jonas & Robert

Hi there!

Hope ya'll had a great Thanksgiving. This week we've got some cool news regarding Beta 19, as you're now able to join the fun! Usually we post our Devlogs on Sundays, but we had some unforeseen issues yesterday that prevented us from posting the Devlog. We're also going to show a new feature that will be added for Beta 20 in this Devlog too!

Beta 19 is focused on optimization and making sure that people who reached the end-game can continue growing their company with even more employees and bigger offices! Make sure to check out some of the previous Devlogs that cover some other features and optimizations that will be present in the new Beta version of Startup Company.

You can now join the fun yourself, as we've published Beta 19 on the testing branch. Below we've listed the steps that you need to complete in order to get on the Beta 19 branch.

- Go to your Steam library.
- Right click on Startup Company and select ''Properties''
- Go to the ''BETAS''-tab.
- Enter the password: ''startupcompany19'' to unlock the branch
- Select ''beta 19'' from the drop-down menu.
- Close the window and you should automatically download Beta 19.

Please note: Beta 19 is still very unstable, which means there might be game-breaking bugs present. If you encounter a bug, or something that you don't (or do) like, please post a message on our community hub, or report it on our Discord channel. (Link to the Discord channel is below this post.)

Once we've fixed some bugs in Beta 19, implemented community feedback and are happy with how everything looks and feels we'll release it for everyone on the public branch! We do not have a solid release date yet, but we aim to release Beta 19 for everyone in December 2018.

Recently we announced the new programmer and executive setup for your employees. This time around we want to share new server racks with you, as displayed in the image below:


Again, these assets might change over the course of the development of Startup Company.

Rack Sizes


We're currently working on a Centralized Clockrate Controller (CCC) in Startup Company, which is a highly requested feature by our community. This new unit can control the clockrate for up to 500 servers.

A practical example would be: if you reach 90% overall CU usage, the CCC will change the clockrate from 50% to 100%. It will be cool to see how everyone will make use of this new feature!

Together with the new and improved X Servers this will allow everyone to make sure that your company is ready for the future - especially when you're being DDoS'd or get a viral boost to handle all the traffic!



Please note: the CCC, new rack and new servers are scheduled for Beta 20.

With Beta 20 two new server types will be introduced into the game: the Small and the Large X Server. These new servers are a lot bigger compared to the existing servers. The servers also generates a lot of heat and a higher energy consumption per throughput. The X Servers are a great choice to combine with the CCC to keep expenses low, while still having the power to overcome increased traffic.


Startup Company is now on sale during the Steam Autumn sale. You can now get a copy with 25% off!


All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game.

That's it for this Monday, hope you all will have a great week!

Best,

Jonas & Robert

Hey all,

Last week we didn't post a new devlog, mainly because there is not a lot to show graphically or feature-wise, as the new Beta 19 will be mostly focused on optimizing performance! However, this week we do have some awesome stuff to share, such as a new overlay, new desks and an update on the optimization for Beta 19.

Beta 19 will be focused on making Startup Company a smoother experience, while also taking the future of the game into account. This pretty much entails that the amount of maximum employees will be increased significantly, which also put some other wheels in motion that will make sure your new employees will feel right at home!

A new office building will be available on the map, which will give you the ability to accommodate more employees. Other than that you will see a significant increase in managers and experts joining your company after Beta 19 has been released.

We'll be adding two new desks to the game, one that is perfect for managers and one that grants your programmers, SysAdmins and designers an amazing setup! Here are the images of these setups:

The executive setup


The ultimate setup


We're also planning on updating the overlay of employees, providing some additional details.



The overlay is still subject to change, as we're still trying to figure out if we're happy with these changes. Please let us know in the comments below what you think about it!

It has been a pain to move certain items, especially when you had a bigger office with more items in there. We've now significantly improved the clickable area from where you can select items that you previously placed on the office floor. This will allow you to remove and/or change items in your office a lot easier.




All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game.

That all for this week. Thanks for reading!

Best,
Jonas & Robert

Hi everyone,

First of all we'd like to welcome all of the new players who have joined us (both on Steam and Discord) while the game was featured on Daily Deal on Steam. Concurrent players has again been above 600, something we haven't seen since the Early Access release back in August 2017.

In the last couple of weeks we've been busy, writing more complicated code than usually. Beta 19 is all about performance improvements and that is going to be visible in the devlogs the next couple of weeks/months.

Beta 19 will introduce a brand new research "tree" which will replace the existing "Tiers and XP". We were never happy with the current unlocking mechanics as it was both scripted and impossible for the player to control. Now it will be entirely up to you how fast you unlock stuff (hiring more researchers) and which items you prioritize unlocking first.


Alright, this one is HUGE! Since the Early Access release Startup Company hasn't been the most optimized game and everyone who had 180 employees know what we're talking about.

The main reason for the bad performance has always been the way the office was rendered (DOM elements). This was a decision we took early on, as Startup Company at the time wasn't that "big" of a game. People usually had 10-20 employees.

Now as the game has progressed, it's time to move on to WebGL and something called canvas. This is all geek talk, but what it really means is the game is going to be incredible efficient compared to the latest Beta 18.

Here's some early stats showing the improvements (all based on i7 7700K and a GTX1060):


As you can see, Beta 19 is going to be insanely fast and it opens up brand new opportunities when it comes to office sizes. Obviously increasing the maximum workstation count is coming, but we are also looking into much larger office buildings.


That all for this week. Thanks for reading!

Best,
Jonas & Robert