Hello! This small patch fixes 2 issues reported today.

- fixed a crash that occurred when customers would get suspicious of the legitimacy of the reviews of the players games
- fixed Managers constantly bugging you about the price of a game being too low/too high when attempting to release a game with the price not being the one suggested by the Manager, making it impossible to release the game on any price but the one the Manager suggests

I would like to thank the people that have reported the bugs fixed in this patch. If you run into any bugs and/or crashes, be sure to report them here.
Thanks for reading!

Hey everyone!

Update #29 brings a new gameplay mechanic and improvements to existing game elements just as promised!


An issue as big in Game Dev Studio as it is in real life. A lot of people pirate games before they decide to purchase them in real life, and now they do too in Game Dev Studio. If your games are good - have no fear, your piracy rates will be low! If they're bad, however, now that's a whole different story...
This gameplay mechanic will add more challenge to the late game stage, when people have a high Reputation level and a lot of funds. Players can additionally counteract the piracy rates of their games by implementing Digital Rights Management (DRM) into their games, but that doesn't mean that your customers will be happy about that either. This directly extends into a new player stat: Opinion.


The Reputation stat in Game Dev Studio in a way acts as fame. The higher your Reputation value is, the higher your sales are because you are more well-known. This type of currency is hard to attain and easy to lose.
With that said, there is now a new player stat: Opinion. This stat affects what people think of you as a company and it directly ties into the Piracy mechanic introduced in this update. The Opinion stat determines how badly your games will be pirated in case they are not good, or your customers are outraged by some kind of decision you've made. Just like Reputation, Opinion is hard to attain and easy to lose. Releasing lots of bad games will surely bring a hit to your Opinion value. This is further amplified by your Reputation - the higher your Reputation is, the harder it is to attain more Opinion points, and easier to lose it.
Gone are the days when players with a very high Reputation level would get a slap on the wrist by releasing bad games. Releasing lots of bad games now will result in a low opinion value, which in turn will drive piracy rates of said games sky-high.


It is no secret that people love with their eyes and let's be real here: the HUD in Game Dev Studio was not exactly very appealing to the eye. If you're going to be spending hours looking at the HUD as you play the game, then it should look better! With Update #29 this is addressed: the games HUD has been remade and is more intuitive, and easier to navigate both visually and with your peripherals.
Player stats are now displayed at the top with additional tooltips when hovering the mouse over certain elements, and all the buttons leading to various menus are now positioned at the bottom. Simple, yet so much better than what was there before.




People were confused as to what all the employee stats do, and I don't blame them with how many there are. Now there's a new tutorial stage which shows you where to check them, what they do, and how much progress they have towards their next level.


- added Piracy:
* the base sale amount (which is then affected by a multitude of various factors) was increased from 10000 to 13000 in accordance with this new mechanic
* the Piracy rate of every game is affected by your Opinion level, how good the game is, and can be delayed by implementing DRM:
* the time until DRM is bypassed depends on several factors including by your Opinion level (if people hate you, the pirates will want to crack your games faster just to spite you!)
* Piracy only affects non-MMO game projects

- made player platforms a lot easier to succeed on:
* base chance to get a new developer every month for a player platform increased from 10% to 15%
* the amount of people that will switch over to a player platform increased to 200% (ie. 1000 instead of 500)
* base amount of people that can switch to a player platform increased from 5000 to 10000

- added the Opinion stat:
* it is gained by making good games and properly managing your MMOs
* it maxes out at 1000 and has the lowest value of 1
* it is lost by making bad games, and not managing your MMOs properly, having bribe offers revealed, and being busted while shilling
* it is a general indicator of how good opinion of your studio is and affects how heavily your games will be pirated
* when loading a pre-1.0.7.0 savefile, the Opinion value will be 500 (half of maximum)

- sequels and expansion packs can now boost the popularity of the game they're made for:
* in the case of an expansion pack: the efficacy of the boost depends on how close the expansion pack is to completion
* in the case of a sequel: the efficacy of the boost depends on the scale of the new game

- HUD remake:
* the top part of the HUD is now clickable and displays extra info when hovering over the various stat bars
* the bottom part of the HUD has all the functionality that was in the game before

- updated the Expansion UI
- updated the Employee Assignment UI to be more intuitive and easier to use
- extended the "Employees" tutorial to acquaint the player with the "Employee info" menu, where a lot of employee info (ie. stats, skills, interests, attributes, etc.) is displayed
- increased advertisement strength of contractors; contract jobs are now more worth it
- added a new task for game projects: DRM
- development costs now track QA costs as well
- loan interest rate reduced from 5% to 1%
- the game project info popup has been improved to show more info
- overall MMO server complexity value increase from MMO tasks reduced to 80% from 100%
- chance that a platform specialist will become busy with another project each month when available reduced to 5% from 30%
- reduced specialist busy time range from 1 year to 3 years to half a year to 1.5 years
- showing time until a platform specialist becomes available
- "CGI Trailer" advertisement now provides a hype increase boost to sequels with a good previous game
- increased Popularity value on C-EXPI platforms, which should help them not become bankrupt as easily
- managers will now always tell you whether or not the price for a game is too low/too high when you go to release it
- fixed the "Employee" tutorial not working when loading a saved game that was saved at a certain point
- fixed month fund change not being saved
- fixed the upcoming game awards notice disappearing after changing the resolution/window mode
- fixed 'CGI Trailer' advertisement not applying a penalty when making a sequel to a game that was bad
- fixed certain advertisement related functionality not being executed when a game that has re-entered the market goes off-market
- fixed a game going off-market not clearing some Let's Player related data if any of them were doing playthroughs at that moment, resulting in potential crashes later
- various UI fixes and improvements
- can no longer create savefiles with nothing in their name
- optimizations mentioned in Patch #2 and #3 bring a performance improvement of 30% or more in CPU-bottlenecked scenarios

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the visual update!

Hey everyone!

Work on 'Update #29' is nearly finished, and right now I'm in the process of improving the UI of an area that saw the least love: the employee management menu.
Aside from all the changes listed in 'Progress update #22' this update will also feature an updated Expansion mode UI and numerous other UI improvements. It will also feature several balance adjustments that make it somewhat easier to play.
The update will be released in less than two weeks, so stay tuned!

Thanks for reading!

Hey everyone!

I'm pleased to announce that the upcoming 'Update #29' is now on the 'develop' branch. As always please keep in mind that the content you see on the 'develop' branch might not be stable. You can opt into the 'develop' branch by going to the properties of 'Game Dev Studio' in Steam, switching to the "BETAS" tab and enabling 'develop' from the drop-down menu. If you run into any bugs or crashes make sure to report them here.


- added Piracy:
* the base sale amount (which is then affected by a multitude of various factors) was increased from 10000 to 13000 in accordance with this new mechanic
* the Piracy rate of every game is affected by your Opinion level, how good the game is, and can be delayed by implementing DRM:
* the time until DRM is bypassed depends on several factors including by your Opinion level (if people hate you, the pirates will want to crack your games faster just to spite you!)
* Piracy only affects non-MMO game projects

- made player platforms a lot easier to succeed on:
* base chance to get a new developer every month for a player platform increased from 10% to 15%
* the amount of people that will switch over to a player platform increased to 200% (ie. 1000 instead of 500)
* base amount of people that can switch to a player platform increased from 5000 to 10000

- added the Opinion stat:
* it is gained by making good games and properly managing your MMOs
* it maxes out at 1000 and has the lowest value of 1
* it is lost by making bad games, and not managing your MMOs properly, having bribe offers revealed, and being busted while shilling
* it is a general indicator of how good opinion of your studio is and affects how heavily your games will be pirated
* when loading a pre-1.0.7.0 savefile, the Opinion value will be 500 (half of maximum)

- sequels and expansion packs can now boost the popularity of the game they're made for:
* in the case of an expansion pack: the efficacy of the boost depends on how close the expansion pack is to completion
* in the case of a sequel: the efficacy of the boost depends on the scale of the new game

- HUD remake:
* the top part of the HUD is now clickable and displays extra info when hovering over the various stat bars
* the bottom part of the HUD has all the functionality that was in the game before

- extended the "Employees" tutorial to acquaint the player with the "Employee info" menu, where a lot of employee info (ie. stats, skills, interests, attributes, etc.) is displayed
- increased advertisement strength of contractors; contract jobs are now more worth it
- added a new task for game projects: DRM
- development costs now track QA costs as well
- the game project info popup has been improved to show more info
- overall MMO server complexity value increase from MMO tasks reduced to 80% from 100%
- fixed the "Employee" tutorial not working when loading a saved game that was saved at a certain point
- fixed month fund change not being saved
- fixed the upcoming game awards notice disappearing after changing the resolution/window mode
- various UI fixes and improvements

Thanks for reading and testing the game on the 'develop' branch!

Hello! This hotfix addresses an issue that arose in Update #28 as a result of optimization.

- fixed "Firmware update" element in the project box not disappearing after finishing, resulting in being able to crash the game if choosing to cancel it when it is finished

Thanks for reading!

Hey everyone!

In yesterday's "Progress update" community post I mentioned that there's a HUD remake in the works for Update #29. As of today its implementation is finished, so I can show what it looks like to you guys.



Compared to the previous HUD, that's quite the contrast in looks and intuitiveness, isn't it?
The new HUD will feature tooltips for player stats in the top part, and all the functionality you know in the bottom part of it.
You might also have noticed there's a new bar aside from Funds and Reputation in the top part that wasn't present on the previous HUD. I'll let you speculate on what that is. ;)

Once I'm done adjusting the Scenarios to the new HUD (which shouldn't take long), I'll get on with making sure the new Piracy mechanic is balanced well, and then this update will become available on the 'develop' branch. I estimate that you'll be able to try it out in no more than 1.5 weeks. As always keep in mind that estimations are just that: estimations. The real time until it's available might differ either way.

Thanks for reading!

Hey all! It has been some time since the upcoming content has been announced and I'd like to give you all an update on what's happening.

The Piracy mechanic is almost finished, right now all I need to do with it is add some more dialogue related to it and make sure that the balancing is not off. Like mentioned in "What's next? #6" this gameplay mechanic will add more difficulty to the late game side of things, and will be barely felt when just starting out with a low reputation level.

Aside from that there is also a HUD remake in the works. This is a big one since it's going to make navigating the HUD itself a lot more intuitive. Let's be honest, the current HUD is not exactly pretty nor intuitive. So with the HUD remake this will be fixed.

This update will soon be available on the 'develop' branch, and I'll make another "Progress update" post to let you know when it goes live. Your feedback will be appreciated regarding the new Piracy mechanic, as well as any bugs you find with the new stuff!

Thanks for reading!

Hey everyone!

It has been a while since I last made one of these posts. There are two reasons why development of post-release content for Game Dev Studio seemingly stopped:

1. The game sales had become really weak, and I couldn't invest more money into it since I'd be working at a loss.
2. I had run out of ideas for additional content.

With that said, as time passed by, both problems were solved. Recently the sales have picked up greatly, allowing me to work on content updates again, and with a fresh head I have some new ideas for the game. With that said, here's what you can look forward to in terms of new content:

#1 - Piracy. An issue in real life, and a soon-to-be issue in one of the upcoming updates for Game Dev Studio. The severity of the piracy rate for your games will depend on how well you treat your customers. If you fill your games with microtransactions or make bad games and sell them at a high price (or a combination of both!), then people will become increasingly displeased. The more displeased your customers are, the higher the piracy rates are going to be. This is a gameplay mechanic that will add extra challenge mostly to the late game side of things and be kept at a minimum in early game, since I am aware that a lot of people find the game difficult despite the addition of the "very easy" difficulty and the timescale adjustment.

#2 - Random events. This area of the game is something I didn't put much thought into, because I wanted the game to have deep gameplay mechanics rather than superficial, fluff type content. In hindsight that wasn't such a good idea, as having very few randomly occuring events (regardless of whether they bring a benefit or something bad) can make the game get stale and boring after some time. I will be looking into adding more of these to spice up the gameplay.

#3 - Additional stage for the tutorial. People have been expressing the fact that they don't understand what certain employee stats do. This new tutorial stage will be dedicated to acquainting players with employee stats such as attributes, skills, traits, etc.

#4 - Digital store fronts. Inspired by recent events in the game industry, I will try to add digital store fronts to the game. I say "try" because I want to make sure that this gameplay mechanic is interesting and provides depth to the game, as is the case with every other gameplay mechanic that I've added to the game so far. This feature falls under a big "if", meaning that if I can't come up with interesting gameplay mechanics then I won't add it.

Phew, with that written down I am quite eager to get back into developing more content for Game Dev Studio, and I hope that once it is released you will have as much fun playing with these new features as I will have developing them!
If you have ideas for random events that could be added to the game, feel free to share them in the comments or in the Discussions of Game Dev Studio!

Thanks for reading!

Hello! This update adjusts a couple of things within the game and fixes a few issues.

- Stylizing, Parkour, and Machine Learning were not used anywhere for Genre-Theme combination Quality point contribution, now they do
- the interest selection during character creation now shows the amount of tasks the knowledge provided by the interest contributes to increasing the Quality point gain from
- fixed incorrect display of the theme-genre combos knowledge given by interests (some genre-theme combos would be skipped over entirely) in the character creation menu
- fixed the "Goals & deadlines" HUD element remaining after changing the resolution/window mode
- fixed game crash that occured when cancelling an in-dev platform while employees could talk about some occurence related to it
- fixed platform specialists never freeing up from their busy state
- optimized event handling, resulting in slightly lower memory usage, and slightly better performance when a lot of things are happening at the same time (most often when playing with the x5 speed multiplier)
- minor optimizations done to lighting compute
- minor optimizations done to main logic loop

I would like to thank the people that have reported bugs fixed in this update.
If you come across any bugs or crashes, make sure to report them in the Steam discussions thread.

Thanks for reading!

Hey everyone!

It has been a year since release of Game Dev Studio, and wow, what a journey this was! Countless patches have been released, 27 of which have been documented, but a lot more that were simple bugfixes weren't announced. Many features were added to the game (some of which were what the community asked for), many quality of life improvements were added, and many bugs were fixed.

With that said, let's take a look at what the biggest changes were over the course of the year mentioned in the updates:

• added the ability to take a loan
  
• added the 'Comfort' drive affector and objects related to it
  
• added the ability to sell engine licenses
  
• added MMO project type
  
• added Platform Creation and a new campaign 'Console Domination' for this feature
  
• added a new tutorial, split up into 3 parts, so that players can easily replay any part they didn't understand fully
  
• added female employees
  
• added Achievements
  
• added Workshop support
  
• added Annual Game Awards
  
• added sub-genres
  
• French and Russian localizations were added
  
• German localization by community member Westman was added
  
• 118 various bugfixes
  
• and a ton of quality-of-life improvements

When I put all the additions in a list like this, it doesn't seem like a lot, but you have to remember that I'm just one person working on this game, and some features bring hours of extra gameplay! All the new gameplay mechanics provide Game Dev Studio with even more depth and longevity, all for the same price that the game launched at!

I would like to thank all the people that were active in the community, suggesting new features, reporting bugs, and generally providing their feedback on all sorts of things. Without you this wouldn't have been possible!

Thanks for reading, and thanks for playing Game Dev Studio!