Game Dev Tycoon news & patch notes

Hello there! 👋 SimFest, the Steam festival celebrating the variety of simulation titles, has begun! And how could we not be a part of it? 😄 {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5050215/9a4f73d31efc2400d20d72f98cf91898d9a206d9.png For Game Dev Tycoon, we are running a discount of 65% to celebrate our love for the genre! During SimFest, we are also releasing something major for our Game #2: The DEMO for Tavern Keeper is now available! As we shared a while back, we've been working on this charming fantasy business sim game for more than a decade! If you’re a fan of Game Dev Tycoon or enjoy the genre and want to see what's next from us, consider giving the demo a try! https://store.steampowered.com/app/436780/Tavern_Keeper/ This Demo is a hand-crafted experience, separate from the full game, in which the narrator is looking for the main character of Tavern Keeper. Is it you? Thank you for reading and giving us your support throughout the years! Much 💚, The Greenheart Games Team

Hello! 👋 As we shared a while back, we've been working on our second game for nearly a decade! Today, we revealed the first gameplay trailer for Tavern Keeper, sharing a bunch of the systems that you'll use to manage your fantasy tavern and run the show! If you loved Game Dev Tycoon and want to see what's next from us, consider putting this on your wishlist! https://store.steampowered.com/app/436780/Tavern_Keeper/ Thank you! The Greenheart Games 💚 Team

Dear Game Dev Tycoon Fans, Here's a surprise, there’s a new edition of Game Dev Tycoon available on Netflix! Truth be told, we never dreamed that we’d be able to make an update to Game Dev Tycoon as we’ve been flat out working on our second PC game but then an opportunity with Netflix came along and together with the Game Dev Tycoon mobile team we made it work. The new edition is exclusive to Netflix for the time being - we wouldn’t have been able to make this happen at all otherwise. If you have a Netflix subscription, you can download it and play it with no extra fees - it's already included with your Netflix membership. 🕹️📱 It's the same Game Dev Tycoon you know and love with a few added features:

Licensed topics

As you play through gaming history, you get access to licensed topics that allow you to develop games based on parodies of your favorite movies and TV shows. Each of these topics comes with custom story events and special rewards when you develop a great game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5050215/03605940b60774b0eb3406eab40bfe9deebb29ac.jpg The story events on licensed topics range from pushy executives trying to hurry your production, to team members quizzing you to see if you really understand the license, to events inspired by historical happenings. You could find yourself making a really bad “G.T. - The Galactic Traveler” game and have your cartridges buried in the desert! Or avoid fate, change history, and have it be one of the best games ever made. Imagine that! Each licensed topic can earn you a special reward if you deliver a good game - this can open up new strategies to gain fans, get research points or even unlock new engine parts.

Content Creators

Another new feature is content creators. As the game progresses, you are able to promote your games with content creators and gain more fans and sales. Find out which genres and topics fit best with each audience and experiment to find out preferences. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5050215/52d3928e45c8fcd2d28dbdcb8ff799fafffd1e4c.jpg

How to play?

To play Game Dev Tycoon NETFLIX, you can use your Netflix account on your mobile device - it’s already included with your Netflix membership.

What’s next?

With this little surprise out of the way, we are going back to focusing on finishing our next PC game. Most of you have probably heard of it already. Tavern Keeper 🍻 is a fun, fantasy tavern management sim and it’s coming out later this year on Steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/436780/Tavern_Keeper/ Thank you for your continued support and excitement for Game Dev Tycoon over the years - without you none of this would have happened. Patrick and The Greenheart Games 💚 team

Happy New Year, everyone!

Steam Capitalism and Economy Fest

Game Dev Tycoon is taking part in the Steam Capitalism and Economy Fest with a 60% discount until January 15th! What a fitting event for a game like Game Dev Tycoon! 😁 {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5050215/7e35fe04e693a306f479e10b39ff974a06f03864.png

How to avoid bankruptcy

In Game Dev Tycoon, your success isn’t measured only by how many 10/10 games you make - and All Games isn’t making this task easy - but also by your ability to keep your development company going and growing. The biggest challenge is avoiding bankruptcy, which is hard enough without the ultra-hard Pirate Mode, so we thought of sharing a few tips to make your playthrough a little easier!

• Save up a good amount of money before moving on to level 2. This can help you experiment with topics a little and gain more experience.
• Medium games work best if you have a team of 3, so your aim should be to get to 2 additional workers. Be mindful when you grow your team since staff members are expensive!
• Fans are important, and to get more fans you should try to take publishing deals. This will help you later on when you want to successfully self-publish games.
• Be very careful what publishing contracts you take. Publishers often suggest not-so-ideal combinations which can lead to bad scores and you having to pay a penalty.
• If you have trouble thinking of what audience is better for what platforms, just think of the best-selling games of the real-world equivalent console and what audience these games target.

Do you have any tips to share? Let us know in the comments!

Our second management game

We also took this opportunity to share more details about the money-making aspect of our second game Tavern Keeper, coming out later this year! You can check the article here. https://store.steampowered.com/app/436780/Tavern_Keeper/ Thank you! The Greenheart Games Team 💚

TEN YEARS + Anniversary Sale

Next week, it will be ten whole years since Game Dev Tycoon came out on Steam! Never would we have dreamed that our first little game would be played by so many people across the globe, that it would be crowd-translated to 17 languages, that it would have so many incredible mods, or that you could play it on mobile and Switch too. THANK YOU ALL 💚 for making this possible! To celebrate the occasion we are doing an 80% anniversary sale for a few days - our biggest discount to date!

A New Game From Us

While we celebrate 10 years, by fortunate coincidence, we can also celebrate that our second game, Tavern Keeper 🍻, has - as of a day ago - a Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/436780/Tavern_Keeper/ If you want to follow our journey with Game #2, please check it out. It will be a fun ride! As for Game Dev Tycoon, we’ll be back. Patrick 💚

Fixed start script for Linux: Instead of setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable it gets appended.

We've released a small bug fix where the staff welcome training was not available after importing from a mobile save game.

We've released a small update which fixes subscribing to our newsletter from within the game. 💚

We've released a small update fixing a few minor cross-platform bugs, as well as aiming to restore game knowledge (and some save slots) that were sometimes lost for some players when upgrading to 1.8.x This update also introduces a workaround for a known issue where modders on Windows are unable to update their workshop mods. We've described the issue and a new workaround for it here. We expect this will be the last update for a while. Hopefully things will run smoothly now. 💚 PS: Consider following our developer page.

We have just reverted all Windows users to the old version of node-webkit (the underlying tech making the game run on PC). Sadly our latest upgrade to a newer version caused game hints and achievements to not load (nor save correctly). The good news is that hints and achievements previously gained should now load again so there should not be any data loss. Unfortunately a proper fix is anything but simple as the issue seems outside our control for now but we will investigate any possible fixes. Other than the fact that we are now again running on an older version and thus miss out on the nicer text rendering, there is no loss of features in this version on Windows. It still comes with all the new features like save-sharing. We have left the Mac version on the newer version as the old version has significant performance and display-compatibility issues. Hopefully we'll have another update to address this soon.

Bugfix: Migrating save files with custom consoles from mobile version did throw the error "InvalidStateError: Failed to execute 'drawImage'".

Bugfix: Deleting a savegame threw a "TypeError: Bad arguments".

We've just released v1.8.0 to Windows and Mac users.

This release should hopefully fix a bunch of odd issues we've recently seen Mac users report and should also have much better performance on Mac. For Windows users the main change is that text-rendering is vastly improved and performance overall should be a bit better too. We haven't updated Linux in this release, as it would not have made any significant changes. If there are any issues, please get in touch with us at [email protected], by responding to this announcement, or by posting on the Steam forums.

Technical details and background information

Game Dev Tycoon was one of the first games on Steam to use node-webkit to run a HTML5 game on Desktops and because of that, we were using an ancient version of node-webkit by today's standards. We often considered upgrading but every time we did, we experienced numerous new issues and had very little confidence that the overall player experience would be better than before. Newer versions of node-webkit (now known as nw.js) are also significantly larger in size and we didn't want to inflate download and install sizes for little gain. Unfortunately, once Apple release Mac OS Catalina, it seemed that, while after a lot of work, we managed to get our version of node-webkit to work, the performance significantly degraded (for all versions of Mac OS) and when we released v1.7.0 we suddenly got all sorts of odd bug reports on Mac, none of which can be attributed to our own game code. Our only choice is to upgrade to a newer version of nw.js and hope that Mac OS supports this better. This is a drastic change for the project hence the bump to version 1.8.0 - You'll notice that the game is now larger in size but the improved performance, Mac support and the vastly improved text-rendering on Windows should make up for it.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5050215/875057bf8201bdc1d4acdaf8ba786c1837c341bb.png With this update, we are making it something of a tradition that every time we release Game Dev Tycoon on a new platform, we update all existing platforms with some new features. Two years ago we released the game on mobile and brought a big update to Steam including lots of UI improvements, as well as the ultra-difficult "pirate mode".

Cross-platform save sharing

This time, to celebrate yet another platform release (hint: something something Ninvento Swap), we are bringing a brand new feature to Steam: cross-platform save support. With cross-platform save support you can take your save file to wherever you want to play, regardless of which platform (PC, mobile, Switch etc.) you play on. To use this new feature, wait for Steam to update your game installation to v1.7.0. After that, you can access this feature in the loading screen, simply click on the little cog icon next to the slot you want to upload, acknowledge the usage policy, click upload and a few seconds later you will have a short code that you can then use to download that same save somewhere else. Here's a quick demonstration. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5050215/0dc28370e23b03c09f8f739fcd9a714fe6dee89d.gif

Play Game Dev Tycoon with us!

This is not only useful if you want to continue your game session on a different device, but can also be used to share your save file with friends, or even play collaboratively. On our Discord server we made great use of this feature yesterday, where players take turns running a single company and hopefully completing a run-through together. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5050215/2a5d242b0cfb4f51064e952af17ecdeae5ef258d.png If you want to join, check out our Discord server and take a look in the #gdt-discord-plays channel.

Other changes

The update contains some other smaller fixes and changes, Farming and RPG is no longer a terrible combination (fair enough Stardew Valley), and we've fixed a particular spiffy exploit were you could gain lots of money by clicking on the side bar notifications repeatedly. Hey, if you want to cheat, just install cheat mod, okay? Some of you might also have spotted another small addition: you can now delete a save slot... finally. It only took us eight years to add that 🤣 seriously though, there's reasons we didn't touch it for so long. It was surprisingly difficult and tricky to do right.

Known Issues

We are working on a fix for an issue where performance on the Mac version is significantly slower than it should be. It seems to be a Catalina/Notarization-related problem (but happens on all Mac OS versions). We are actively working on a fix but don't have an ETA yet.

Behind-the-scenes

This feature was actually implemented in our upcoming game Tavern Keeper first and the team just found it so super useful that we wanted to back port it to Game Dev Tycoon too. Oh, I wish we had this feature years ago, when we debugged all these different save states! Anyway, we thought it would be an easy undertaking but wow, we were wrong. First, the mobile and PC versions of Game Dev Tycoon used a different save structure so we had to spend quite some time to sort out all the differences and then we ran into so much trouble implementing this for the PC version. Who would have thought that uploading and downloading a file would be so difficult in an HTML5 game. Anyway, I hope you like this little update. As always, if you want to stay up to date with news and our upcoming game, make sure you follow our developer page and sign up to our newsletter. Patrick 💚

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/a5fd350b2e87e6b7821c1f3d9b34f0967bb3eed2.png The first total UI overhaul mod for Game Dev Tycoon called "TAG Mod" is now fully released. All the way back in July 2014, a small group called Throw Away Games (short TAG, hence the mod name) teased the mod on our forums with some impressive mockups. Since then they have changed their name to Bellwood Studios but kept working on the mod year after year. The result is nothing short of impressive. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/c1d27fac3c819fa85649c682b8984512e8c3068a.png TAG Mod not only gives Game Dev Tycoon a fresh look but also introduces some neat convenience features such as the ability to generate a game report from the sales UI, or the super-charged game history screen showing you how you set your sliders on your past games and which engines you used. That's not all though, there's lots more to discover so head over to the mod page and try it out yourself: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1527391789 The folks over at Bellwood Studios are also working on their own game, if you are curious what the talented team is up to, check out their discord link on the mod page. Until next time. Patrick Greenheart Games 💚

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/8f6ca98966c8bbd5ed83884800772601dd79cc76.png It's been five whole years since Game Dev Tycoon released on Steam. Time for a brief illustrated trip through the game’s history. Back in 2011, my brother Daniel and I (we are both software developers) decided that we wanted to try to make a game. After days of brainstorming and discussions, we settled on the idea of making a game dev simulator. We were inspired by Game Dev Story on the iPhone (made by Kairosoft) and wanted to make a game in that genre with our own spin on it. Our intention was to make a game dev simulator where the player would have finer control over the decisions of what to focus on during game development. Game Dev Tycoon started, as many games do, on a single piece of paper. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/08e457f276d1f57f9cf9592061dbef9baa5e048a.jpg Back then, we imagined the game as a turn-based game with almost no graphics for phones. Our plan was to create a small but fun game to gain experience and test the market. This is what the game looked like as a prototype. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/32deb8c94cc947f095345e763e40247a8b7bcbfd.png We spend a few months in this prototype developing the algorithms on how points are generated, what decisions players make, and how virtual games are reviewed and judged. Next, we realized how difficult it would be to be successful on mobile without a big marketing partner so, when Windows 8 (remember Windows 8?) was announced, we pivoted hard towards Windows. Our plan was to make Game Dev Tycoon the first simulation game on the very first Windows Store which we thought was a decent marketing strategy. Windows 8 was all about tablets and touch-screens so our designs - intended for phones - no longer cut it. We changed from a turn-based simulation game with almost no graphics to a real-time isometric simulation game where you see your office at all times. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/964d0920bbf734731bbe5de183761000b590017f.jpg Windows 8 only had two reasonable technology choices: C++ with Microsoft's Windows-specific XAML frontend or HTML5. We both had XAML experience and Daniel is a great C++ developer (me, less so :D) but we also both disliked XAML. More importantly, while we heavily bet the game on Windows 8, we had enough experience in the Microsoft ecosystem not to trust the hype blindly. If the Windows 8 Store would flop, what would we do? With that in mind we opted to go for a versatile cross-platform technology instead of what we knew and decided to write our game in HTML5. Neither Daniel nor I had ever written anything in HTML5 before. We took our prototype and ported it from C# to JavaScript. We also changed our algorithms from turn-based to real-time. In May 2012 the game looked like this: https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/2abc15835ac3e77fc12d8181b1cdc051d768c18d.jpg What followed was months of intense work to make the Windows 8 launch deadline. Moving to HTML5 was mostly easier than I personally expected but it did take me a whole day to figure out how to stack buttons on top of each other in CSS, not to mention how to center things :D Initially, both Daniel and I worked on the game as a side project to our full time jobs but we soon realized that we needed to give it much more attention. I transitioned out of my job and put my savings from 10+ years as a software engineer behind the project to hire artists and finish the game on time, while Daniel worked hard next to his job and on weekends. If my money would run out, he'd have to support us both. It was an intensely stressful and uncertain time full of the highs and lows of indie development. Three months later, we published a free 'lite' version which just contained the first level of the game on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview store. The rest of the game wasn't even close to being finished yet. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/a3f28dced96b33113d48984e8f7f51364688f9c1.jpg This looks very familiar at a glance but in the final version we replaced the 3D modeled characters by more cartoony 2D ones and reworked the level art to be more crisp, stylized, and colorful. We also ditched the cut-off wall look. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/7be893bd6986097143fa72ed1d3fed64e4af8023.jpg Left: preview style. Right: release graphics. We were quite nervous releasing just a preview game but within days we had nearly a thousand downloads and 4.5 star reviews. We were the very first simulation game on the Store. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/c3f2f00eb9bb14815a67d9927414110dcbbfa6ae.png Fueled by the positive response and early reviews, we put our heads down and developed the rest of the game. Here are a few images from the process. This is the evolution of our second level. From basic sketch and a painted version in our old art-style to complete reboot and finally a vector draft which is quite close to what we ended up with. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/c5f748094a9c68cc0c92fb3cbbe757796faa9075.jpg By the time we designed the last level we had optimized our design process. Below you see a much more streamlined progression from sketch to layout concept to final piece. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/c46bb3a7efff93943133155c23840d2ffd5dfa11.jpg On the UI front, we quickly decided against a more commonly seen fancy UI and instead focused on big readable text and minimalism. Here is a comparison between an early design versus what it ended up looking like. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/fe5bd88d0e584ab17f902fde1ef3e0ea306c1255.png After 8 intense months of work, Game Dev Tycoon launched on the Windows 8 Store on December 11th, 2012. With around 420 sales on day 1, we made it to spot 3! https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/740b5d6b0b2a7ca62a3fad98a4ce52548cc55b5a.jpg Sadly, Windows 8 and particularly the Windows Store didn't quite reach the adoption we had hoped for and sales quickly dropped and leveled out. We knew that we had to port the game to a wider audience if we wanted to be able to work on another game full-time. Our previous decision not to use Windows-Store-only technology for the game now proved crucial and within a few months we made the game run on desktops for Windows/Mac and Linux. Late April 2013, we published the game on our own store via our website. At the same time we released a modified version on torrent site as a little piracy experiment. I still remember saying that after working non-stop on the game for over a year, I was planning to take a week off. I was just gonna publish the results of our piracy experiments first. I published the story late at night, went to bed and when I woke up the next morning everything was on fire. Our piracy story went viral overnight. We had 500 emails in our inbox. Our website was down because it couldn’t handle the traffic and Game Dev Tycoon was suddenly discussed everywhere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0U7XEG8djU We were utterly unprepared for the sudden spotlight. Emails kept flooding in and because of the sudden influx of players so too did the bug reports. At the same time the discussion around our experiment exploded and the press wanted to talk to us. We hired some help to handle emails but decided to listen to our players and retreated from the spotlight to focus on the game instead. With all the new players, lots of valuable feedback and critique was brought to our attention and after we were Greenlit for a Steam release we decided to address those concerns. Four months later, this resulted in the release of the improved Steam version on August 30th, 2013. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/feed321c85963fcd3f995ea083dd1b77d094cc7b.jpg Steam in 2013. Since the original Steam release a lot has happened. - We have released 58 updates to the game. - Most recently, a major content and quality-of-life update introducing new topics, everyone's favorite new console, a brand new game mode and several important UX improvements went live for free. - The technology we developed (and open sourced) to enable Steam support for our game has now been used in 23 other Steam games. - Game Dev Tycoon has been ported to iOS and Google Play. - We have manually replied to nearly 40K emails in five years. - Our modding community is still going strong with hundreds of mods and dozens which go far beyond simple content additions. From the ever-green most subscribed mods to more recent additions like the Compact Topic & Genres mod and the much anticipated upcoming TAG MOD. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/5932f4ba05a6bd96bcaa50538e7a4a97c5e68748.jpg Screenshot from the upcoming TAG MOD by Bellwood Studios. We are incredibly honored and humbled by the success of Game Dev Tycoon and for the past five years we have turned this small two-brother team into a seven-people indie studio and poured our heart into developing our next game: Tavern Keeper. It's not ready yet but we plan to write an update in coming weeks and give you a better idea of what to expect. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/6be2461b69d781e6b33cd4a32a10918717914f3b.jpg Quite an old screenshot by now. We'll aim to share more soon. Please consider following our developer page and sign up to our newsletter if you want to know more. We are also thinking of doing a special Game Dev Tycoon developer stream in a week or so. If you’d be interested in that, please let us know in the comments. Thanks for all the 🎮 - Patrick Klug Greenheart Games 💚

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/5f0bde90ac0a0fead86c689cbe9a621ea2ed92f3.png Valve has just launched developer pages on Steam allowing you to follow your favorite creators and be notified of upcoming games. It's like they read our minds :ghsmile: If you want to follow our journey and stay up to date with news on our next game, please consider following us here: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/greenheartgames You can also sign up to our Tavern Keeper newsletter on the official website: https://tavernkeeper.com/ - Patrick 💚 Greenheart Games

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/c2a0972d3c373d0ff5e5e6359a234e63b07ec449.png We've been quietly working on our second game (Tavern Keeper) in the past years but to celebrate the mobile release of Game Dev Tycoon (it came out on iOS and Google Play), we've decided to take a break from designing taverns and worked to bring a FREE content update to our amazing Game Dev Tycoon community. Here are the goodies:

Pirate Mode

Try your luck surviving the harsh realities of piracy in this new ultra-hard game mode in which you have to invent DRM and sell company shares to survive. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/ad5976993f5399a4098d63d3a1eecd8b848e65bd.png You can find the pirate mode under the advanced options when starting a new game. We've also added two new achievements: http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/d1e1e5036dd26f6e5a0cc66b35276b437c2312dd.png

New Review Screen

Inspired by the mobile UI, we've revamped the review screen with now 100% more star-power. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/d4f7498b1a1edf45029fd20a11b433aafd2456fd.gif Disclaimer: Sudden rushes of anger from receiving a bad score from All Games is unchanged but the feeling of elation from receiving amazing scores is increased by several measurable units of excitement!

New side bar messages

Messages and events can now appear in a new sidebar instead of opening automatically and interrupting gameplay. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/3e2c42e2281898d15098433ae998c1e0c6033d22.gif Messages can stack. You can click on them to read the message (or right-click to dismiss them). They will gently pulse and disappear if you ignore them too long. We've tuned the default settings to be ideal for first-time players but experienced players can control which type of messages should auto-popup and which should appear in the sidebar in the new "Messages" settings tab: http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/80414d0401aa539717e8fa3179913deb94913dce.gif

New Topics, Icons & Drag to Scroll

We felt that the un-modded game lacked a few core topics that prevented players from re-making their favorite game in Game Dev Tycoon. This release adds 15 new topics to the game to enable more game combinations and, while we were at it, we completely redesigned the topic picker with shiny new icons. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/304093ffe75c6cbb45a854c695648559384afa9c.gif Adding topic icons made the topic list a bit bigger, so we took this as an opportunity to add kinetic scrolling to lots of scrollable elements in the game. If you want to quickly browse the topic list now just click, drag, and flick it!

👩🏽‍💻 Women in Tech 🏆

We were made aware of a pretty sad bug where the 'women in tech' event in the game did not alter the gender balance of job applicants. We have now fixed this and also added a lot more famous women game developers to the game. In related news, the default character when starting a new game is now randomized and there is a random character button for you to press too.

Swap and late-game PC

Turns out that Ninvento can't stop innovating! We have added the Ninvento Swap to the platform list, including a corresponding news story telling you all about bitter cartridges. We have also added a new late-game PC image to the game. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/f2a0a5776817aefd6f68ee9b3d838a3adea1e916.png

Modders 🛠

Existing mods should continue to function as they have before but we have added a few new features which modders can make use of:

• Mods can now add an (optional) icon to their topics by specifying an iconUrl (documentation).
• Mods can now add their own settings UI to the game's settings-panel via a call to `GDT.addSettingsTab(title, content);` (documentation).
• Mods can spawn messages in the new sidebar. (documentation).
• The game now ships the Greensock GSAP animation library which modders can use to its full potential (documentation).

Thanks for playing! 💚

Hope you all enjoy this free update. We will now head back into fantasy land and focus on our second game. We hope we can talk more about it soon. If you haven't done so yet, *please* sign up to our newsletter on tavernkeeper.com.

Full changelog

v1.6.11

• New: super-difficult 'pirate' game mode including new piracy, DRM and company ownership game mechanics.
• New: Added Ninvento Swap console and 100% more mentioning of denatonium benzoate in the game.
• New: Added new modern PC image.
• New: UI panels have now a kinetic drag behaviour.
• New: Updated review screen with new star animations.
• New: Added 15 new topics.
• New: Nicer topic and genre picker with all new topic and genre icons.
• New: Added icons to context menu.
• New: New message sidebar where messages can appear without interrupting gameplay.
• New: New 'Messages' settings allow you to set which in-game messages should auto-popup and which should open in the new sidebar.
• New: Character can now be randomized when starting a company.
• New: Settings, achievements and highscore panels are now draggable.
• New (modding): Mods can now add their own settings panel via GDT.addSettingsTab(title,jqueryContent);
• New (modding): Custom topics can now specify a iconUrl to show a custom icon (otherwise generic fallback is used).
• New: Modders can now make use of greensocks GSAP animation library: https://greensock.com/gsap
• Improved: Added more famous women to the game.
• Added: Translations of new content.
• Improved: Removed UI selection outline from slider handle.
• Improved: Added visual clue when there are not enough research points to start a research project.
• Improved: Small story window is now slightly wider.
• Improved: Sponsoring the women in tech event now causes more women to apply for jobs.
• Improved: Combobox in new game window is now larger.
• Improved: The default character when starting a new company is now randomized.
• Changed: Progression hint messages are now categorized as company milestones and will auto-open by default.
• Fixed: Randomize character button in company creation screen has missing icon.
• Fixed: Animation sounds would sometimes continue playing when starting a new game.
• Fixed: Typewriting animation would sometimes speed up on the intro screen when starting a new game.
• Fixed: Several buttons do not play a sound when clicked.
• Fixed: It was possible to have a game that never went off the market if a company had lost all fans and then released another bad game.
• Fixed: The splashscreen is no longer draggable.
• Fixed: When stories picked team members, often the first staff got picked.

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/c2a0972d3c373d0ff5e5e6359a234e63b07ec449.png We've been quietly working on our second game (Tavern Keeper) in the past years but to celebrate the mobile release of Game Dev Tycoon (it came out on iOS and Google Play), we've decided to take a break from designing taverns and worked to bring a FREE content update to our amazing Game Dev Tycoon community. Here are the goodies:

Pirate Mode

Try your luck surviving the harsh realities of piracy in this new ultra-hard game mode in which you have to invent DRM and sell company shares to survive. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/ad5976993f5399a4098d63d3a1eecd8b848e65bd.png You can find the pirate mode under the advanced options when starting a new game. We've also added two new achievements: http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/d1e1e5036dd26f6e5a0cc66b35276b437c2312dd.png

New Review Screen

Inspired by the mobile UI, we've revamped the review screen with now 100% more star-power. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/d4f7498b1a1edf45029fd20a11b433aafd2456fd.gif Disclaimer: Sudden rushes of anger from receiving a bad score from All Games is unchanged but the feeling of elation from receiving amazing scores is increased by several measurable units of excitement!

New side bar messages

Messages and events can now appear in a new sidebar instead of opening automatically and interrupting gameplay. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/3e2c42e2281898d15098433ae998c1e0c6033d22.gif Messages can stack. You can click on them to read the message (or right-click to dismiss them). They will gently pulse and disappear if you ignore them too long. We've tuned the default settings to be ideal for first-time players but experienced players can control which type of messages should auto-popup and which should appear in the sidebar in the new "Messages" settings tab: http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/80414d0401aa539717e8fa3179913deb94913dce.gif

New Topics, Icons & Drag to Scroll

We felt that the un-modded game lacked a few core topics that prevented players from re-making their favorite game in Game Dev Tycoon. This release adds 15 new topics to the game to enable more game combinations and, while we were at it, we completely redesigned the topic picker with shiny new icons. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/304093ffe75c6cbb45a854c695648559384afa9c.gif Adding topic icons made the topic list a bit bigger, so we took this as an opportunity to add kinetic scrolling to lots of scrollable elements in the game. If you want to quickly browse the topic list now just click, drag, and flick it!

👩🏽‍💻 Women in Tech 🏆

We were made aware of a pretty sad bug where the 'women in tech' event in the game did not alter the gender balance of job applicants. We have now fixed this and also added a lot more famous women game developers to the game. In related news, the default character when starting a new game is now randomized and there is a random character button for you to press too.

Swap and late-game PC

Turns out that Ninvento can't stop innovating! We have added the Ninvento Swap to the platform list, including a corresponding news story telling you all about bitter cartridges. We have also added a new late-game PC image to the game. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/f2a0a5776817aefd6f68ee9b3d838a3adea1e916.png

Modders 🛠

Existing mods should continue to function as they have before but we have added a few new features which modders can make use of:

• Mods can now add an (optional) icon to their topics by specifying an iconUrl (documentation).
• Mods can now add their own settings UI to the game's settings-panel via a call to `GDT.addSettingsTab(title, content);` (documentation).
• Mods can spawn messages in the new sidebar. (documentation).
• The game now ships the Greensock GSAP animation library which modders can use to its full potential (documentation).

Thanks for playing! 💚

Hope you all enjoy this free update. We will now head back into fantasy land and focus on our second game. We hope we can talk more about it soon. If you haven't done so yet, *please* sign up to our newsletter on tavernkeeper.com.

Full changelog

v1.6.11

• New: super-difficult 'pirate' game mode including new piracy, DRM and company ownership game mechanics.
• New: Added Ninvento Swap console and 100% more mentioning of denatonium benzoate in the game.
• New: Added new modern PC image.
• New: UI panels have now a kinetic drag behaviour.
• New: Updated review screen with new star animations.
• New: Added 15 new topics.
• New: Nicer topic and genre picker with all new topic and genre icons.
• New: Added icons to context menu.
• New: New message sidebar where messages can appear without interrupting gameplay.
• New: New 'Messages' settings allow you to set which in-game messages should auto-popup and which should open in the new sidebar.
• New: Character can now be randomized when starting a company.
• New: Settings, achievements and highscore panels are now draggable.
• New (modding): Mods can now add their own settings panel via GDT.addSettingsTab(title,jqueryContent);
• New (modding): Custom topics can now specify a iconUrl to show a custom icon (otherwise generic fallback is used).
• New: Modders can now make use of greensocks GSAP animation library: https://greensock.com/gsap
• Improved: Added more famous women to the game.
• Added: Translations of new content.
• Improved: Removed UI selection outline from slider handle.
• Improved: Added visual clue when there are not enough research points to start a research project.
• Improved: Small story window is now slightly wider.
• Improved: Sponsoring the women in tech event now causes more women to apply for jobs.
• Improved: Combobox in new game window is now larger.
• Improved: The default character when starting a new company is now randomized.
• Changed: Progression hint messages are now categorized as company milestones and will auto-open by default.
• Fixed: Randomize character button in company creation screen has missing icon.
• Fixed: Animation sounds would sometimes continue playing when starting a new game.
• Fixed: Typewriting animation would sometimes speed up on the intro screen when starting a new game.
• Fixed: Several buttons do not play a sound when clicked.
• Fixed: It was possible to have a game that never went off the market if a company had lost all fans and then released another bad game.
• Fixed: The splashscreen is no longer draggable.
• Fixed: When stories picked team members, often the first staff got picked.

http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/1de179f8c756742fc0b07f61984bfe5d72776a82.png

Mobile Relase

We released Game Dev Tycoon on the App Store this week and it has been an interesting journey. You can read our release announcement here.

Developer log

We are also blogging the results of this release by showing sales data, reactions, and talking about our overall thoughts and struggles in our release reports. If you are interested in a look behind-the-scenes check them out:

Report 1: A rough start

Report 2: Steady Improvements

Report 3 is coming next week. (if you want to be notified of future reports, consider signing up to our newsletter.

New Features Coming To Steam

I also wanted to give everyone here an update on when the new features will be available on Steam. As mentioned in our previous announcement, we'll port new features such as new topics, the new 'pirate' game mode, the updated story and a few cosmetic improvements like new topic and genre icons to the PC version in a free update. I really have to apologize for how we phrased the time plan on this though. When we said soon after the mobile release we really meant after both iOS and Android releases are out. The Android release is scheduled for some time in January and we expect the PC update to go live about two weeks after the Android launch. However, as a way to apologize for our bad phrasing, and given the general interest in this, we are now planning to bring the PC update gradually to Steam and unlock a Beta version much sooner, hopefully in the next weeks. Thanks for your patience! ːghsmileː

http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/1de179f8c756742fc0b07f61984bfe5d72776a82.png

Mobile Relase

We released Game Dev Tycoon on the App Store this week and it has been an interesting journey. You can read our release announcement here.

Developer log

We are also blogging the results of this release by showing sales data, reactions, and talking about our overall thoughts and struggles in our release reports. If you are interested in a look behind-the-scenes check them out:

Report 1: A rough start

Report 2: Steady Improvements

Report 3 is coming next week. (if you want to be notified of future reports, consider signing up to our newsletter.

New Features Coming To Steam

I also wanted to give everyone here an update on when the new features will be available on Steam. As mentioned in our previous announcement, we'll port new features such as new topics, the new 'pirate' game mode, the updated story and a few cosmetic improvements like new topic and genre icons to the PC version in a free update. I really have to apologize for how we phrased the time plan on this though. When we said soon after the mobile release we really meant after both iOS and Android releases are out. The Android release is scheduled for some time in January and we expect the PC update to go live about two weeks after the Android launch. However, as a way to apologize for our bad phrasing, and given the general interest in this, we are now planning to bring the PC update gradually to Steam and unlock a Beta version much sooner, hopefully in the next weeks. Thanks for your patience! :ghsmile:

http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/338dc1d827ebced79ec49449d99487107c3d87cd.gif We are happy to announce that Game Dev Tycoon is finally coming to mobile and to celebrate the occasion a free content update for Steam will follow soon after the mobile release. You can look forward to:

• an updated story line (something about bitter tasting cartridges).
• new topics to enable even more game types.
• a new super-difficult game mode, inspired by true events ːantipiracyː.
• all-new gorgeous icons for every topic in the game.

To learn more about the update and mobile release and to see a teaser trailer (packed with game references), head over to our announcement. ːghsmileː

http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/5050215/338dc1d827ebced79ec49449d99487107c3d87cd.gif We are happy to announce that Game Dev Tycoon is finally coming to mobile and to celebrate the occasion a free content update for Steam will follow soon after the mobile release. You can look forward to:

• an updated story line (something about bitter tasting cartridges).
• new topics to enable even more game types.
• a new super-difficult game mode, inspired by true events :antipiracy:.
• all-new gorgeous icons for every topic in the game.

To learn more about the update and mobile release and to see a teaser trailer (packed with game references), head over to our announcement. :ghsmile:

Today, we are happy to announce that Game Dev Tycoon now ships with Steam Workshop support and, even better, there are already a dozen great mods available for you to enjoy. From simple mods that add topics and platforms, to more advanced mods adding competitors or allowing you to build custom PCs. Head over to our Workshop page to check out what's on offer. Create your own mod! Whether you are an expert modder or a complete beginner, you can create a mod for Game Dev Tycoon. For beginners, our community has created a wizard-style mod creation tool that requires no programming knowledge. With its simple UI, the Ultimate Mod Editor allows you to create your own mod in no time. Game Dev Tycoon is written in HTML5 and if you do have some programming knowledge, the open nature of this technology doesn't put a limit on what you can achieve. To start with, you can use our modding API but skilled modders are *not limited* by what the API provides. We have an enthusiastic and friendly modding community and we'd love to see you become a part of it. Head over to our forums and say hello :) To developers Is your game created in HTML5? Want to add Workshop support to your own Steam game? Good news! We have just updated our open-source Steamworks integration library, Greenworks, to include Workshop support and you can use this to integrate Steam Workshop for your game for free. Check it out here.

Today, we are happy to announce that Game Dev Tycoon now ships with Steam Workshop support and, even better, there are already a dozen great mods available for you to enjoy. From simple mods that add topics and platforms, to more advanced mods adding competitors or allowing you to build custom PCs. Head over to our Workshop page to check out what's on offer. Create your own mod! Whether you are an expert modder or a complete beginner, you can create a mod for Game Dev Tycoon. For beginners, our community has created a wizard-style mod creation tool that requires no programming knowledge. With its simple UI, the Ultimate Mod Editor allows you to create your own mod in no time. Game Dev Tycoon is written in HTML5 and if you do have some programming knowledge, the open nature of this technology doesn't put a limit on what you can achieve. To start with, you can use our modding API but skilled modders are *not limited* by what the API provides. We have an enthusiastic and friendly modding community and we'd love to see you become a part of it. Head over to our forums and say hello :) To developers Is your game created in HTML5? Want to add Workshop support to your own Steam game? Good news! We have just updated our open-source Steamworks integration library, Greenworks, to include Workshop support and you can use this to integrate Steam Workshop for your game for free. Check it out here.

Every week we receive questions about if and when Game Dev Tycoon will be coming to mobiles and, today, we are happy to announce that a completely revised version of Game Dev Tycoon is in the works! Developed under the guidance of the best mobile-game design gurus, this will bring an entirely new and FREE experience to the mobile market! http://www.greenheartgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ad_thumb.png Surprised? To learn all about this move, check out our announcement!

Missed all the excitement around Game Dev Tycoon modding? Now is a good time to catch up on what's happening: http://www.greenheartgames.com/2014/02/28/game-dev-tycoon-modding-taking/ (In short: dozens of great mods and a community-created mod editor, plus Workshop support is in the works.)