This is a quick update to talk a bit more about the development and incoming features for They Are Billions. It has been a long time since our last update because we have been working in parallel on different parts of the game, not only for the Campaign but also for the Survival Mode.


Six new buildings are coming... and they are the greatest ones! They are extremely expensive to research and build. Not many colonies will have the capacity to even build just one of them. After all, we are surviving in a zombie apocalypse so there is no place for such luxurious and opulent wonders... BUT, if your colony has plenty of resources or you want to take the risk to build one of them, they can grant you very special rewards. Your colony will be the envy of all. :)

One of them, the cheapest one, will be the Inn/Tavern we mentioned in old updates. Finally we had to change its function as it was conflicting with other elements of the Campaign.

In the next update, we will show you all the Wonders and explain the special rewards. A quick look ahead on the Six Wonders, all of them will give you extra victory points if you win the game. The extra points will be very useful for the veteran players that try to get the highest score possible for the Survival or Community Challenge.


Our composer, Nicolas Diteriks, is about to record the soundtrack of They Are Billions with the 60 musicians of the Bratislava Philharmonic Orchestra. This is going to be epic! In the next update, we will show you some videos. Stay tuned!


Many people have asked us how the final game score is computed. This method could change in the future, especially with the new Wonders coming.

Right now, we use this formula:

- If the game is won the score is:

- If the game is lost then:

- Extra points for colonists:

- Extra points for infected killed:

And then the final score is multiplied by the score factor.

For the Community Challenge, the score factor can be 100%, 115%, 135% or 155% depending on the map type.


There is much to do in the Campaign. We know the expectations are very high, so we want to create something really special. We are producing lots of new assets and implementing many more features.

As many of you already know, in the Campaign you will have to reconquest a huge territory from the infected under the orders of the New Empire. We want the campaign to be non-linear, so the player can decide if he or she prefers to explore an old human base in search of new technology or attack a huge swarm of 200K infected that is blocking a new territory to build a colony with their imperial army... Together with how the player progresses in the science and engineering tree, relation with the new empire, map reconquest strategy, and selection of objectives will make each campaign unique.



We want to add a lot of optional content so players that are stuck and cannot progress will more have more options to expand their army and advance in the technology trees.

Although this decision could change later, we would like to continue with the Ironman Mode for the missions, in the sense that you cannot reload old saves while playing a mission. Of course, if you lose you can repeat it again. Also, you can save freely when you are in the intermissions Campaign Dashboard.

And that's all for the moment, see you in the next update!

This is a quick update to talk a bit more about the development and incoming features for They Are Billions. It has been a long time since our last update because we have been working in parallel on different parts of the game, not only for the Campaign but also for the Survival Mode.


Six new buildings are coming... and they are the greatest ones! They are extremely expensive to research and build. Not many colonies will have the capacity to even build just one of them. After all, we are surviving in a zombie apocalypse so there is no place for such luxurious and opulent wonders... BUT, if your colony has plenty of resources or you want to take the risk to build one of them, they can grant you very special rewards. Your colony will be the envy of all. :)

One of them, the cheapest one, will be the Inn/Tavern we mentioned in old updates. Finally we had to change its function as it was conflicting with other elements of the Campaign.

In the next update, we will show you all the Wonders and explain the special rewards. A quick look ahead on the Six Wonders, all of them will give you extra victory points if you win the game. The extra points will be very useful for the veteran players that try to get the highest score possible for the Survival or Community Challenge.


Our composer, Nicolas Diteriks, is about to record the soundtrack of They Are Billions with the 60 musicians of the Bratislava Philharmonic Orchestra. This is going to be epic! In the next update, we will show you some videos. Stay tuned!


Many people have asked us how the final game score is computed. This method could change in the future, especially with the new Wonders coming.

Right now, we use this formula:

- If the game is won the score is:

- If the game is lost then:

- Extra points for colonists:

- Extra points for infected killed:

And then the final score is multiplied by the score factor.

For the Community Challenge, the score factor can be 100%, 115%, 135% or 155% depending on the map type.


There is much to do in the Campaign. We know the expectations are very high, so we want to create something really special. We are producing lots of new assets and implementing many more features.

As many of you already know, in the Campaign you will have to reconquest a huge territory from the infected under the orders of the New Empire. We want the campaign to be non-linear, so the player can decide if he or she prefers to explore an old human base in search of new technology or attack a huge swarm of 200K infected that is blocking a new territory to build a colony with their imperial army... Together with how the player progresses in the science and engineering tree, relation with the new empire, map reconquest strategy, and selection of objectives will make each campaign unique.



We want to add a lot of optional content so players that are stuck and cannot progress will more have more options to expand their army and advance in the technology trees.

Although this decision could change later, we would like to continue with the Ironman Mode for the missions, in the sense that you cannot reload old saves while playing a mission. Of course, if you lose you can repeat it again. Also, you can save freely when you are in the intermissions Campaign Dashboard.

And that's all for the moment, see you in the next update!

We have a lot of news to share about our most recent big update V0.6!



Now the game can be played in Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Korean, Japanese, Russian, German, French, Polish, and Brazilian Portuguese.

The game should start selecting the language automatically. If it does not work please select the language from the Options screen.

Of course, consider the new translation in a beta state as is the game. We will check and improve everything with time. Also, you can use this forum to give us feedback or reporting issues. Each language has its own forum discussion. Our translators will check the forums and update everything as soon as possible.




Finally, it is here! Every week, starting on Monday there will be a new Community Challenge where you can play the same survival map and compete with the entire They Are Billions community. The scores will be uploaded to a leaderboard where you can compare your score with other players or friends. You have just one opportunity to try every challenge, so be careful!


Waypoints for Patrol, Travel and Attack Commands



Now you can add more waypoints to a unit’s path when using the commands Patrol, Travel, and Attack. To do so, just keep the SHIFT key pressed when selecting the target of the command. It also works for the Move command. This can be done with the right button, just keep the SHIFT key pressed to add more points.

The Old Towers



Now in the survival maps, you can find some old fortified towers that were infected and abandoned some time ago. You can reclaim these structures and have them join your colony. They can be reactivated once they are repaired.

Explosive Barrels

A new bonus you can find in some of the ruins. Explosive barrels can be carried by Soldiers, Snipers, and Lucifers and placed anywhere you’d like. If a unit shoots the barrel, it will explode causing devastating damage to the surroundings. Be careful, because they will detonate more barrels within range. They can be very useful to lessen a big swarm, or even blow up a full Doom Village!

New Dwelling Models


We have created more models for the wood and stone houses. They share the same style as the older ones but add a bit more variety and beauty to the colony.

New Swarm Music Theme

Our great composer has created a new atmospheric theme for the swarms. Hope you like it. Also, very soon we will record the entire soundtrack with the symphonic orchestra of Bratislava!

Some more minor changes:

- Improvement: Commands activated with the keyboard are more responsive (they are activated on key down, instead of on the key up event).
- Improvement: When Steam Overlay is activated the game pauses automatically and when it is closed the game continues from its last state (paused/playing).
- Improvement: When sending a unit to attack a position, now the travel indicator is displayed in the color red.
- Improvement: When attacking a specific unit with the attack command, a small red indicator will be displayed under the target unit.
- Fixed: When using the command attack key repeatedly the units cancel their current action even when attacking the same target area.
- Fixed: Steam Overlay activation could leave some phantom keys pressed.
- Fixed: Technology names in mayor description.
- Fixed: Graphics glitch with patrol path line.


We have published here a Frequent Asked Questions post that should answer the main questions about the game. We will update the F.A.Q periodically with more information.

And that's all for now. In the next big update, we expect to add some more features like the Lost Tavern, the Monuments and Wonders and the Great Telescope (the first new addon for the Command Center). Stay tuned!

See you soon!

We have a lot of news to share about our most recent big update V0.6!



Now the game can be played in Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Korean, Japanese, Russian, German, French, Polish, and Brazilian Portuguese.

The game should start selecting the language automatically. If it does not work please select the language from the Options screen.

Of course, consider the new translation in a beta state as is the game. We will check and improve everything with time. Also, you can use this forum to give us feedback or reporting issues. Each language has its own forum discussion. Our translators will check the forums and update everything as soon as possible.




Finally, it is here! Every week, starting on Monday there will be a new Community Challenge where you can play the same survival map and compete with the entire They Are Billions community. The scores will be uploaded to a leaderboard where you can compare your score with other players or friends. You have just one opportunity to try every challenge, so be careful!


Waypoints for Patrol, Travel and Attack Commands



Now you can add more waypoints to a unit’s path when using the commands Patrol, Travel, and Attack. To do so, just keep the SHIFT key pressed when selecting the target of the command. It also works for the Move command. This can be done with the right button, just keep the SHIFT key pressed to add more points.

The Old Towers



Now in the survival maps, you can find some old fortified towers that were infected and abandoned some time ago. You can reclaim these structures and have them join your colony. They can be reactivated once they are repaired.

Explosive Barrels

A new bonus you can find in some of the ruins. Explosive barrels can be carried by Soldiers, Snipers, and Lucifers and placed anywhere you’d like. If a unit shoots the barrel, it will explode causing devastating damage to the surroundings. Be careful, because they will detonate more barrels within range. They can be very useful to lessen a big swarm, or even blow up a full Doom Village!

New Dwelling Models


We have created more models for the wood and stone houses. They share the same style as the older ones but add a bit more variety and beauty to the colony.

New Swarm Music Theme

Our great composer has created a new atmospheric theme for the swarms. Hope you like it. Also, very soon we will record the entire soundtrack with the symphonic orchestra of Bratislava!

Some more minor changes:

- Improvement: Commands activated with the keyboard are more responsive (they are activated on key down, instead of on the key up event).
- Improvement: When Steam Overlay is activated the game pauses automatically and when it is closed the game continues from its last state (paused/playing).
- Improvement: When sending a unit to attack a position, now the travel indicator is displayed in the color red.
- Improvement: When attacking a specific unit with the attack command, a small red indicator will be displayed under the target unit.
- Fixed: When using the command attack key repeatedly the units cancel their current action even when attacking the same target area.
- Fixed: Steam Overlay activation could leave some phantom keys pressed.
- Fixed: Technology names in mayor description.
- Fixed: Graphics glitch with patrol path line.


We have published here a Frequent Asked Questions post that should answer the main questions about the game. We will update the F.A.Q periodically with more information.

And that's all for now. In the next big update, we expect to add some more features like the Lost Tavern, the Monuments and Wonders and the Great Telescope (the first new addon for the Command Center). Stay tuned!

See you soon!

First, thanks for all this wonderful support! The amount of comments, feedback, videos, twitchs... is simply amazing! There are players that are making colonies that we have never seen in our play testing. Just look this one with almost 16K colonists!



We are glad to see our game engine moving softly these huge scenes with thousands of colonists, hundred of buildings and dozens of thousands of zombies.

And here goes a quick update to inform you of the game’s development progress.

Since the release on December 12th, we have been very busy working on several important technical aspects of the game:


With so many players and computers, sometimes some components required by the game are not correctly installed. Therefore, some players have had problems starting the game.

DirectX: It seems the Microsoft install is not always the correctly installed version, so we have added the exact libraries to the game folder and DirectX is no longer needed.

Visual C++ Runtime 2017: The same issue here. This has been the source of a lot of problems, giving the error HRESULT: 0x8007000B (thanks, Microsoft). Now the libraries are compiled statically, so that installer is no longer needed anymore.

There are a few more technical issues that we are studying such as problems with some monitor refresh rates.


We have fixed a lot of small bugs detected by the players and refactored some parts of the code to avoid random crashes. This new version should be the most stable one.


As They Are Billions is being played massively in all parts of the world, we have worked on implementing the multi-language support. And furthermore, we have implemented an automatic system that allows the translators to update the game with their changes very easily. So, all the languages will always be up to date and won't delay the development at all.

For notifying issues or errors in the translations please use this forum. We will create a pinned topic for every language and the translators will take of them:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/644930/discussions/3/



Spanish is the first language added and is now available on the options screen. It is available in the Version 0.5.


We expect in two or three weeks to have the next languages: Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, Japanese, German, French, and Russian. We are also trying to add Brazilian Portuguese, Polish and Italian.


Unfortunately, because of all the work related to the technical aspects we have delayed the development a few weeks for the new building The Tavern and the feature Challenge of the Week. But don't worry, it will be ready very soon. All the developers want to test our skills against all the players playing the same map. That is going to be very fun!

Thanks for all the support! I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday break and a happy start to 2018.

See you soon!

First, thanks for all this wonderful support! The amount of comments, feedback, videos, twitchs... is simply amazing! There are players that are making colonies that we have never seen in our play testing. Just look this one with almost 16K colonists!



We are glad to see our game engine moving softly these huge scenes with thousands of colonists, hundred of buildings and dozens of thousands of zombies.

And here goes a quick update to inform you of the game’s development progress.

Since the release on December 12th, we have been very busy working on several important technical aspects of the game:


With so many players and computers, sometimes some components required by the game are not correctly installed. Therefore, some players have had problems starting the game.

DirectX: It seems the Microsoft install is not always the correctly installed version, so we have added the exact libraries to the game folder and DirectX is no longer needed.

Visual C++ Runtime 2017: The same issue here. This has been the source of a lot of problems, giving the error HRESULT: 0x8007000B (thanks, Microsoft). Now the libraries are compiled statically, so that installer is no longer needed anymore.

There are a few more technical issues that we are studying such as problems with some monitor refresh rates.


We have fixed a lot of small bugs detected by the players and refactored some parts of the code to avoid random crashes. This new version should be the most stable one.


As They Are Billions is being played massively in all parts of the world, we have worked on implementing the multi-language support. And furthermore, we have implemented an automatic system that allows the translators to update the game with their changes very easily. So, all the languages will always be up to date and won't delay the development at all.

For notifying issues or errors in the translations please use this forum. We will create a pinned topic for every language and the translators will take of them:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/644930/discussions/3/



Spanish is the first language added and is now available on the options screen. It is available in the Version 0.5.


We expect in two or three weeks to have the next languages: Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, Japanese, German, French, and Russian. We are also trying to add Brazilian Portuguese, Polish and Italian.


Unfortunately, because of all the work related to the technical aspects we have delayed the development a few weeks for the new building The Tavern and the feature Challenge of the Week. But don't worry, it will be ready very soon. All the developers want to test our skills against all the players playing the same map. That is going to be very fun!

Thanks for all the support! I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday break and a happy start to 2018.

See you soon!

Greetings! Finally, They Are Billions Survival Mode is available on Steam! We know lots of people have been waiting patiently to play the game, especially the backers after we ran out beta keys. We have worked as if we were being chased by billions of zombies to launch the game much earlier than originally anticipated.

This version is now much more polished than the original. We have implemented lots of improvements suggested by the beta testers and also fixed billions of issues and bugs. This process will continue during the Early Access phase while we work on the epic Campaign Mode.


The backing period and special editions are no longer available. Thank you so much for your support and patience. The overwhelming support for our game was so much more than we had ever dreamed of.

Your Steam key(s) are already available on your download page in Humble Store. Just use the link from the email you received as: "Your Ranger Edition is Ready.”

In January, we will start creating the special rewards for the Sniper, Lucifer, Thanatos, and Titan editions. We will contact all of you directly by email.



From now on, we will announce the new versions and what's next directly on the Steam Store updates section. As many of you may already know, these were the last changes to the game:

New Mayors System
Now the colony can choose a new Mayor when the colony reaches specific population levels. There are about 100 mayors with different levels and features.

Thanatos
The awesome Thanatos unit is now available. He can be very narcissistic, but his rocket launcher can blow up dozens of infected in one shot!

Veteran Units
Rangers, Soldiers, and Snipers earn experience and can level up, improving their attack power and speed.

Targets Selection Priority
For the units, you can set the mode for auto-targeting enemies. Currently, it is only "The Nearest Enemy". There will be another mode, where you can set the priority "High Level Enemies first".


New Building: The Tavern of Lost Souls
Would you like to attract mercenaries and strange travelers of all kinds to your colony? Nothing better than offering a beer by the fireplace.

Competitive Mode: Challenge of the Week
Every week you can play a specific map that will be the same for all players. All players will compete on the same map and their score will be registered on a Leaderboard. Players will only have one chance to play the Challenge of the Week.


We have decided to anticipate the translation of They Are Billions, so the Survival Mode can be enjoyed by all the players:
- Simplified Chinese: 汉语
- German: Deutsch
- French: Français
- Spanish: Español
- Russian: Pусский
- Polish: Polski
- Italian: Italiano
- Japanese: 日本
- Korean: 한국어


Don't forget that the main mode of They Are Billions is the Campaign. Though the Survival Mode launch has taken us a lot of time, the development of the campaign is a bit delayed but don't worry, it is going to be like a whole new game with a great story, characters, missions, and lots of new features like the steam trains, the old fortresses, the infected mutant... We expect that it will have about 40-50 hours of gameplay. And of course, it will be included for free for all the Backers and Early Access buyers.
We will talk about the campaign in the next updates!



As you know, reviews on Steam are more important than ever. If you are enjoying the Survival Mode, please consider writing a review. The game is just in an early access phase, so we need all of your support to continue developing and improving the game. Thank you very much in advance for your time!

Greetings! Finally, They Are Billions Survival Mode is available on Steam! We know lots of people have been waiting patiently to play the game, especially the backers after we ran out beta keys. We have worked as if we were being chased by billions of zombies to launch the game much earlier than originally anticipated.

This version is now much more polished than the original. We have implemented lots of improvements suggested by the beta testers and also fixed billions of issues and bugs. This process will continue during the Early Access phase while we work on the epic Campaign Mode.


The backing period and special editions are no longer available. Thank you so much for your support and patience. The overwhelming support for our game was so much more than we had ever dreamed of.

Your Steam key(s) are already available on your download page in Humble Store. Just use the link from the email you received as: "Your Ranger Edition is Ready.”

In January, we will start creating the special rewards for the Sniper, Lucifer, Thanatos, and Titan editions. We will contact all of you directly by email.



From now on, we will announce the new versions and what's next directly on the Steam Store updates section. As many of you may already know, these were the last changes to the game:

New Mayors System
Now the colony can choose a new Mayor when the colony reaches specific population levels. There are about 100 mayors with different levels and features.

Thanatos
The awesome Thanatos unit is now available. He can be very narcissistic, but his rocket launcher can blow up dozens of infected in one shot!

Veteran Units
Rangers, Soldiers, and Snipers earn experience and can level up, improving their attack power and speed.

Targets Selection Priority
For the units, you can set the mode for auto-targeting enemies. Currently, it is only "The Nearest Enemy". There will be another mode, where you can set the priority "High Level Enemies first".


New Building: The Tavern of Lost Souls
Would you like to attract mercenaries and strange travelers of all kinds to your colony? Nothing better than offering a beer by the fireplace.

Competitive Mode: Challenge of the Week
Every week you can play a specific map that will be the same for all players. All players will compete on the same map and their score will be registered on a Leaderboard. Players will only have one chance to play the Challenge of the Week.


We have decided to anticipate the translation of They Are Billions, so the Survival Mode can be enjoyed by all the players:
- Simplified Chinese: 汉语
- German: Deutsch
- French: Français
- Spanish: Español
- Russian: Pусский
- Polish: Polski
- Italian: Italiano
- Japanese: 日本
- Korean: 한국어


Don't forget that the main mode of They Are Billions is the Campaign. Though the Survival Mode launch has taken us a lot of time, the development of the campaign is a bit delayed but don't worry, it is going to be like a whole new game with a great story, characters, missions, and lots of new features like the steam trains, the old fortresses, the infected mutant... We expect that it will have about 40-50 hours of gameplay. And of course, it will be included for free for all the Backers and Early Access buyers.
We will talk about the campaign in the next updates!



As you know, reviews on Steam are more important than ever. If you are enjoying the Survival Mode, please consider writing a review. The game is just in an early access phase, so we need all of your support to continue developing and improving the game. Thank you very much in advance for your time!

Greetings!

We would like to announce that the Early Access launch is coming soon. But first, let's talk about the beta program and the supporting campaign.


For those that have not followed the game updates, here is a small summary.
We first announced the game in July 2017. Since then, we published updates periodically revealing more info about the game. Over time, interest and popularity grew for They Are Billions. Initially, we announced Early Access would be released in Fall 2017 with only the Survival mode. Then in Spring 2018, we'd release the campaign. But after we thought about it for awhile, we thought perhaps that the Survival mode would not be enough content to justify the Early Access launch. Therefore, we decided to delay the launch and only release it when both modes were ready in 2018.

Over time, the hype grew and we received a lot of emails from people that wanted to pre-order to back the game because they loved the art, gameplay, theme... So we thought it would be a nice idea to launch a crowdfunding campaign as we did with Lords of Xulima, which worked very well.

In Update #5, we asked the players for feedback on what we should do because we weren't sure if we should run a Kickstarter campaign or just create a place to support us directly from our website at Numantian Games. We all agreed that the second option was the best, so we worked on setting up a page for players to back us directly. Additionally, we thought that it would be a great idea to let the backers play the Survival mode as beta testers to give us feedback to improve and polish the game. This is exactly what we did for Lords of Xulima. Everything sounded perfect :)

So we did it all on Halloween. We asked for a pack of beta keys from Steam and launched the supporting web. In the beginning, we temporarily restricted the Ranger Edition to avoid having too many players for the very first version of the game because of all the possible bugs. However, many fans voiced their opinion that they felt betrayed for having the Ranger edition locked. It was then that we enabled the Ranger Edition.

This is when everything really began to snowball. People started to play it, upload videos on Youtube, and spread the word. Some big Youtubers even joined the party, building even more hype and expectations for They Are Billions. In less than two weeks, the Ranger keys sold out. A few days later...the Soldier Edition, two days after that...the Sniper Edition... What?????

And during all this debacle, we, the developers were working day and night fixing all the problems and solving lots of issues with hardware compatibility. As we created a custom engine for They Are Billions, it had only been tested on a few dozen different PCs. Now we suddenly had 10K players testing it at the same time! And during the development, we also had to attend to thousands of forum posts with bugs, feedback, and thousands of emails with crash reports that the game sends automatically. We also received hundreds of emails every day of people complaining because they wanted to play the game but didn’t receive a key, or that they did not know that it was a pre-order, or that we were the most greedy company in the world for selling a game for $250 (the Lucifer Edition)... !!!

We would have loved to have the ability to save the game before the launch of the pre-order web so we could return to that point and do things differently, but the real life, as in They Are Billions, works in Ironman mode.


First, a big thank you for all that have backed They Are Billions. We are very, very happy and appreciative. That extra income will be so helpful for creating a great campaign that They Are Billions and its players deserve. THANK YOU!!

Second, the game reception has been extremely positive from the beta players, Youtubers, and all the non-buyers that write to us just to say that they love the game and want to play it now. And this is just the Survival Mode! Wait until you see the campaign, which is the main mode that conceived They Are Billions!

Third, during these last three weeks, we have been able to polish a lot the game, solving many issues, bugs, and exploits. We now feel that it is in very good shape. But of course, we will continue the process of fixing and polishing. So, in order to allow everybody to play the game, especially the ones that have pre-ordered it, we will try to release the game on Steam Early Access as soon as possible. We expect to release it in a few weeks. We will add some additional features to the Survival Mode (as you can see in the What's Next post on the forum). Also, we will add Achievements and Steam cards. A basic tutorial for new players will also be implemented.

Initially, the game will have only the Survival Mode during the Early Access phase. We will continue to expand and improve this mode while we work on the campaign. We expect the campaign to be ready Spring 2018.

What do you think? Let us know your thoughts!

See you soon!

Greetings!

We would like to announce that the Early Access launch is coming soon. But first, let's talk about the beta program and the supporting campaign.


For those that have not followed the game updates, here is a small summary.
We first announced the game in July 2017. Since then, we published updates periodically revealing more info about the game. Over time, interest and popularity grew for They Are Billions. Initially, we announced Early Access would be released in Fall 2017 with only the Survival mode. Then in Spring 2018, we'd release the campaign. But after we thought about it for awhile, we thought perhaps that the Survival mode would not be enough content to justify the Early Access launch. Therefore, we decided to delay the launch and only release it when both modes were ready in 2018.

Over time, the hype grew and we received a lot of emails from people that wanted to pre-order to back the game because they loved the art, gameplay, theme... So we thought it would be a nice idea to launch a crowdfunding campaign as we did with Lords of Xulima, which worked very well.

In Update #5, we asked the players for feedback on what we should do because we weren't sure if we should run a Kickstarter campaign or just create a place to support us directly from our website at Numantian Games. We all agreed that the second option was the best, so we worked on setting up a page for players to back us directly. Additionally, we thought that it would be a great idea to let the backers play the Survival mode as beta testers to give us feedback to improve and polish the game. This is exactly what we did for Lords of Xulima. Everything sounded perfect :)

So we did it all on Halloween. We asked for a pack of beta keys from Steam and launched the supporting web. In the beginning, we temporarily restricted the Ranger Edition to avoid having too many players for the very first version of the game because of all the possible bugs. However, many fans voiced their opinion that they felt betrayed for having the Ranger edition locked. It was then that we enabled the Ranger Edition.

This is when everything really began to snowball. People started to play it, upload videos on Youtube, and spread the word. Some big Youtubers even joined the party, building even more hype and expectations for They Are Billions. In less than two weeks, the Ranger keys sold out. A few days later...the Soldier Edition, two days after that...the Sniper Edition... What?????

And during all this debacle, we, the developers were working day and night fixing all the problems and solving lots of issues with hardware compatibility. As we created a custom engine for They Are Billions, it had only been tested on a few dozen different PCs. Now we suddenly had 10K players testing it at the same time! And during the development, we also had to attend to thousands of forum posts with bugs, feedback, and thousands of emails with crash reports that the game sends automatically. We also received hundreds of emails every day of people complaining because they wanted to play the game but didn’t receive a key, or that they did not know that it was a pre-order, or that we were the most greedy company in the world for selling a game for $250 (the Lucifer Edition)... !!!

We would have loved to have the ability to save the game before the launch of the pre-order web so we could return to that point and do things differently, but the real life, as in They Are Billions, works in Ironman mode.


First, a big thank you for all that have backed They Are Billions. We are very, very happy and appreciative. That extra income will be so helpful for creating a great campaign that They Are Billions and its players deserve. THANK YOU!!

Second, the game reception has been extremely positive from the beta players, Youtubers, and all the non-buyers that write to us just to say that they love the game and want to play it now. And this is just the Survival Mode! Wait until you see the campaign, which is the main mode that conceived They Are Billions!

Third, during these last three weeks, we have been able to polish a lot the game, solving many issues, bugs, and exploits. We now feel that it is in very good shape. But of course, we will continue the process of fixing and polishing. So, in order to allow everybody to play the game, especially the ones that have pre-ordered it, we will try to release the game on Steam Early Access as soon as possible. We expect to release it in a few weeks. We will add some additional features to the Survival Mode (as you can see in the What's Next post on the forum). Also, we will add Achievements and Steam cards. A basic tutorial for new players will also be implemented.

Initially, the game will have only the Survival Mode during the Early Access phase. We will continue to expand and improve this mode while we work on the campaign. We expect the campaign to be ready Spring 2018.

What do you think? Let us know your thoughts!

See you soon!