With the launch of this patch, we have also begun the next ladder season. All boards have been reset, and the top 10 players from each ladder have been recorded into the "Hall Of Fame". We had so many entry's in the first season "Launch Legends" with some amazing scores. Thank you to everyone for playing the game and putting in the time to shatter the top scores over and over.
Older saves will continue to work if you were in the middle of a play through and wish to continue, but only new saves created on August 1 or later will be eligible to post scores to the new seasons leader boards.
Fixes
Crypto Exploit
There was an exploit with crypto markets that would allow you to buy -2.1 billion worth of a coin and then sell that coin for a profit. This is no longer possible all coins are caped at 2.1 trillion for individual transactions.
ESC To Close Menus
Fixed an issue that caused the ESC key to not work to close menus. This was not functioning properly due to not being able to be run when the game was paused. This has been addressed and will now work correctly to close the majority of open menus when using the ESC key.
Variety Of Fixes
Fixed a variety of small issues, bugs, and typos. The game is still far from perfect, but we will continue to make these small but impactful changes to the games polish as they are reported.
Translation Improvements
There have also been a variety of translations improvements based on user feedback. Once again these are still far from perfect, but with each patch and your help they continue to improve. It hurts my heart when players review the game and mention the translations are poor, but there is no way around that without professional translations. Until that day comes we will continue to improve the translations with your help.
Changes
Studio Command Bar Rework
The studio command bar has had a major rework. We have gone from 16 buttons to 32 buttons that are categorized by types. The categories are "Game Dev", "Studio", "office", and "Info".
Many important menus that were nested inside of other menus have been brought out into their own menus to improve the flow of the game. I won't go into specifics here as it would make this post even longer, but you can view them all inside the game.
The icons for these new menus are contextually inaccurate, and some don't make that much sense. I apologize for that, but I am in the process of having brand new icons created that will give a much better visual representation of the menus. I am not a great artist, so I have had to make use of icons I owned. We will soon have fresh new icons made by someone with far better skill than myself that will feel a lot better based on the context of the menus. Stay tuned...
Merged Manage Engines
Manage engines and salvage engines have been changed into one menu with both functions. This menu has its own section in the new studio command bar under manage engines. This is also separate from the create engine menu which also has its own button in the game dev section of the studio bar.
Balance Changes
There have been a series of balance tweaks and changes. The majority of these were nerfs to game sales particularly in the larger games. Smalls have not been reduced by much but large and AAA have been reduced. Some engine features and creations have been tweaked as well to better align with player progression. Keep in mind that master difficulty is meant to be harder on you financially. If you want cheap engines costs please consider changing that setting to match what you want.
Crypto Sorting
Crypto markets now remain sorted when you review a coin and then return to the main menu.
Bonus Tasks Changed
There have been some changes to a few bonus tasks to align with some of the recent changes to some game systems such as hardware and workers.
Variety Of Tweaks And Changes
There have been a variety of small tweaks, changes, and QOL improvements. These include such things as improving consistency across menus, disabling and enabling of certain aspects, adding your money and RP balance to certain menus, and a variety of small improvements. big shout out to "DoorFail" from discord for his efforts and reports. He has gone a long way to making many small improvements that have improved the games polish in large ways, and earned a spot in the games community credits.
Additions
Contract Tracking
Added a tracking number to contracts that will at a glance show you how many contracts are available. The number reduces as you complete contracts. This should make it easy to at a glance see when 6 new contracts have been made available or when you are about to finish your final contracts.
Auto Research
Added the ability to auto research topics and genres. From the research HUD topic / genres menu you can now choose to learn a specific topic or genre or you can begin auto researching. This auto research can be stopped in the same way you stop auto training by clicking on the worker and hitting stop work. You can also use the new worker menu to stop all auto work.
This auto research will continue until there are no valid topics or genres to learn or if you lack the RP to continue research unless stopped by the player.
Bulk Stock Options
Added the ability to purchase 25 stocks at once instead of just 1 or 5. To buy stock in bulk you need to hold shift and then click on the buy 5 >> icon. You can also sell 25 at once.
Worker Menu Addition
We have added a new worker menu. This menu now has its own button and should be easier for players to locate when looking to hire additional staff. This menu also comes with the ability to begin mass training of workers for a specific stat. This menu also has a mass stop auto work button you can use to quickly tell all workers to stop there auto work when they complete their current tasks.
Reworked Hardware System
There has been a complete rework to the hardware system. Instead of an individual worker needing to buy hardware we now have an office wide upgrade system. These upgrades are locked based on the current office you are in and have a much more realistic cost associated with them.
The old system used insane amounts of money to make it a progression system, but this left a lot of players scratching their heads as to why a monitor would cost $500k. By making it office wide we have removed the tedium from the process, and by making them locked to offices we have made it a progression system while lowering the costs to be a lot more realistic.
A big thanks for this idea goes out to a variety of players across the steam boards and discord. Thank you all so much for the support, and great ideas.
Hard Mode Added
A brand-new hard mode has been created to test the best GDM players. This mode has its own leader boards, and static difficulty settings.
In this mode you will begin with 8 paragon points to spend on whatever paragon skills you wish, and the difficulty settings are taken to a new high.
The epic engine is not available and the cheats are also not available. On top of this there are a few specific settings and changes that make this mode the most difficult mode to date.
In order to play on this mode, you first must reach office 3 on a previous game save. This exists to prevent any new players from starting on Hard Mode and then getting frustrated by how difficult it is. I cannot look back at your old saves to flag veteran players with the ability to play hard mode as some players will have deleted old saves and what not.
However, you can easily start a new game, enable cheats, add $100m, upgrade to office 2 and then 3, and then save and exit to menu. This will quickly flag your game as eligible for hard mode quickly.
If you are one of the top players and you are diving into hard mode. Please give me some feedback around this mode. It might be too difficult or not hard enough and I would love to hear your feedback. I have tested it myself extensively, but I am only one person. With your help and feedback, we will shift hard mode balance until players think it is perfect.
Whats Next
First off, I would like to just say thank you to everyone who has supported the game and to those players who have contributed some amazing ideas and feedback. It really means a lot to me to have players engaged in the game playing hard and then taking the time to tell me what they love and what they would love to see added or changed. Your positive feedback and reviews bring me more joy than you can imagine, so thank you for that.
My current plan is to run this next league until the end of September. Based on feedback I know you guys want quick seasons, and provided we get enough ladder entries I am happy to keep recording scores to the hall of fame and starting a new season for players.
I intend to post new scores as usual while hanging out with players ready to jump on any issues that might arise from the 1.3 patch. After posting a hotfix if needed and having a week or 2 pass to know the game is stable. I am planning to take some time to explore the ability to port GDM to mobile. My plan is to create a buy 2 play version of the game for mobile with no ADS or monetization in any way. I think a small buy in fee is more than enough and I think people deserve to have games on mobile that they can play offline or while online anytime they want.
Beyond looking into creating a mobile version I have several great ideas I want to bring to the game. Some of these are ideas are found in the road map as well as many others that have been recently submitted from players. We have had some new additions to the discord who have given some amazing ideas we can use to improve the game. One in particular is BrandonS who has given some great ideas we will make use of soon. I hope to have a big content patch ready for the end of Sept timed out with the next season start that will include fresh icons and HUD changes.
Thank you to everyone, and I hope you enjoy the current patch. Please leave any feedback / suggestions in steam or on discord. The game has come a long way from its first EA launch until now, but there is still a large road ahead with major changes and additions to come. Thank you for coming along for the ride.
Season 1 Ending Soon
The first post launch season of GDM, the "Launch Legends", will be ending on July 31st. At this time the top 10 players in each leader board will be recorded into the launch hall of fame to permanently show their dominance over the past 2 months. The leader boards will then be wiped, and reset for season 2 which will begin August 1st.
Old saves from the previous season will continue to work, but they will not post scores to the current leader boards. Only saves created after August 1st will be eligible to post scores in the new season.
At the same time as this season reset, we will be dropping the next big content patch. I don't want to go into too much detail regarding the patch yet as it is still a work in progress. However, I can confirm a few things already in place.
A complete rework of the studio command bar. This includes un nesting certain menus players had issues finding or that get a lot of use.
A new hardware system that is streamlined for the entire studio making it far less tedious and more realistically priced.
A new worker menu with additional commands such as mass training of workers, or stopping all auto work with one button.
A brand new hard mode featuring static difficulty settings and its own new leader board. This mode will put the best players to the test.
These plus many other aspects are already in the patch as well as additional content being worked on daily.
You have until the end of this month to claim your spot in GDM history by posting a top 10 score in one of the many leader boards. Don't worry though, there will be many more seasons and chances to dominate the leader boards as we continue to develop and expand the game.
Thank you to everyone for your support and feedback, this next patch will improve the game while also bringing a brand-new challenge to veteran players. I cannot wait for you pro players to get your hands on this new mode.
Turkish Language Is Live
I am pleased to announce that Turkish is now available in game as a language option. Turkish was not really on my radar, but I have had a couple gamers ask for this, and in particular one very passionate gamer in discord who really wanted to try the game but only spoke Turkish. So, I know there is at least one happy person out there today.
Like all the translations I did this myself, it was done with google translate and will have some issues. Google is great, but it struggles with words that have multiple meanings. Please as you see an issue let me know, and if possible, please include a screen shot for me on discord showing what is incorrect as well as what it should be. With your help over time, we will improve Turkish as well as all languages offered in game. I wish I was in a place to have them professionally done, but that is just not within my financial means at this time. If the game finds success we could potentially consider having professional editing done to all the languages offered in game.
Next up I plan to begin work on a content patch bringing a lot of great new ideas that have been suggested by the community. There are some really great ideas coming in, and many of which I think will serve to improve the games experience. If you want to stay up-to-date with what is being developed, consider joining the discord server. https://discord.gg/WfbXE4cDVA
I was planning to aim for a mid-July date for this update, but due to the steam summer sale I think it will make more sense for players to aim for August 1st. This will also be the first time we will record a new post release "Hall Of Fame" record of the top 10 players in each leader board to permanently show their dominance of the game. I may leave the boards intact, or reset them at this time and force new saves to be created to post scores. I would prefer to keep long running boards, but if to many balance changes are made, we might look at a reset for each season like we did during EA. Let me know your thoughts, and to any new Turkish players. Have fun and reach out for help or to give feedback and suggestions anytime.
Post 1.0 Changes
First, I would just like to say thank you to all the new players and support the game has received since leaving early access. There are still areas in the game that need work, but it's running very well with very few issues, and has amazing depth and features. We are far from done with the game's development though. I still have big plans for additions, overall improvements, and expansion of some existing systems for many aspects of the game. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I am very proud of the current state of the game. I am so pleased that the majority of players are having a positive experience, and the feedback we have been getting has been amazing. Thank you for that, it makes working on the game that much easier.
I will be opening up a new poll for GDM around the leader boards / seasons. I would love to hear your feedback on this issue. You can do so on the discord in the gdm_projects channel found here: https://discord.gg/WfbXE4cDVA If you prefer you can also cast your vote in this thread. More information will be given at the bottom of these notes.
Balance Changes
There have been a bunch of small balance changes based on player feedback and game data.
Here are a few key balance changes worth noting;
Famous IPs
I love the famous IP system, but in late game some of the sales increases were a little too good. I have reduced this system to be roughly half as powerful on larger games. It remains unaffected on smaller games, but it is reduced by a little bit as you move to medium and then eventually about half as effective on AAA.
Self-Published
Smaller self-published games have not been adjusted, but large and AAA have been slightly reduced. We almost had someone create a AAA game that hit the integer cap for the steam leader boards(2.1 billion). I did not think that was possible, but clearly with the right game and situation it is. So, AAA have been reduced in sales by roughly 10% and 5% on large. This combined with the famous IP changes should bring the sales figures down to a more reasonable place.
Digital Stores
A lot of players don't really get how the digital stores work, which I am working to improve the system and tutorials to make this clearer. However, I have gone ahead and bumped the sales value for digital stores up by a few percent to help players see the value of digital stores.
In short digital stores are long term passive income compared to the quick 12 weeks of sales given to self-published. Digital games have a hype from 0-100 and an age from 0-6. Using tools such as dlc, updates, ports, convention, and game sales events you can keep the hype at 100 and the age at 0. By manipulating the hype and age of a game you can continue to get the max monthly sales for multiple years, and you can do this for multiple games at the same time leading to massive passive gains for your studio. If you do not update or work on these games in any way then self-published will be better, but provided you manipulate their hype and age well digital stores outperform self-published in the long run.
There is also a visibility and reputation attached to each store. Reputation goes up based on releasing games on that platform depending on quality, and visibility goes up based on total sales for that platform. Just like steam if you sell more, they will push your game harder to a larger audience. Something GDM itself does not experience, but at least we can experience this in game.
Epic Engine
I have gone and increased the revenue share for the epic engine from 15% to 30%. Late game the epic engine was too good of an option for most players. I want it to be there for anyone who falls behind in engine requirements, but I want custom engines to remain the better option provided you are up-to-date. This could hurt early small games revenue, but early game you should be able to keep up with your engine for the most part. I am always open to feedback if players think this was too aggressive of a change to make epic engine take a steam size revenue split.
Studio Perks
I have adjusted a few studio perks to make them more valid of an option. I reached out to a few of the best scoring players in GDM to ask their thoughts on studio perks and what they used. I found that the vast majority prefer the increased sales option. So, I have increased the other aspects to try and entice a variety of skill choices. Fans, Engine costs + sales, and game creation costs were all increased to make them a better appealing option.
Fixes
There was a typo on the training HUD for the speed stat showing $10k where it should have been $15k. This now correctly matches up to what it will actually cost you.
I have increased the background sign algorithm that sizes the backdrop based on your studio name length. This was falling a bit small for short names; it should now be a better back drop for any players who use this option.
We have had several translation improvements to multiple languages. These are all still not perfect, if you see any issues with any translations, please report them to me and I will continue to improve these translations as much as I possibly can. I have a community member working on some Portuguese fixes right now, I am hopeful to have those live next week as well as an additional language will be added "Turkish".
The main convention did not allow you to use your in-development games for the main stage. This has now been fixed to allow you to use your in-development game on the main stage. This will grant increased sales for that game based on the quality of its matches and the other 2 games being showcased. This does not add hype, you can still max hype to increase sales, this adds an additional buff to sales figures for the showcased main stage game.
New Additions
Added a select all option to game add-ons for self-published games. This should make turning all options on a little bit quicker.
I have added in the custom console creation cost to the custom console review menu. This should make it easy to see cost vs gross to give a more accurate income return from that generation of your console.
I have added the ability to press the ESC key to close out menus and resume play. This can be used for most menus that are open with the exception of a few menus you cannot close without completing such as the dev stage huds. Other than those few cases this should work to close out any menu or worker menu you are looking at. There are a lot of different edge cases for the menus, but I believe I have this working issue free. If anyone runs into a weird issue trying to close out any menus, please report it to me and I will fix them up.
What is Next
I know I said in the roadmap that around this point I wanted to look into the possibility of a mobile port for the game. However, we have had so many new players with amazing suggestions and never before heard of ideas to improve the game that I want to do a content patch before we look into the possibility of a mobile port. My current plan is to drop a translation patch with fixes and the addition of Turkish by Monday, followed by a content patch that I hope to drop around July 10. This should give me time to work in some of the larger amazing ideas players have suggested for the game. After we get this content patch in, we can then look into the possibility of a mobile port.
GDM Poll
So, now that we are post release. I was wondering if players want me to collect the top 10 scores for each board into a hall of fame and then reset the boards for an additional season. I did this during Early Access every month as we added new features, and I thought it was a lot of fun having fresh boards to conquer. My question to you players is how frequent should we do these resets or should we not reset? Please drop the number of your choice in this thread or on the discord to help me make this decision. Thank you for your continued support and I very much look forward to hearing your feedback.
1. Reset every month 2. Reset every 2 months 3. Reset every 3 months 4. Reset every 4 months 5. Never reset the leader boards
Small 1.0 hotfix
This small hotfix patch contains a few fixes and changes brought on from the recent 1.0 release patch.
Fixes
-Removed the ability to upgrade an engine without adding any features -Few small text fixes -Changed the wording on the holdings HUD to better reflect current game balance -Couple corrections and updates to the credits entries -The 3rd stage development HUD did not hide optimal balance correctly if you were using a genre you had not researched
Changes
-Reduced sales for large and AAA Self-Published games -Reduced Port sales for Self-Published
With the recent additions of game add-ons and famous IP's the self published sales got a bit to large.
This covers the few small issues that have been found in the last 24 hrs since launch. Please if you find any issues bring them to my attention and we will fix them ASAP. I am also talking to a player right now that plans to help improve the Portuguese translations for players. Thank you for the support, and have fun.
Game Dev Masters Is Leaving Early Access
Game Dev Masters has officially released from Early Access
It has been a long road to reach this point. Going from prototype, to early itch.io versions, to steam demo plus early access, and now the official release. So much has been done over the past few years to get here and I am honored and humbled by the community support. The game is as good as it currently is directly because of you amazing players providing great feedback, suggestions, and fixes. This is not the end of the line when it comes to work on GDM, but it is an amazing milestone to reach. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to try the game, and especially those who not only tried the game but got involved with its development. The game would not be what it is today without your support. I don't want to bloat these notes with future plans, but if you want to see what is still to come, please refer to the new Road map post in the steam discussions. If you would prefer to just get the quick bullet highlights of the patch please refer to the GDM discord patch notes section.
Now that we have that out of the way, let's get into the 1.0 patch changes you can expect to see when you login to the game.
The leader boards have all been reset, and only saves created post the 1.0 launch will qualify to post scores to the boards. I am not deleting any of your saves from EA. They will still work if you choose to continue playing them, but they will not be eligible to post to the global leader boards. I personally recommend you create new saves, but if you want to continue an older save you can with minimal issues. I have tested the new build with older saves and it does seem to work. That being said this is the perfect time to begin a fresh play through.
Balance Changes
There have been several edits and changes to the games balance, and this is something you can expect to see tweaked in the near future as more players experience the current balance of the game. Some of the new features added have altered the games balance in many ways, and I have worked extensively to ensure the game is well balanced and beatable on all difficulty settings.
I am not going to go over specific balance changes, you can experience these for yourself as you play the game. If you find the current balance to easy or to hard, please reach out to me with your feedback, it will all be considered as we move to alter balance in the future.
Reworks
The help glossary has had several new additions, and all existing listings have been edited and changed to fit the current state of the game. Some of the glossary had become out of date since changes to the game had been made. These are all now as accurate as they can be, and many new additions have also been added to ensure players can find the help for each aspect of the game as they need it. If anyone can't find the help they need for a specific aspect of the game let me know and we will make sure it is added ASAP. I believe I have covered the vast majority of the games features in the glossary, as well as entries for many new features.
The crypto market access has been moved out of the financial > banking menu to the studio options > crypto market. I really like the crypto market and felt it was to hidden in the banking menu for players to make use of it. The studio options menu has become quite a big navigation of features, but I did not want to add more buttons to the already large studio command bar at the bottom of the screen.
Additional pop-up tutorials have been added for certain aspects of the game to make new players more aware of how certain systems work and interact with each other. I have also edited and changed many of the pop-up language to be better suited the current state of the game.
There have been several translation improvements made to several of the languages. Huge shout out to my discord community for all there help on this aspect. The translations are still not perfect, but these changes have helped to improve the translated languages in large ways.
The opening splash screen about the game being early access has been changed to a joke I like to use in my games. I hope people enjoy the levity. I don't take myself or my work to serious, and I hope you all enjoy a bit of silly fun injected into your games like I do. I take the quality of the game very serious, but I never forget the fact that games are meant to be fun, I hope that comes through in my work.
I have reduced the larger "create xx games" milestones from 25/40 down to 20/30. With all the different ways to make money in the game forcing 40 games to be made in a play through seemed like to many. For some players who prefer to just make games this was not an issue, but this makes the game more finish able for players who prefer other aspects compared to just creating games. On top of that with the addition of digital stores you can make less games and more DLC, and updates while making big money. This change should open up your options while still allowing you to complete the final milestones.
Additions
I have added a credits menu from the main menu. In this menu there are the three following sections;
1. The game credits where you can see specific credits to contributions made to the game.
2. The community page where I have written heart felt blurbs about individual players who have impacted the game in one way or another. This ranges from amazing suggestions and game contributions, down to people in the GDM discord and twitter who just helped me mentally with their kindness and humor.
3. The Hall Of Masters. This page lists everyone who took the time to dominate the current content in the game during early access to reach the discord role of GDM Master. These are the players who mastered the game, and the role tells others that they know their stuff. These players have had a great hand in helping me balance the end-game and I am very grateful for their assistance. The "Hall Of Masters" will stand as a reminder of who the best players were during EA.
Movie IP Licenses I have added a new system to the game that allows you to pay money to buy the rights to use a movie license as your game. These are all puns based on some of the best movies ever made, and I had some amazing community suggestions for these, as well as I added many of my own. In total there are over 100 movie IPS in game. From the studio options > License IPs menu you will be shown 3 potential IPS you can buy. They each have a cost and a % increase on sales. You can refresh these 3 IPS for a small fee and the cost + sales percent is randomly generated using a weighted procedural system. It is possible to get a good deal on a high sales increase but low-cost purchase to use. Once you click on an IP that you wish to use and confirm purchase you will be taken to the game dev screen with the name of your game locked off. All other aspects are selected by you, and game scoring is identical to non-IP games. However, if you used an IP, it will multiply your sales by its given % allowing you to really increase copies sold.
Epic Engine We added the "Epic Engine" to the game, and yes that is a riff on unreal engine from epic. This new engine will always be there much like the default engine, but this engine has high engine power with built in features. Unlike other engines making use of the epic engine will cause you to lose 15% of your game's revenue, and you will not learn new engine research from making games in the epic engine. However, this engine will always have the power to surpass the current requirements for engine power and give you access to big features you can use to improve tech + design totals. Every few years a new version of the epic engine will be made available replacing the older version, and this engine will always have the power to make all sizes of games at all years during your play through. This is not meant to replace your own engines in any way, but it will provide you an option if you are lacking in engine research. You can make use of this engine to make high scoring games and then make use of engine discovery to get your own research back on track. For those players who prefer to take a more passive stock and crypto based play through this engine will allow you to still make great games when you chose to do so. This engine will also allow you to add powerful features for DLC creation.
Game Add-ons I have added a new system to the game that allows the addition of some add-ons for Self-Published games. You can now add Cover art, Ost soundtracks, game maps, and a deluxe version upgrade. after you hit self-publish you will see the add-ons menu for optional add-ons. Each add-on has a cost and will increase the sales price of your game. Essentially this is a way to increase the power of a self-published game bringing them closer to digital stores. Digital stores are still the superior route if done right, but this brings self-published games much closer than before. However, if you make a bad game and add some extra add-ons to the game you are basically just digging yourself further into debt by increasing the development costs of a failure. If you know you have made a great game, then adding in some of these optional add-ons is a great way to bring up those sales figures.
Crypto Sorting I have added the ability to sort the crypto market list in a various number of ways. The first click on a section will sort them from high to low, and the second will sort them from low to high. So, if you want to see the most expensive or cheapest crypto coins, or maybe which coins have the biggest market change this week. You can now do so much easier.
Custom Consoles I have added a custom console system to the game. I know this is one many players were asking for, but it was a complex addition and needed a lot of time to nail down. Based on feedback from my community we decided that custom consoles will be made available in office 3 and 4 only, making it a later game aspect. I did not want to make this a forced part of the game, so no milestones have been added surrounding consoles. I instead tried to create a system that would be a great form of passive income for players who want to put in the time to create, market, and launch exclusives to drive up their sales. This is a great source of passive income once you have put in the work that should help you easily pay your bills as you work on other aspects of your studio.
I will now break down the way consoles work below in both short and long hand;
As previously stated, you need to reach office 3 to being console creation
To access the custom console menu, you do so through the studio options > custom consoles section
If you have not already created a console only the create console option will be available to you when you go to this menu
To create a console, you need to select the 4 hardware options for each section. GPU / Storage space / Chipset / RAM
Based on the year the gaming audience has a technical requirement you must surpass to make sales
Each piece of hardware has a cost, a tech point increase, and a manufacturing time
Once your console no longer meets the tech requirement for a new year it will stop selling
Based on the hardware power you will have a price range you can charge per console unit
You can max the hardware and smash the requirements if you chose, but the cost of creation will be high
Sales of your console will increase based on the year to simulate the growing gaming audience
Late game years where higher creation costs are required are balanced out by higher potential sales
Sales of your console are based on the year + the hype of your console + your current market share of your console + a factor based on your consoles price
You can enter an optional name for your console, if no name is used then "My Custom Console" will be used
Once you have selected your 4 pieces of hardware to be used for this custom console. You can see the listed manufacturing costs, the required tech power, your consoles tech power, and the manufacturing time needed before your console hits the market. When you confirm and hit create console you will see the in-development screen. From here you can see the remaining time, your hype, and market share. You can run small, medium, or large hype campaigns during this time. Each campaign has a cost and a special amount required to reach. Provided you have a good team with high research and perhaps some "Rush Work" skilled workers, you can use this manufacturing time to hype up your console.
Once the manufacturing time has passed a new entry will be displayed under the main details panel top right. This is the same location that current self-published games are shown as well as income changes. This will show you the hype, market share, weekly sales, and total sales for your console at a glance. This panel updates its stats weekly.
If you visit the custom console menu while your console is on the market, you can view the review console page. This page allows you to see all the relevant details about your current console and its sales. From here you can also que up additional marketing campaigns to increase your consoles hype, thus increasing its weekly sales.
Market share has the largest impact on how well your console will sell, and should not be neglected if you hope to have a high passive income stream from your custom console.
In order to increase the market, share you need to create and launch console exclusives for your console. Once you have a console on the market for sale when you create a game you will find your custom console below the existing consoles in the platform section of the game development HUD. If you select your console a new option will appear below platforms at the main menu of development allowing you to toggle console exclusive on or off.
Games made on your console have no difference than existing consoles. They can be ported, make DLCs, and everything else you would expect. However, if you make the game exclusive, they cannot be ported to other systems lowering their potential sales. This will instead increase your market share based on the size and quality of the exclusive that you create. Making exclusives will allow your custom console to earn substantial weekly income, especially when combined with high hype.
Each week that passes you lose 2% hype on your console, and each month passes you lose 1% market share. Meaning you will need to release at least 1 console exclusive each year to counter market share loss, or more if you wish to take over the market.
If you have a high market share (97% is possible in game leaving 1% on all other platforms) then games sold on your system will have better sales than other releases. The market share reflects the market for buying consoles. Having a low market share does not mean there aren't many players with that system. It means new players that year are buying other systems and their potential sales pools are now higher.
Provided you create a system with enough tech to sell for a few years, run some hype campaigns to keep hype high, release some console exclusives. You will have a very strong income stream added to your studio allowing you to get crazy with crypto, acquisitions, or whatever strategy you have.
The one current limitation is that the player does not have the ability to create their own digital store presence such as their own STEAM. So, you can only self-publish games made on your custom console. The complexity of your own digital stores was a bit beyond the time frame for this release date, but is something I would like to visit in a future post launch update if players are enjoying the console system.
This is a brand-new system in the game and I tried to keep it from breaking the existing game or forcing a certain play style. Please give me feedback around your experience with this new system and we will work to make improvements as they arise. I personally enjoy what I came up with, but I am a tad bias so please feel free to talk consoles with me anytime.
Conclusion
This is what I was able to manage for this patch. On top of several bug fixes and bug hunts and small minor tweaks and changes not worth mentioning. I hope you all enjoy the current state of the game and find it more than worth the asking price, which is staying the same. I am not increasing the cost as we leave early access. Having a game feel like it was worth the cost is a big factor for me as a player and keeping the lower price helps ensure that is the case.
I have worked extensively on this patch to ensure as few bugs as possible, and hopefully zero bugs. However, there are so many hardware setups and different player types that it would be arrogant to think I attempted to mimic every type of player in my pursuit of bug hunting. So please, if you find any issues do not hesitate to contact me via steam, discord, twitter, email, or whatever means best suit you. I will be playing and hanging out over the next few weeks ready to spring into action for any issues. I am very confident and proud of the current state of the game, and I believe it is ready for release. Thank you to everyone for their support and for your time. I hope you have as much fun in game as I do, and I look forward to smashing all of your GDM scores on the leader boards. Bring it on.
Hotfix patch for Translations
A variety of formatting and language issues were fixed in the Spanish, German, and French translations.
Huge shout out to "UweMachts" for the German feedback, "titou45150/Phil" for the French feedback, and "GianluPlay" for the Spanish feedback.
No translation is perfect, but with support from players we will continue to improve all the localizations for GDM. Thank you and have a great week.
German Translation is live
I wasn't planning to patch again this soon. However, a great guy named UweMachts finished up the German translation. So, I had to push to get that added in ASAP.
I have not performed that much testing of this translation as I am already working on additional things. So, if any existing German players or new German players spend time with the game, please report any issues. If there are any words outside of HUDS or obvious formatting issues, please screenshot the issue and send it to me on discord. Having a visual makes it very easy for me to identify what to fix. Overall is should be quite good, but please report any issues, thank you.
I have also added a fix that makes demo saves usable after purchasing the retail client. Now once you close the game and then run the retail client, when you hit continue it will unflag your save as a demo save, and allow you to move to office 2. You will also start to gain achieves for new milestones, but old completed milestones will not be credited for achieves.
OK, back to work. Have fun and thank you in advance for reporting any issues with the translation.
The Champions Have Been Crowned
First off, I would like to congratulate Dycart for taking the top spot in both procedural and realistic seeds. I cannot say I am surprised to see Dycart take champion for the procedural ladder as he has been the number 1 spot many times in previous seasons, but taking both was an impressive surprise. Dycart has been an amazing supporter for the game through all of Early Access, and has provided an ungodly amount of feedback, bugfixes, and great suggestions. So, I am very pleased to consider him the Early Access Champion. If you want to check him out or maybe throw him some love, he streams every day on twitch during the afternoon(EST) and he plays a variety of great games. Here is a link to his channel for anyone interested https://twitch.tv/Dycart He has been great to the game, and I would love to see good things come his way.
The championship is over, and the top 10 for every board has been recorded for the final EA Hall of Fame board. However, the ladder will not be reset. I am not running another season until we launch on June/03/2022. You can continue to post and improve scores, but you cannot dethrone Dycart until release. You will have until the end of May to join the discord and reach the GDM master role to be included in the "Hall Of Masters". So, if you want to leave your permanent mark on the game for the rest of time, this is your last month to do so. GDM Master role is earned by reaching and creating a AAA game which is essentially the final form of game development in GDM. If you need a discord link they can be found all over but here is another one https://discord.gg/WfbXE4cDVA This is of course optional, but for those who want there name set in stone in game this is an easy road to do so.
This announcement comes with a small update as well that has a variety of visual tweaks, improvements, and optimization changes. Nothing overly drastic just an overall increase to game polish and improved performance.
These next two months before release are critical and I will be performing my own self-imposed CRUNCH. I have a large list of features, changes, and additions I hope to work into the game for the big 1.0 release patch. Some I may not reach and will be moved to post launch but I hope to get as much done as possible. Custom consoles, exclusives, engine licensing, and ips are some of the first on my list as well as a ton of others. If you would like to keep up-to-date on development as it unfolds, consider coming to the discord. If you are willing to test the new features as they get added on the beta branch, please come to the discord as well. I will be picking a few players to help test the beta branch throughout this patch process to ensure the most stable and perfect version I can for launch. If you can help with this, please let me know in discord chat or DM, and thank you for your help in advance. You can expect new features to be ready for testing within a week or so from today, and more to keep rolling in as they are completed.
It has been a great experience so far working on the game and chatting with the community, but there is still a lot to be done. I am very excited to reach the next milestone, the 1.0 launch. Thank you so much for your support and you know where to find me. I might have an announcement for steam during the next two months, as well as a couple new translations to add, but there won't be a feature patch until release. I need to release with a nice big patch to entice new players, and bring back the veterans. I really look forward to hearing from both veterans and new players around what they think of the release version. There is still so much more I hope to do post release, but this marks a huge milestone for the game. Hopefully we can also gain some new players who just fear EA titles, and are waiting for the full release. Have fun and stay frosty, I got to get back to work.
Visual Updates And Fixes
First and foremost, please note that come March 31st we will be crowning the Early Access champions for both procedural and reality-based seeds. If you are the best player, this is the time to prove it.
In This Update
Visual Changes
There have been a variety of added visuals to the game. These range from different PC screens based on the type of work each worker is doing, to particle effects on all the player skills. There is also a new stage spotlight effect that highlights which worker is leading that stage for medium + sized games. All of these effects can be toggled off in the game options menu if you find they ruin immersion or you prefer no effects for performance reasons. These effects also act as player feedback in the sense that they provide a visual way to see when certain time-based skills are running and completed such as Crunch / Rush Work / Design and Tech Overrides.
There are more visual improvements and optimizations planned to come this month. It is a difficult and tedious task but all these small improvements add up to a much more polished and complete game.
Fixes
There were a few issues that have been found and fixed. I have to give a big shout out to Dycart Gaming for his amazing bug hunting work combined with twitch VODS. They have been a great asset for the game over the last 10 months of EA and they still continue to do so.
There was an issue with engine updating and then trying to make DLC for a game that used the pre updated engine. This would result is the game not finding the engine to list its features for the DLC due to the new 2.0 naming convention. This will now correctly find an updated engine for DLC creation.
There was a rather large issue with the new CPU screen system combined with doing both studio work and individual worker tasks at the same time that could miss match pointers ruining the training and research being done. This will now correctly work during any mix of studio work and worker tasks running. I am very confident this issue has been completely fixed, but of course if anyone notices any issues, please bring it to my attention and we will make short work of any problems.
What Is Next
For the rest of March, we have more visual updates and optimization changes coming. As previously stated, we will be crowing the champions of EA at the end of the month. I am very happy to say that we are on schedule to hit the June / 03 / 2022 release date exactly 1 year after we began EA. I have a large list of features, changes, and additions planned for the 1.0 release patch. This will be worked on over April / May leading to release. I am not going to get into the release patch specifics, but we can continue the conversation on Discord if you are interested.
For now, just know that the EA champions will be crowned soon, but the ladder will not be reset until release. Part of the 1.0 patch will be creating the champions page as well as the hall of fame entries so these will be recorded at the end of March 31. Thank you for all your support and feedback over the past 10 months. The finish line for the release is within sight, and the post release phase will soon begin.
