Dear Startup Company players, We have some exciting news to share with you. We are introducing a new version of the game that has been optimized for use with controllers. This means that the game will be fully compatible with the Steam Deck and other controller-based devices. We recommend that players on desktop computers continue to play the regular version of the game as it provides the best experience in terms of gameplay, modding, and overall performance. However, if you prefer to play using a controller, the new controller-optimized version of the game will provide an equally immersive and enjoyable experience. Please note that the controller-optimized version of Startup Company will not support modding, and savegames between the two versions are not compatible/shared. To choose between the two versions, simply start the game as usual and you'll be prompted to select the desired game version:
Thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm for Startup Company. We hope you enjoy the new controller-optimized version of the game! Sincerely, Hovgaard Games

[ 2023-04-11 09:49:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, We're incredibly happy and equally scared to finally release our new game, Big Ambitions, into Steam Early Access. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1331550/Big_Ambitions/

Big Ambitions is a revolutionary role-playing business sim

Big Ambitions is the successor to Startup Company. While Startup Company was all about large internet-based businesses, Big Ambitions focuses much more on the small retail businesses that grow to become huge empires. To quickly give you an understanding of the game, here's a list of its key features:

• Huge Business Sandbox - Go from nothing to the most prominent tycoon in New York. Whether one business or multiple, work smart and make them thrive.
• Grow any Business - Start your own gift shop, supermarket, coffee shop, or law firm. Whether its a single shop or making millions developing websites from a basement.
• Incredibly In-depth - Take out a loan, rent multiple buildings, design their logos, renovate your stores, grab stock, manage your money, hire staff, and create your infrastructure.
• Life Sim on Steroids - Need a delivery truck? Travel to a dealer and buy one. Need food? Head to a supermarket, just make sure you have a refrigerator back at home.
• Own New York City - Enter any building in New York and buy it. Go from a small apartment to a dream penthouse in midtown or buy a series of skyscrapers.
• Fast Cars or Investment Funds - Spend your wealth however you wish. Buy a big SUV, a speedy sports car, or the new luxurious Mersaidi S500. Maybe even risk it all at the casinos.
• Make it to Retirement, or don't - Make sure you get enough sleep and stay healthy and happy. Enjoy the journey, for as you grow older, youll discover that money cant buy you time... or can it?

If you want to read more about our journey developing Big Ambitions, as well as its Early Access Roadmap, I recommend checking out the official Steam announcement: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1331550/view/3653020827586553519 We really hope you'll like it and thank you so much for reading! All the best, Jonas and the Big Ambitions team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1331550/Big_Ambitions/

[ 2023-03-10 18:18:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, We have exciting news to share! Startup Company will expand business to PlayStation 5|4, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023! It is available to wishlist now: Xbox: https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/startup-company-console-edition/9n43wgrsm8nx Playstation: https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10004684 Nintendo: https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/startup-company-console-edition-switch/ If youve been a fellow entrepreneur with us on PC over the years, we cant thank you enough. Were so happy that over 400k of you have been enjoying the businesses youve built. When bringing this dynamic corporate environment to consoles, we will present Startup Company in a new light with new UI/UX features. While the original version of Startup Company was built using HTML/Javascript, Startup Company Console Edition was developed in Unity. Youll be creating a fresh company from scratch with the features you know and love, all perfectly suited for console platforms. Get ready for a new class of corporate competition! We can't wait for you all to experience our new console edition. As always, we are available via Discord, Twitter, Email, Instagram, or the comments below. Thanks for reading, and thank you for your continued support! - All of us at Hovgaard Games

[ 2022-11-30 14:46:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Long time no talk! I hope you're all doing amazing :schappy: After 1 year of development, we're proud to finally announce our next upcoming game: [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1331550]

Big Ambitions is a revolutionary role-playing business sim

Big Ambitions is my personal successor to Startup Company. It's the game I always wanted to play, both as a kid and as an adult. As of today, you can now access and follow our Steam Coming Soon page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1331550

Remember to wishlist & follow!

Similar to "Startup Company", I'll be covering all development through devlogs, both on the website and the Steam page. There are already 16 devlogs waiting for you. As I'll stop posting about "Big Ambitions" on the "Startup Company" community hub, I really hope you'll take your time to click the wishlist and follow me on the Big Ambitions store page. That way I can keep you updated on all the exciting stuff coming in the future I can't wait to hear what you think of what we have made so far. If you have any questions please don't hold back asking! Discord, Twitter, email, Instagram, the comments below, whatever channel you prefer Thank you so much for reading! All the best, Jonas and the Big Ambitions team

[ 2021-05-20 17:24:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Fixed broken link to Localizor: https://www.localizor.com/startup-company/
• Updated all languages
• Added Czech support
• Added Indonesian support

[ 2021-02-24 12:05:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey there! After working on my first game Startup Company for more than 5 years, Im finally ready to announce the title of my next game: Big Ambitions The website is online too: https://www.bigambitionsgame.com To give you a better understanding of what Big Ambitions is all about, we should take a look at the beginning of the game.
To give you an understanding of what Big Ambitions is all about, we should start at the very beginning of the game:

The New Beginning

Youre eighteen years old and living in your parents apartment in downtown New York. You have big aspirations to make money and become successful. However, before you can start on your journey, you need to earn some money.

Getting a job

The city offers hundreds of jobs, from flipping burgers to driving New Yorkers around in a taxicab. Its up to you to decide which path you take. With a few thousand in the bank, you can finally rent your own space and start working on your empire. Most tycoons start simple: A restaurant, a small supermarket, or even an auto repair shop. Its up to you, try to choose something thats in demand for the specific area of the city youre staying in. As you continue along your journey to success, both your wealth and life will change. With more money comes more problems.

Objectives and Goals

Your goal in Big Ambitions is to become the biggest city tycoon in New York. Your daily tasks will vary between:

• Buying & selling real estate
• Setting up and managing businesses such as restaurants, supermarkets, offices and more
• Securing deliveries of goods for your businesses
• Renovating owned properties
• Managing employees
• Taking care of yourself by sleeping, eating, working out and more

Lifecycle and limitations

The game comes with a full day & night cycle following a real-life schedule with rush hours, weekends and more. You have 3 main factors to maintain: Energy, Hunger and Happiness. To function as effectively as possible, you need to keep all three in balance. As aforementioned, your journey starts at the age of eighteen, but as you play your character will move through the three stages of adulthood (each having their own advantages and disadvantages):

• Young
• Middle-aged
• Old

Engine, controls and perspective

Big Ambitions is my first game developed with an industry-standard game engine: Unity 2020. Unlike Startup Company, the game will be 3D and you will control your character using a point-and-click navigation system (similar to the one found in the Diablo franchise). However, vehicles will be controlled using the keyboard. The game is viewed from an isometric top-down camera angle and youll be able to zoom in, zoom out and rotate the camera which will always follow your character.

The City

The game will be set in the bustling centre of New York City. I focus on ensuring that the streets feel as authentic as possible since I really want you, the player, to feel like part of New York City. As part of my quest to deliver an authentic city experience, Im making it so that every building in the city can be interacted with and owned. The first public build (Beta 1) will come with the following city map:
I expect the final map to be 4 times bigger.

Development and release date

Similar to Startup Company, Ill be the only developer working full time on the game. Fortunately, Ill be hiring contractors to help me produce some core components such as the 3D models, complex Unity systems, UI design, music and sound effects. I plan to release devlogs showcasing the progress on average once a week. Ill also continue streaming the development on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jhovgaard Since I have, no pun intended, big ambitions for the game, I expect at least 2 years of development before the first build is ready for the public. Its definitely a long time away but I dont want to take any shortcuts so that I can provide the best possible experience. Im determined to build a game that does more than entertain you - something that makes you dream big after closing the game. I hope youre as excited about Big Ambitions as I am. I cant wait to show you what Ive got lined up for future devlogs, so make sure to subscribe to the newsletter on the website. Thank you for reading! All the best, Jonas

[ 2020-09-07 18:43:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Today is the day! After four years and nine months of hard work, I can finally and proudly announce the Full Release of Startup Company! If you read my special devlog about how Startup Company became a thing, you can probably imagine how excited I am about this. Today is the day I'm releasing the game I've been dreaming about. Startup Company is now officially out of Early Access.

Introducing Version 1 - Packed with new stuff!

I hope you're ready for this, because this update will be much longer than you're used to. Here's what's new in Version 1...

2 New Website Types

By popular demand, you can now start the following two new website types: Dating Platform & Gaming Platform

New feature: Profile Page

A new Profile Page feature is now available for all Gaming & Dating platforms.

20 New Competitors

With the new website types, I had to add some new competitors too. I asked my colleague Mark for some help naming these new competitors. As you can see, he was surprisingly creative!

New feature: Early Retirement

Some of you really wanted to be able to retire early. I've listened and you can now find a "Retire now" button in your CEO's Retirement menu.

Employees Menu: Mass-Upgrades!

I got more requests for this feature than I could count. Now it's here, upgrade all your employees at once!

Customize the "Days per year"

In order to get a nice balance between simulating a day's work and the progression of years, I've ended up shortening a year to 50 days in Startup Company. Some of you really did not like that, so I added the option to define the length of a year through the Custom Game menu:

New feature: Sell Your Website

This feature request has been so popular that you'll even find mods adding the functionality. I'm happy to report that it's now natively in the game. Obviously websites can only be sold if you've already bought out all the investors.

In-game Achievements

As Version 1 introduces a "direct download" option, I have created an achievements menu in-game, meaning achievements are no longer limited to Steam users.

New office items!

We've now got some new cool items for your office:

• Huge Slide: What's a big headquarter without a huge slide?
• Game Console Area: Again, a sign of success. You need it.
• Large Plant & Rectangular Plant: This is the sequal to the current "plant in a vase."
• Indoor Tree: Big offices always have indoor trees for some reason. Now you can too.
• Privacy Walls: Give your employees a bit more privacy with these walls.
• Privacy Box: A box canceling all noise coming from inside it. Very modern.
• Egg Chair: Probably the most expensive chair in the world.
• Letters (A-Z): Motivate (or unmotivate) your employees with these letter-shaped objects.

All the new items except the letters can be demanded by new employees and come with various new bonuses.

Improved HR Management

Most of you have probably experienced losing a good employee, simply because you didn't accept a salary raise in time. You can now let your HR Managers handle this.

Better Production Plans

The production plans has now been moved to an independent tab of the Inventory Menu. Options to more precisely control production behavior has also been added.

Other Improvements

• Fixed components incorrectly shown as locked.
• "Game paused" shown when the time machine running.
• Slider's maximum salary too low.
• Limited Help System to one instance per website.
• Reduced organic growth.
• Introduced Jeets earlier in the game.
• Added logo selector to "new game dialog."
• Improved auto-save to save only after further progression.
• Added random name generator to "new game" dialog.
• HR manager's exhaustion is now easier to understand.
• Newly hired employees can no longer be fired right away.
• Fixed overlays causing people to get stuck on slower computers.
• Fixed bug allowing outsourcing tasks to be completed instantly.
• Purchased furniture can now be sold again.

Bugs and balancing

As with any release, there will of course be bugs and changes that need rebalancing. As always, I'll monitor the Steam discussions and apply hotfixes ASAP. I'm also planning on releasing a few updates to address various UI/QOL issues.

What's next at Hovgaard Games?

So much! As we're now a full-blown company with the resources to explore multiple paths, our roadmap looks like this:

Localizor.com

With Localizor we're revolutionizing the way games are translated by building an intelligent and community/crowd-based platform. We'll continue to invest heavily in improving the platform. Visit Localizor.com

The Next Game

I can't count how many times I've been asked, "Is there another game coming from Hovgaard Games?" I can finally reply with a confident "Hell yes!" We're already busy creating the first concept art and I can't wait to show you everything. For now, I'll give you a few hints:

• It's once again a tycoon/management game.
• The camera angle is topdown/isometric and the gameplay is something we're confident you have never seen before in this genre.
• The budget for the new game is 50 times (!) bigger than it was for Startup Company.

Make sure to follow Hovgaard Games on Steam to stay updated! Once again! I hope you enjoy Startup Company now in it's final form schappy Thanks for reading and for your continuing support! All the best, Jonas and the Hovgaard Games team

[ 2020-04-10 17:04:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there, Just a quick update to remind you that the full release of Startup Company is now less than 24 hours away! schappy I honestly have no idea how I'm going to get any sleep tonight. I'm so excited to finally share the full version of Startup Company with you. The time of release is 10am PST / 19:00 CEST. There will be a release event on our Discord server where I'll be running a small Steam key giveaway to those of you (or your friends) who still haven't purchased the game. You can join us here: [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]
I want to thank all of you who helped translate the remaining strings on Localizor. All languages have reached 100% except Korean and Japanese. Those will be added later. If you want to contribute the link is: https://www.localizor.com/game/1/translations Lastly, I have to end with a sneak peek. Ready for some new furniture?
See you tomorrow, it's going to be a big day! All the best, Jonas

[ 2020-04-09 19:29:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, I hope you're all as excited about the full release as I am. There's only 14 days left now and we're super busy fixing the last bugs and issues. I really want to make sure everything works flawlessly when you receive it. However, as the title indicates: I need your help translating the rest of the game! Currently the following languages have untranslated content:

Russian, Spanish, Chinese (Simplified), Korean, Japanese, Italian, Turkish and Hungarian

If you speak any of these languages fluently (and have decent grammar skills), I would really appreciate any help over at Localizor:
https://www.localizor.com/game/1/translations That's all for today :-) Stay safe everyone and enjoy the weekend! All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2020-03-27 18:00:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, I'm super happy to finally share the official release date of Startup Company:

April 10, 2020

This means the game will finally move out of Early Access and into full release. I have decided not to increase the price and keep the current $12.99 (or your regional equivalent).

Countdown has begun on our new website!

Make sure to visit the official website and sign up for the countdown. By signing up, I'll send you an email 1 hour before Version 1 releases! Check it out here: https://www.startupcompanygame.com

Questions and Answers

Will there still come new content to the game, as usually? No. Version 1 is the last content update. What if I find a bug, will it be fixed? Yes! All bugs we might have been missed will be fixed as usual through hotfixes. Will Startup Company continue to work on future Operating System updates? Yes, we'll continue to support the game and bring updates if necessary. Is there any DLC planned? Not currently planned, no. Is Startup Company coming to other platforms? Yes. We expect to release on XBox, Playstation and Nintendo Switch. Official annoucement will come later this year. Can you tell anything about future games coming from Hovgaard Games? No comments schappy Will there ever be a Startup Company 2? No comments schappy I'm super excited to show you version 1! Stay tuned :-) Thanks for reading! All the best, Jonas

[ 2020-03-07 19:30:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi, everyone! As you probably already imagine from the title, this will be a very special devlog. First, let's get right to the practical: the official release date of the Startup Company Full Version will be announced in next week. We'll finally leave Early Access and the Beta program. To celebrate, I'd like to share my story with all of you, who have been following my game for the last couple of years. It's a long read, so if you're only curious about game updates, you should probably stop reading now schappy Let's get started. It was back in 2015...

The Beginning

I was working a 9-5 corporate job as a Lead Developer. My primary task was to build websites, and I knew absolutely nothing about game development. But I loved tycoon games, and I had the desire to make one myself. One evening, around July 2015, I was casually playing around with combining web technology (HTML, CSS, and Javascript) with some free isometric game assets I had found online. I had no goal at all. I was just curious if it was possible. Slowly, I started understanding how I could layer multiple PNG images on top of each other and make the website look like a game. It was incredibly simple, but it felt real. I continued testing ideas and researching possibilities. After a couple of weeks of investigation, I came to a conclusion: I could definitely build a game entirely in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I was experienced in all these technologies. The only limitation was that I had to keep the animations simple.

The Idea

Back when I was younger, I had tried starting up two companies. The first was a hosted e-commerce platform, basically a competitor to Shopify. We spent a year developing the platform in our spare time, but failed miserably when we learned that developers can't sell anything and that marketing is important. After that, I built a platform to manage web servers. It failed, too, because I still hadn't learned anything. However, with my newly found knowledge about game development, I was ready for my third adventure. I knew that I could build a game. I just had to decide what I would build. Fortunately, it couldn't have been more obvious: I needed to build a game that would allow me to succeed in starting a company. I quickly jumped on Steam and searched for "Startup Company"...0 results. Boom, that was it.

Livecoding

I had been working on the concept for a couple of months. I even found an up and coming artist from India, who was willing to provide me with cheap assets (I think I paid $20 per item) to get started. At the time, I was working mainly in the evenings, after work. That left me with 2 problems. First, I had already programmed for 8 hours, so I was tired and slow at solving complex problems. Second, I procrastinated too much by watching Twitch streams, chatting with friends, etc. To overcome these issues, I decided to start streaming my development. Exactly like regular Twitch streams, but with me writing code. Game development streams werent really a thing on Twitch at the time, but there was a site called Livecoding for exactly that. I signed up, got my OBS configured, and went live Saturday, October 17, 2015. I was too shy to use a webcam or even have a microphone. (English is not my native language.) Instead, I would reply to viewers directly via chat. I don't remember the duration of my first stream, but I remember the feeling: I had been incredibly productive. Because someone was watching me (between 0-1 viewers), I couldn't chat with my friends or watch stupid videos on YouTube. Instead, I had to work and keep them entertained with my progress. I continued streaming and my followers started climbing. I got confident and eventually added both a microphone and a cam to my stream. At my peak, I had up to 100 viewers every night. People even donated me money to invest in the game. Here's the first preview I made of Startup Company: [previewyoutube=Px7YmA0xAAk;full][/previewyoutube]

The Hustle

As more and more people started following my development streams and signing up for my newsletter, I started to believe that I really had something. With new motivation, I started to really put in the hours. Weekends were now dedicated to the game. I even had a rule that I had to work more hours on the game than on my full-time job, which obviously resulted in 70+ hour work weeks.

Beta 1

After working on the game for almost 6 months, I was finally ready to release Beta 1. On February 21, 2016, I made Beta 1 available to everyone who had signed up. I remember feeling not only excited, but also very nervous. What if they didn't like it? 20 minutes later I got the first feedback. I remember it clearly: "lol, it's so boring." The feedback continued: "It feels like real work"; "This is spreadsheet simulator"; and so on. At this point, I was seconds away from giving up completely. I didn't reply to anyone, and I didn't touch the game for days. To this day, I'm not sure why I picked up the game again. But, fortunately, I did. I reached out to everyone who had given me feedback and started questioning them about everything. I wanted to figure out what they expected and wanted from the game. Over the next year, I ended up rewriting the game completely two times. The root cause of the boring gameplay was my desire to make it complex and realistic. I tried to simulate real life "development models" and "deployment processes." Geeky stuff that sounded cool on paper, but was awful in a game. At last, I finally figured out that a game had to be simple enough for the player to fully understand what was going on. When playing a game, you want to understand exactly what is going on, so that you can make smart decisions. This is also the reason that I have insisted on keeping the game casual and sometimes unrealistic. I tried the opposite. It wasn't good.

The Early Access Release

Fast forward a year. It's Summer 2017. The game had evolved a ton. It was a good experience, and people were playing it for an average of 2 hours. I had already set the release date: August 11, 2017. The game was up on "Steam Coming Soon." I knew from my earlier failures as an entrepreneur that marketing was the most important thing, especially now, 3 months prior to the release. At this point of time, I completely stopped working on the game. Instead, I went into full-blown marketing mode. I literally sent more than 500 emails with Steam keys to YouTubers and Twitchers. If they didn't reply to me, I would message them on Twitter or even crash their live stream on Twitch. I would even appear in their comments section. If you were contacted by me back then: I'm sorry, I know I must have been annoying. A lot of small YouTubers covered the game. It started slowly. Most had fewer than 1,000 subscribers. But then, my game was covered by "GrayStillPlays" on YouTube. The whole thing went nuts from there. The number of people wishlisting the game began climbing like never before. On Friday August 11, 2017, I pushed the button on Steam and Startup Company went live. Within an hour, the game was on the frontpage of Steam. At its peak, the game had more than 1,400 people concurrently playing the game. It took me a couple of days before I fully understood what had happened. The upcoming Monday I knocked on my boss' door, only to tell him that I would like to resign.

Life as a Game Developer

I had to stay in the job for six weeks after my resignation. It was a stressful time. The huge increase in players caused a lot of bugs to show up. I couldn't accept it, if any of my players had a question that was unanswered or a bug that wasn't fixed right away. At the same time, I had no experience in community management. I was way too emotionally attached to my game, and a single bad review would literally ruin my whole day, especially if it was valid. Fortunately, I learned, over time, to handle all that stuff. Today, I work a healthy amount of hours, and I've read enough negative reviews for them to not change my mood. After the release, I started documenting all development progress through the devlogs here on Steam. (You can check them out, as they are all still available).

The Next Chapter

Right now, I'm working on Version 1 of Startup Company. Obviously, I can't make a full release, without also bringing you the biggest content update for the game ever. So far, Version 1 contains more new content than the last 5 beta updates, and I'm only halfway done. If there's a time to be excited as a Startup Company player, it's now! I'm also actively negotiating with another studio to help me bring Startup Company to Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch. There will, of course, be an official announcement about this later. And finally, me and my colleague Mark are working on Localizor, our new community translation platform, which has really started to take off lately. You can check it out here: www.localizor.com

Thank You

No matter how long you've been following me and Startup Company, I just want to say thank you for all your feedback, bug reports, ideas and suggestions, negative and positive reviews, mods in the workshop, and comments and likes on my devlogs. Having a community like this is truly a blessing. Startup Company would never had been possible without you. That's all for today. Remember to keep an eye on the announcements at the end of next week. Something is coming... Thanks for reading! All the Best, Jonas

[ 2020-02-28 17:24:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! Beta 29 is now available. Restart Steam to get it right away! It's been 42 days since the last beta update. While Beta 29 isn't the biggest update, it delivers some important changes. One of these changes has been in the pipeline for more than a year! Let's jump right into it and see what's new.

CEO Backstory

The CEO's backstory allows you to select which skill your CEO had before becoming a CEO. You'll be able to choose between developer, designer, or manager. No matter which role you choose, the CEO will still be able to participate in recruitment. All you have to do is manually switch between his roles. The CEO is the first and only employee type that can handle multiple skills.

New Fusion Hardware

Beta 29 introduces brand new "Fusion" hardware. Both new hardware items are very expensive, but are also the most efficient seen so far.

Fusion Server

Generates a lot of heat, but it's also the first server to produce all three types of throughput.

Fusion Heat Transformer

Incredibly expensive but reduces temperature by a stunning -55 Celsius (-67 Fahrenheit).

New Enhancement Feature: Help System

This headline might be confusing. It's not an in-game help system it's a new enhancement feature you can add to your website. Adding the Help System will not only allow you to increase overall satisfaction (it counts as a regular feature), but it also greatly reduces the number of generated support tickets.

Tidal Power Investment Project

A third investment project is now available: Tidal Power. It will unlock both the Fusion Heat Transformer and the Fusion Server. The upfront payment is $28 million and the minimum daily budget is $1.2 million.

Minor changes

Beta 29 also contains a lot of bug fixes and improvements. The most exciting ones are

• Employee Menu: Order by age added
• Retirement warnings added
• New achievements: "The Wave" & "Dangerous Future"

Help us translate!

Even though the community has been very busy translating Beta 29, there are still a couple of untranslated strings. The following languages are incomplete: Portuguese (BR), French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, and Turkish. If you want to help out, whether it be voting for suggestions or writing your own, simply click the button below to get started: [url=https://www.localizor.io/game/1/translations]
https://www.localizor.io/game/1/translations
As always, I'll be monitoring the release very closely for any potential issues that might arise or that we might have missed during testing. If you encounter any issues or bugs, please send me a message on our Discord channel (link provided below) or create a post in the Steam discussions. I really hope you like all the new changes and features! Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2020-02-07 19:00:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, This devlog was originally planned for last week. Fortunately we had some good progress on Beta 29, which allowed me to postpone the devlog till today, but also include the official release date of Beta 29!

Beta 29 Sneak Peek: Fusion Server

The Fusion Server is here! It's expensive and generates a lot of heat, but it's also the first server to produce all 3 types of throughput.

Beta 29 Sneak Peek: Tidal Power Investment Project

The new Tidal Power investment project will unlock both the Fusion Heat Transformer and the Fusion Server. The upfront payment is $28,000,000 and the minimum daily budget is $1,200,000.

Beta 29 Release Date

I think you'll like this one: Beta 29 will be publicly available this Friday (February 7) at 20:00 CET (11am PST). The update contains the following:

• CEO Backstory
• Tidal Power Investment Project
• Fusion Heat Transformer & Fusion Server
• New enhancement feature: "Help System"
• New achievements: "The Wave" & "Dangerous Future"
• And other smaller improvements and fixes

There will be a small happening over at our Discord server. I'm looking forward to see you!

Remember the translations!

I'm continuously uploading new strings for translation to Localizor. So if you want to help translate the game, this is the place to go: https://www.localizor.io/game/1/translations Thank you for reading and see you in Friday! schappy All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2020-02-04 15:44:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, I had some great progress on Beta 29 recently. Everything is coming along much faster than expected. I even hope testing will begin at the end of next week. I'll keep you updated in the next devlog.

Beta 29 Sneak Peek: CEO Backstory

This week I finalized the most popular change in Beta 29: The CEO's backstory. Basically you get to select which skill your CEO had before becoming a CEO. This will allow him to act as a Developer, Designer or Manager. He'll still be able to do recruitment. All you have to do is manually switch between his roles. As you can see below, I added a small icon for that.

Beta 29 Sneak Peek: Help System

The headline might confuse you. It's not an in-game help system. It's a new Enhancement Feature you can add to your website. Adding the Help System will not only allow you to increase overall satisfaction (as it counts like a regular feature), but it also greatly reduces the amount of generated support tickets.

Beta 29 Sneak Peek: Order by age

A small but useful update. You can now order by age in the employees menu.

Beta 29 Sneak Peek: Retirement warning

Another small but useful update. You now get a warning 1 year before an employee will retire.

Beta 29 Sneak Peek: New Fusion Hardware

Beta 29 will also introduce new servers and airconditioners. We categorize them as "Fusion hardware". Bruno did his best to make it look as badass as absolutely possible. He nailed it, don't you think? schappy

That's all for this week

Also remember I'm continuously uploading new strings for translation to Localizor. So if you want to help translate the game, this is the place to go: https://www.localizor.io/game/1/translations Thank you for reading and see you in the next devlog schappy All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2020-01-12 16:00:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! Beta 28 is now available. Restart Steam to get it right away! I'm happy to once again present you another big update for Startup Company. This update is really for you, as every single change and feature is based on community feedback. Let's jump right into it and see what's new.

Dynamic DDoS Attacks & DDoS Protection

In Beta 28 I have greatly increased the effect of DDoS attacks both in duration, strength and how often they happen. To help you counter these attacks we're introducing another Enhancement Feature: The DDoS Protection. Similar to the Adblock Obfuscator you can improve the feature from 0-100%. At 100% you'll be almost invincible to DDoS attacks. DDoS Protection has a flaw though: The system will automatically ask users if they are a robot or not. This will annoy your users and result in increased dissatisfaction.

Introducing Jitter

Understanding your users is a vital part of succeeding as a startup. This is why we're introducing Jitter. Users will send out Jeets expressing their feelings. You'll also get weekly updates from the StockTraders account giving you hints on what companies to invest in. I'll introduce even more types of Jeets over the next beta releases.

Updated Stock Market and UI

After a ton of requests (you guys really like investing in stocks), I've finally fixed the buggy stock market. Beta 28 will introduce brand new mechanics that makes the stocks much more dynamic. The UI has also been updated:

• Added a transaction log to better track whether you're making money or not.
• Added a 1% trading fee for both buying and selling.
• Increased the amount of days stock prices are tracked.

Fusion Power Plant & Fusion Framework 2020

The second investment project is now available: The Fusion Power Plant. Once you have completed this investment you'll unlock the Fusion Framework 2020 which allows to reach even higher feature levels and add more features to the same website. The projects are incredibly expensive therefore it's only for well-established companies.

Other minor changes

• Decreased the effect of Viral Boosts.
• Increase hours to recruit intermediate and expert employees.
• Decrease the chance of headhunting superstar employees.
• Added support for UI scaling as a replacement for "Big UI" (moved to top left corner of the main menu).

Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. As always, I'll be monitoring the release very closely for any potential issues that might arise or that we might have missed during testing. If you encounter any issues or bugs, please send me a message in our Discord channel (link provided below) or create a post in the Steam discussions. I really hope you like all the new changes and features! Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-12-27 18:55:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Intro....

Beta 28 Sneak Peek: UI Scaling

After being in the pipeline for a long time I finally found time to add a UI scaling feature. The old "Big UI" option has been removed.

Beta 28 Sneak Peek: Fusion Power Plant & Fusion Framework

I'm happy to present the second investment project: The Fusion Power Plant. The upfront payment will be $22,000,000. By completing this project you gain access to the new Fusion Framework 2020. The framework allows you to upgrade your features all the way to level 7000. You also get a total of 12 feature slots!

Beta 28 Sneak Peek: Dynamic DDoS Attacks & DDoS Protection

In Beta 28 I have greatly increased the effect of DDoS attacks both in duration, strength and how often they happen. To help you counter these attacks we're introducing another Enhancement Feature: The DDoS Protection. Similar to the Adblock Obfuscator you can improve the feature from 0-100%. At 100% you'll be almost invincible to DDoS attacks. DDoS Protection has a flaw though: The system will automatically ask users if they are a robot or not. This will annoy your users and result in increased dissatisfaction.

Beta 28 Release Date

We're busy testing Beta 28 right now. If you want to help out, come join us on Discord. The official release date is: December 27 at 19:00 CET (10am PST).

That's all for this week

Also remember I'm continuously uploading new strings for translation to Localizor. So if you want to help translate the game, this is the place to go: https://www.localizor.io/game/1/translations Thank you for reading and see you in the next devlog schappy All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-12-23 17:00:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, 2 weeks ago Beta 27 was released. It has been very successful! Reviews has been more positive than ever, thank you! The build was also very stable, I have only spent 1 week on fixing bugs:

• Fixed bug where retirement sequence didn't start from step 1.
• Fixed bug making it impossible to unlock "The Sun Is The Future"
• Recruitment: Changed max value of salary and bonus slider to support new superstar employees.
• Show daily payment when negotiating ad contracts
• Added "In stock" value to Production Plans
• Updated localization files
• Fixed yet another "Employees not retiring" bug
• Fixed bug where retirement tax percentage didn't update after transferring.
• Fixed bug where both main menu and game soundtrack would play simultaneous
• Fixed issue where "years till retirement" could go into negative
• Fixed bug where new candidates would contain fire demands right away.
• Fixed bug making it impossible to upgrade to new office for some old savegames.
• Fixed error being thrown if employee was fired while having their dialog open.

Beta 28 Sneak Peek: Jitter and the in-game browser!

Beta 28 will introduce a new in-game browser. The first website you can visit is Jitter. From here you can get:

• Info on how to improve your website and what annoys your users.
• Which companies might be interesting to invest in.
• Random rages from angry people.

If you have some cool ideas about things users could "jeet"about, feel free to submit your suggestions in the comments section.

Beta 28 Sneak Peek: Updated Stock Market and UI

After a ton of requests (you guys really like investing in stocks), I'm finally fixing the buggy stock market. Beta 28 will introduce brand new mechanics that makes the stocks much more dynamic. The UI has also been updated:

• Added a transaction log to better track whether you're making money or not.
• Added a 1% trading fee for both buying and selling.
• Increased the amount of days stock prices are tracked.

Beta 28 Sneak Peek: Tidal Power Plant

The next investment project will be the Tidal Power Plant. Once you have completed this investment you'll unlock the Fusion Framework 2020 which allows to reach even higher feature levels. I'll talk more about this in a future devlog.

That's all for this week

Also remember I'm continuously uploading new strings for translation to Localizor. So if you want to help translate the game, this is the place to go: https://www.localizor.io/game/1/translations Thank you for reading and see you in the next devlog schappy All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-11-15 17:11:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! Beta 27 is now available. Restart Steam to get it right away! It has been 72 days since the latest beta (26) was released. I'm super excited to announce Beta 27, which is the biggest update to the game, both for content, and lines of code. Let's jump right into it and see what's new.

Career Mode

Beta 27 introduces a brand new Career Mode, which is also the new primary game mode. When you start the game, your CEO will be 18 years old. As the game progresses your CEO will now age along with your employees. At the age of 67, you will retire and the game is over. As you're playing, your main objective is to move money from the company account to your retirement fund to secure your future.

Custom Game

"Custom Game" allows you to configure the game exactly how you like. Don't like investors? Turn it off. Don't like the new retirement feature? Turn it off. Hate that you have to research everything? Turn it off! Wanna go crazy and build your dream? Turn up your starting money.

Retirement Fund

From the CEO window you'll now able to access the Retirement tab. From here you can move money from your company account to your personal retirement fund. You'll have to think this through as your investors need to receive an equal cut (unless you have bought them out). You'll also have to consider taxes. Paying out everything in the same year will hit you with a huge tax charge.

Investment Projects

If we look at the world today, most successful entrepreneurs are investing in massive projects which move the world forward. Elon Musk with SpaceX and Tesla. Jeff Bezos going to space with Blue Origin and Mark Zuckerberg is aiming to provide access to the internet to everyone with internet.org. In Startup Company Beta 27 you'll be able to do the same. Each investment project will give you access to special abilities. Investment Projects are accessed via the city map. The projects are incredibly expensive therefore it's only for well-established companies. Beta 27 introduces the first project out of 3: Space-based Solar Power.

Superstar Employees

Have you ever worked with someone that was incredibly fast? In Beta 27 you'll now be able to hire those superstar employees. The superstar employees are very rare and can only be found using expert-level Recruiters. They require a very high salary, but can also reach base speeds of up to 900%.

Improved Inventory

The Inventory Menu is probably the least used feature in Startup Company. Hopefully, this will change with Beta 27. You'll finally be able to see both consumption, demand and production for each component/module. This new information will allow you to make your office more efficient and cut down on overproduction.

Other minor changes

• 7 brand new achievements.
• Ability to disable workstation limits (be aware of lag).
• Designed Company & Benefits menu.
• Increased game speed (twice as fast in 3x speed).
• Beginner Kits for all employees are automatically researched.
• Sliders/UI for Sales Executives has been improved.
• 27 various bug fixes.

Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. As always, I'll be monitoring the release very closely for any potential issues that might arise or that we might have missed during testing. If you encounter any issues or bugs, please send me a message in our Discord channel (link provided below) or create a post in the Steam discussions. I really hope you like all the new changes and features! I have to go now, It's time to get started on Beta 28 schappy Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-11-02 17:15:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Another week went by and another Daily Deal has come to an end. The impact on our Review Score has been enormous this time. From 100% out of 18 reviews to 61% out of 41 reviews in 2 days. I won't lie, the "demotivational impact" is equally enormous. I'll keep my eyes away from the reviews until things are back to normal. If you have any issues with the game, please reach out to my directly (jonas@hovgaardgames.com or Discord). The game is 100% stable and if you have any issues with the game I guarantee to fix it within 24 hours. With that off my chest, let's look into some exciting news!

Improved Contract Filters

A lot of you have probably struggled with setting the right max impressions for your Sales Executives. Beta 27 changes how max impressions is calculated, so it won't suddenly drop to lower amounts. I also added a textbox to easily enter the desired amount.

No more researching beginner kits

I had a lot of complaints that players found it annoying that you had to combine the "Beginner Kit" after researching the a new employee type. All beginners kits are now instantly available in all new savegames.

7 new achievements

Beta 27 comes with 7 new achievements mainly focused on the new features: [table] [tr] [th]Achievement[/th] [th]Goal[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]Fast Support[/td] [td]Reach an average response time lower than 2 hours with more than 500 tickets[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]The Average Worker[/td] [td]Secure a retirement fund of more than $500,000[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Upper Middle Class[/td] [td]Secure a retirement fund of more than $1,000,000[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Biggy Shot[/td] [td]Secure a retirement fund of more than $45,000,000[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Mister Biggy Biggy Shot[/td] [td]Secure a retirement fund of more than $200,000,000[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Mister World Wide[/td] [td]Secure a retirement fund of more than $3,500,000,000[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]The Sun Is The Future[/td] [td]Invest 100% of Space-based Solar Power[/td] [/tr] [/table]

Changes to game speed

I have decided to increase the speed of the game, mainly to reduce waiting time in stale periods of the game. The following changes has been applied to Beta 27:

• In-game minutes changed from 200ms to 150ms
• 2x Speed ticks changed from 2 to 5 in-game minutes
• 3x Speed ticks changed from 5 to 10 in-game minutes

These changes will dramatically increase the speed, especially when playing in fast-forward mode. I hope these changes makes you feel more in control of the game's progression.

Release date of Beta 27

I can finally announce that Beta 27 will be publicly available November 2, 2019 at 10:00am PT (18:00 CET). You can participate in the countdown on our Discord server. Make sure to subscribe to the CEO role by writing !subscribe in any channel.

That's all for this week

Also remember I'm continuously uploading new strings for translation to Localizor. So if you want to help translate the game, this is the place to go: https://www.localizor.io/game/1/translations Thank you for reading and see you in the next devlog schappy All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-10-25 14:47:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Today's Deal: Save 50% on Startup Company!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Sunday 10/20 at 10AM Pacific Time

[ 2019-10-18 17:15:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Daily Deal! Grab it while you can!

For the next 48 hours you can snatch up a copy for yourself, or a friend, at 50% off! This means that Startup Company will be available for purchase for only $6.5 (or your regional equivalent)!

Need help? Got any questions?

Then don't keep it to yourself. There's a huge community around Startup Company including a lot of amazing people who're ready to help you out. Our Discord server have more than 5000 members often with more than 500 online users. You can join by clicking the button below: [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

The next update is just around the corner and it's a big one!

This might be the perfect time to purchase Startup Company. The next update is Beta 27 and we're busy finding and fixing all the bugs right now. The test is public. Once you own Startup Company you can join the test team by reading the pinned message in the #testing channel on our Discord server. I hope youll have a ton of fun with Startup Company! Best, Jonas

[ 2019-10-18 17:03:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, It's been a month since my last devlog and I must admit I'm surprised how many of you have reached out to me and asked what was going on with the silence. I wasn't aware how many of you follow these logs. I really appreciate that! schappy The reason for the silence isn't that exciting tho. One of the week I've spent attending the Unity Unite conference here in Copenhagen. The rest of the time I've been busy with prepping Beta 27 for testing. It has been heavy work for sure, but definitely worth it! Beta 27 will be, without doubt, the biggest update in the history of Startup Company.

Custom Game Mode

I have completely redesigned the "New Game" menu. You'll now be able to select "Custom Game" which allows you to configure the game exactly how you like. Don't like investors? Turn it off. Don't like the new retirement feature? Turn it off. Hate that you have to research everything? Turn it off! Wanna go crazy and build your dream? Turn up your starting money.

The new beginning...

This one comes without a screenshot, as I don't wanna spoil anything. However I can say that there's now an actual ending to the game and it happens when your CEO becomes 67 years old and retires. You'll also be able to continue playing in a new way.

Redesigned Company Menu

The company profile has been slightly redesigned. The main reason has been a lot of new players would have trouble finding the "Benefits" menu. I've renamed the menu and combined the two tabs. It's a small thing, but I believe it has annoyed a lot of players.

We're now secretly testing Beta 27!

Yes! I have given our moderators access to the Beta 27 branch and they are now busy testing and finding the biggest bugs. When they finally stop reporting bugs, I'll invite all of you on Discord to start testing too. It can be any time now so make sure to subscribe to our CEO role by writing !subscribe in any channel!

That's all for this week

Also remember I'm continuously uploading new strings for translation to Localizor. So if you want to help translate the game, this is the place to go: https://app.localizor.io/game/1/translations Thank you for reading and see you in the next devlog schappy All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-10-12 19:16:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, It's been a very busy two weeks so let's jump right into it!

Investment Projects

If we look at the world today, most successful entrepreneurs are investing in massive projects which move the world forward. Elon Musk with SpaceX and Tesla. Jeff Bezos going to space with Blue Origin and Mark Zuckerberg is aiming to provide access to the internet to everyone with internet.org. In Startup Company Beta 27 you'll be able to do the same. Each investment project will give you access to special abilities. Investment Projects are accessed via the city map. The projects are incredibly expensive therefore, it's only for well-established companies. Today I'm announcing the first project of 3: Space-based Solar Power.
This project gives your company access to hiring new superstar employees.

Superstar Employees

Have you ever worked with someone that was incredibly fast? In Beta 27 you'll now be able to hire those superstar employees. The superstar employees are very rare and can only be found using expert-level Recruiters. They require a very high salary, but can also reach base speeds of up to 900%.

Career Mode: CEO Aging & Retirement

Beta 27 will introduce a brand new Career Mode, which will also be the primary game mode. When you start a new game, your CEO will be 18 years old. As the game progresses your CEO will now age with your employees. At the age of 67, you will retire and the game is over. As you're playing, your main objective is to move money from the company account to your retirement fund. You'll have to think this through as your investors will need to receive an equal cut (unless you have bought them out). You'll also have to consider taxes. Paying out everything in the same year will hit you with a huge tax charge. Below is a very early screenshot not containing investor cut or "retirement fund goals". The screenshot also shows the new topbar with a progress bar for both the current day and the CEO's retirement (purple).
All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game.

That's all for this week

I hope these changes bring excitement to you all. Beta 27 is shaping up to be one of the biggest updates. I'm continuously uploading new strings for translation to Localizor. So if you want to help translate the game, this is the place to go: https://app.localizor.io/game/1/translations Thank you for reading and see you in next devlog schappy All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-09-08 10:20:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, Just a short little update on what we've been working on. This week I've started on Beta 27 and Mark has been busy adding features to Localizor.

Improved Inventory

The Inventory Menu is probably the least used feature in Startup Company. Hopefully, this will change with Beta 27. You'll finally be able to see both consumption/demand and production for each component/module. This new information will allow you to make your office more efficient and cut down on overproduction.

Steam Review Score

Unfortunately, I have some unfortunate news to share with this devlog. Within the last month our "Recent Score" has dropped from around 85% to 62%. It is indeed an extensive drop and I've been trying to figure out exactly what is going on however I have had no luck. The negative reviews aren't pointing in any specific direction so it might just be a coincidence. I'll keep you updated if/when I figure out what's going on.

Localizor's Coin Shop is now open!

Yes! You'll finally be able to spend your hard-earned coins in Localizor on free Steam keys! Please note that we'll soon move all Localizor related news onto the Hovgaard Games publisher page. Make sure to follow us on there! https://store.steampowered.com/developer/hovgaard
That's all for this week. Next week I'll show some cool improvements to the Company Profile Menu. Thanks for reading! schappy All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-08-23 19:15:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! Beta 26 is now available. Restart Steam to get it right away! We're super excited to bring to you Beta 26, which introduces a very controversial feature: Outsourcing. To understand why, we have to go back to Beta 17. Back then, we had something called "Contract Work". The feature was removed in Beta 17 because it was such an easy way to earn money. It was probably the most unpopular decision I have ever made. Fortunately the game ended up being much better, as I was finally able to correctly balance out websites. You can read the original devlog here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/606800/announcements/detail/1709565386033916765 Today, with Beta 26 we are reintroducing "Contract Work" as Outsourcing. The feature has been completely rewritten and is now much more integrated with the rest of the game's ecosystem. It is "part 1" as I plan to introduce even more features in future updates.

Outsourcing: Completing tasks for money

You can use Outsourcing in two ways. To deliver components and receive money, or to request components and pay money. To generate extra income, you have to first hire an Outsourcing Executive. Then you'll have to win the task by sending a good offer. The mechanics are similar to recruitment, but here you'll be competing against other companies.

Outsourcing: Get components/modules delivered

The second part of outsourcing is getting other companies/competitors to deliver components and modules to your company. This is especially useful if you have a sudden demand for some specific components or modules or if you simply don't have the space to hire more employees. To create a task simply use your Outsourcing Executive. You can define up to 4 requirements (max 500 each). The shorter the deadline you define the more expensive it will be.

Outsourcing: Market Prices

The new Market Prices Menu allows you to make clever choices based on the demand and prices of specific components/modules.

Another round of performance optimization

Improving performance across the board. This time the code that updates overlays has been improved. In my specific test case I went from aroung 20 FPS to a minimum of 120 FPS. I'm feeling pretty happy with that!

Pay bonuses to multiple employees

By popular demand, you can now pay bonuses to multiple employees at once using the Employees Menu.
Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. As always, we'll be monitoring the release very closely for any potential issues that might arise or that we might have missed during testing. If you encounter any issues or bugs, please send us a message in our Discord channel (link provided below) or create a post in the Steam discussions. That's it for Beta 26! Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-08-16 16:34:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Just a quick update of this weeks progress.

Pay bonuses to multiple employees

By popular demand, you can now pay bonuses to multiple employees at once using the Employees Menu.

Beta 26 is finally ready! Almost...

Yes, we're done testing. I feel confident that the outsourcing feature is well balanced and bug-free. The only thing left is localization. Everything has been uploaded and a lot of the strings have been translated, but we're still lacking a lot of votes in order to verify that the translations are correct. All help is appreciated! You can help translate here: https://app.localizor.io/game/1/translations

Beta 26 release date

Beta 26 will be out Friday, August 16, 2019. There will be an official release announcement once it's out. The next devlog will be August 23, 2019 where I announce the next big feature of Startup Company! schappy That's all for this week! All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-08-09 13:08:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Better late than never, but here it is: Devlog number 50!

Localizor has been updated and we need your votes!

We recently shipped a big update to Localizor, our community translation tool. We realized that having moderators for each language was a huge bottleneck. Instead, we made everyone a moderator by simply asking you to vote for the correct translations. You can start voting right away: https://app.localizor.io/game/1/translations As you go through the translations, you'll gain 1 point per vote. Later on you'll be able to convert these points into exciting gifts. I can't show it just yet, but I'll promise it will be worth your time and effort schappy

Outsourcing: Component/Module demand

A new parameter has been added when bidding and receiving bids for outsourcing tasks: Demand. Next to each component/module you'll see a red, yellow or green indicator. Green means low market demand, red means high market demand. The higher the demand, the higher the price. Demands are dynamic and change based on the state of the game and how you play (or what tasks you create).

Outsourcing: Market Prices

A new tab has been added to the outsourcing menu, allowing you to see current prices and demands for components and modules. This view will allow you to make clever choices based on the demand and prices of specific components/modules.

Another round of performance optimization

We've been working on improving performance. This time the code that update overlays has been improved. In my specific test case I went from ~20 fps to minimum 120 fps, so that's quite an improvement. iTzCallumUK's quote describes it too (the pause issue has also been fixed):

Beta 26 ready yet?

No, not yet. We still need to complete various things, such as:

• Testing and improving outsourcing for the later stages of the game.
• Added tool-tips and improved usability/UI for outsourcing.
• Translating new strings (they are not ready yet, I need to complete the tool-tips first).

If everything goes well, my guess is that we're able to release the new update on August 16, 2019! schappy That's all for this week. All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-08-05 18:08:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Today is an exciting day, as we have some awesome stuff to announce. Let's jump right into it!

New trailer

For a long time the Startup Company trailer has been out of date and didn't give you the impression of Startup Company that we wanted. We completely redid our entire trailer from scratch and we're really proud of it! Make sure to check out the new trailer, we hope you like it as much as we do! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKtUgM2S1qs

Outsourcing: Right from the beginning

If you choose the "Bootstrapping / No investor"-mode you'll now have the new Outsourcing Executive unlocked right away. This means you can finally build up your company's bank balance, before investing and creating a website.

Outsourcing: Real-time bidding

The AI bidding for outsourcing tasks has been greatly improved this week. Each competitor has a different level of "competitiveness". For now, only the "public bidding" is available, but we are also working on a "1-bid-system" where each competitor only has one chance to send an offer. These type of bidding "rounds" will be used specifically for larger tasks.

Outsourcing: Up for testing until Sunday!

Because of the complexity of the new Outsourcing feature, we've decided to invite all of you to test what we've developed so far. We'l use the feedback provided by you to make the feature even better! However, you'll have to be fast! You'll only have access to the feature up until this Sunday! (July 28, 2019) Please note: your save-game for this specific test is temporary! Your progress will be lost after Sunday, unless you manually backup the .sg file! In order to access the test, please follow the instructions below: * In Steam: Right click Startup Company and select Properties * Select the "Betas" tab * Enter torremolinos2019 in the text box * Click "Check Code" * Select the new version in the dropdown menu. If you're unable to make the code unlock the branch, try to restart your Steam client. Feedback can be sent like this:

• The comment section of this thread.
• In the #testing channel on our Discord server.

Thank you in advance for you help! We're super excited to hear your feedback! All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-07-25 17:03:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there, Today we're announcing that Startup Company will go slightly up in price, to reflect the long way we've come since we first released the game back in August 2017. Since the launch of the game we've been selling Startup Company for $9.99 (or your regional equivalent) and have been putting out countless updates, bug fixes, introduced new features and implemented requested gameplay features by the community. Since the official early access release back in 2017 we've updated the game at least ~80 times. On July 19, 2019 the price of Startup Company will be increased to $12.99. We wanted to communicate this to the community in advance, so that people who are considering to get Startup Company (or for their friends as a gift) have a chance to snatch it up for the ''old'' price. Does this mean that we're done with Startup Company? The short answer: NO! We've still got a lot of features planned for Startup Company and we're obviously going to listen closely to what the community wants as well. Startup Company will not leave the Early Access program of Steam just yet, as we want to make sure that potential players are still aware of the fact that we're still implementing new features which can sometimes result in massive gameplay overhauls. Feel free to join our Discord community (link provided below, just click the image) and we'll be happy to answer any questions you might have! All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-07-15 16:16:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! Beta 25 is now available. Restart Steam to get it right away! We're super excited to bring to you Beta 25, which will introduce new features that will change the game play and introduces new challenges for you to manage as CEO!

Major change to website satisfaction: Dissatisfaction

Beta 25 changes how website satisfaction is calculated. How it worked in Beta 24 The website satisfaction was calculated by simply using the average of all features' satisfaction. You could have a Landing Page with 100% satisfaction and "Banner Ads" with 15% satisfaction. This worked okay, but it was super confusing to new players, as the red smiley would show 5% for "video ads" and 15% for "banner ads", indicating that "video ads" would be less annoying to the user. How it now works in Beta 25 There are now two options for a feature: Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction. Base Features will only produce Satisfaction and Revenue Features will only produce Dissatisfaction. The total website satisfaction is calculated by first taking the average of your base features and then subtracting the dissatisfaction from all the revenue features.
Hopefully this change will make it more clear to new players how everything is calculated. Please notice: Existing Revenue features will continue to use the old model to avoid breaking your save-game. If you want to switch to the new model, you'll have to remove and add the revenue features.

AdBlockers

Adblockers are now a part of the game and will directly affect how many impressions is generated (and can be monetized) for ad features. Small websites will have a very low ad-blocker penetration as they havent yet been discovered by many ad-blocker programs. As a website gets more users, the more ad-blocker programs will register the site and start blocking ads.

AdBlock Obfuscator

The obfuscator will cover up your ads in messy Javascript code that makes it much harder for the AdBlockers to detect your ads. If you dont continue upgrading the obfuscator, it will be less efficient over time (as AdBlockers become smarter). The obfuscator is also the first time we see Research Points being used to upgrade a feature. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. As always, we'll be monitoring the release very closely for any potential issues that might arise or that we might have missed during testing. If you encounter any issue or a bug, please send us a message in our Discord channel (link provided below) or create a post in our community hub - which we'll be closely monitoring while Beta 25 is rolled out. That's it for Beta 25! Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-07-05 16:49:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Let's jump right into it. As promised last week, I got a major announcement today:

Meet Mark - our new developer!

Just as in Startup Company, eventually all successful companies need to expand the staff team. I've been eagerly waiting for this to happen. Starting today Mark Jan Kordon is joining us at Hovgaard Games as a full-time developer. Right now Mark is already busy working on adding new features to Localizor, our community translation tool. Next week, he will start working on a bunch of QOL updates for Startup Company that I know a lot of you have been waiting for. I hope you'll all welcome Mark (he is @kordonme at Discord) and I can't wait to see how much faster we can work with another set of hands. Thank you for all for making this happen!

Status of Beta 25 and Beta 26

The testers on Discord have been busy testing and finding bugs. Below is a screenshot of the registered remaining bugs (for now). All of these bugs will be fixed within the next couple of days. For that reason, Beta 25 is now scheduled for release this Friday, July 5!
We're still missing some translations for Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Turkish. If you want to contribute, follow this link: https://app.localizor.io/game/1/translations We're also looking for a Spanish reviewer/moderator. If you're fluent in Spanish language and Spanish grammar and want to contribute, you can reach me at jonas@hovgaardgames.com, here on Steam or on Discord. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-07-01 14:06:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Apologize for the silence lately. After Localizor was made public in Beta 24, there has been a substantiel increase in users interested in translating Startup Company into more languages. Because of this interest, it has been necessary to improve various parts of system which has been taking up my time. Fortunately I'm almost done, and looking at the numbers it looks like we'll soon see both Dutch and Polish added to the game. Thank you to everyone who has contributed! schappy

Major change to website satisfaction: Dissatisfaction

Beta 25 will now completely change how website satisfaction is calculated. How it works today Today the website satisfaction is calculated by simply using the average of all features' satisfaction. You could have a Landing Page with 100% satisfaction and "Banner Ads" with 15% satisfaction. This worked okay, but it was super confusing to new players, as the red smiley would show 5% for "video ads" and 15% for "banner ads", indicating that "video ads" would be less annoying to the user. How it works in Beta 25 In the future there will instead be two options for a feature: Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction. Base Features will only produce Satisfaction and Revenue Features will only produce Dissatisfaction. The total website satisfaction is calculated by first taking the average of your base features and then subtracting the dissatisfaction from all the revenue features.
Hopefully this change will make it more clear to new players how everything is calculated. Please notice: Existing Revenue features will continue to use the old model to avoid breaking your savegame. If you want to switch to the new model, you'll have to remove and add the revenue features.

Outsourcing

By popular demand I'm now introducing Outsourcing in Startup Company. We had the feature in the game before (formerly known as Contract Work).
To start finding outsourcing tasks you have to hire and use a Sales Executive. It will take between 4 and 24 hours to find a new task. A task contains the following properties: Requirements - The components and modules that has to be delivered. Time Left - The amount of hours before the bidding ends. Deadline - The amount of days before the requirements has to be delivered (after time left and bidding has ended). Current Bid - The current lowest price. Another new thing about Outsourcing is that youll also be able to submit your own tasks and have your competitors work for you!
The Outsourcing feature isn't planned until Beta 26, as I already locked down Beta 25 (I believe you've waited long enough for new content already). Please notice that the Outsourcing feature is still under development and is subject to change. All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board.

Release dates

Yea, I really don't know for sure, but let me explain what we're waiting for: Beta 25: Everything is done. We're testing right now. Strings has been uploaded to Localizor. Once everything is translated and bug free, I'll release it. My hope is Friday (June 28). Beta 26: Development has started. Together with Outsourcing I also want to include a bunch of additional QOL improvements. We're probably looking at late July.

That's all for this week!

I hope the changes above is as exciting for you as it is for me. I can't wait to ship it all to you schappy By the way, stay tuned for next week. I got some major news to announce! All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-06-23 16:26:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! Beta 24 is now available. Restart Steam to get it right away! Today is the release of Beta 24, an update with a bunch of new features and various improvements. Performance issues have taken most of the time in this update, so hopefully a lot of you notice an improvement schappy As with each beta release we just want to make sure that youre aware of the fact that there might be some bugs or other unexpected issues. Jonas is on standby, ready to make sure that any discovered issues are fixed as soon as possible. If you find any bugs or experience any issues make sure to either let us know on the community hub or by joining our Discord!

New Map!

The city map has been updated and revamped, making it much more detailed and cooler!

Improved Performance

Another huge performance improvement hits Startup Company. This time I've been working heavily on improving performance of the employee overlays which caused a lot of end-game lag. Switching between floors and buildings (office/hosting) has also been greatly improved. The game will now "cache" the floors, making the switching much more smooth and rapid.

CEO becomes a Manager

Beta 24 adds another option to your CEO: HR Management. Just like the usual HR Managers, you can now use your CEO to set working schedules and adding speed bonus. The CEO will still be able to recruit, meaning the CEO is the first employee type to be able to do multiple task types.

Shared Production Plans

Beta 24 makes managers even more useful with the new feature: Shared Production Plans. Instead of having all your managers working independently, they can now share the same production plans. I also took some time to redesign the UI of the screen making it a bit easier to find the components or modules you're looking for.

Improved Competition

For a long time there has been a bug allowing the game to "shrink" the internet population. Beta 24 fixes this once and for all. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That's it for this week! Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-06-07 15:28:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, This week I've been putting in a lot of hours in the new roadmap. I hope to introduce it next week. I promise you, you won't be disappointed. Tons of new cool things to show!

The new citymap

We've been facing some problems making the new citymap suit all resolutions. Right now I'm waiting for Bruno to get back to me with some new assets. Once received the city-map should be all ready.

Missing transations!

I've uploaded a bunch of new Beta 24 strings for translation. Together with the city-map, this is the last thing we need before Beta 24 can be released. If you want to help out, we have missing translations for the following languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified and Chinese. We're also looking for language moderators. If you're 18+ years old and believe you have good grammar, please let me know, either here on Steam or in Discord :-) Click here to start translating!

Beta 25: AdBlockers

Adblockers will be introduced which will directly affect how many impressions is generated (and be monetized) for all ad features. Small websites will have a very low ad-blocker penetration as they havent yet been discovered by many ad-blocker programs. As the website gets more users, the more ad-blocker programs will register the site and start blocking ads.

AdBlock Obfuscator

The obfuscator will cover up your ads in messy Javascript code that makes it much harder for the AdBlockers to detect your ads. If you dont continue upgrading the obfuscator, it will be less efficient over time (as AdBlockers become smarter). The obfuscator is also the first time we see Research Points being used to upgrade a feature. All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That's it for this week! Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-06-02 15:55:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone!

Performance and white-screen bug

As announced earlier the performance of SC will be greatly improved in Beta 24. This last week I've been struggling to make the update compatible with all setups/computers. A lot of the testers have been getting a white-screen crash which has taken up a lot of my time. Fortunately it looks like it's all sorted out now. Performance is still way way better compared to Beta 23.

Introducing Localizor: Now in open beta

This is a big one! I'm finally happy to announce that all of you (the community) can finally contribute by translating Startup Company to your native language. The tool is still very much in beta and missing lot of quality of life improvements, but it works! To start translating, go to the following URL and register: Startup Company on Localizor Localizor is a brand new translation tool from Hovgaard Games. Right now we're testing the tool exclusively on Startup Company, but as the tool has matured we want to invite other game developers to use it.

We need testers!

Do you want to help out testing Beta 24? Then all you have to do is go check out the pinned message in the #testing channel on our Discord server. All help is much appreciated! That's it for this week! Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-05-26 16:29:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, First of all welcome to all the new players coming in the last two weeks, it has been incredible to see all the new faces joining our community hub, Discord and providing super valuable feedback for the further development of Startup Company. :-) This week has been a combination of working on Startup Company and working on Localizor. We already begin testing Localizor (only on Discord for now). Hopefully we'll soon be able to invite everyone to come help translate Startup Company into any language they'd like.

CEO becomes a manager

Beta 24 will add another option to your CEO: HR Management. Just like the usual HR Managers, you can now use your CEO to set working schedules and adding speed bonus. The CEO will still be able to recruit, meaning the CEO is the first employee type to be able to do multiple task types.

Shared Production Plans

Beta 24 makes managers even more useful with the new feature: Shared Production Plans. Instead of having all your managers working independently, they can now share the same production plans. I also took some time to redesign the UI of the screen making it a bit easier to find the components or modules you're looking for.

Improved competition

For a long time there has been a bug allowing the game to "shrink" the internet population. I'm now working on improving this. I'm also experiencing with a "close competitor" functionality. I hope to tell you more about this in next devlog.

An updated roadmap

It's time to get the roadmap updated. I really think the future looks suuuper exciting! I can't wait to get started on the development.
Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That's it for this week! Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-05-12 15:18:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, This week the main focus has been on support and bug fixing. Last Saturday Startup Company was featured as Steam's Daily Deal. We had an amazing week where we welcomed a lot of new players. We even managed to break the old record of max concurrent players from 1403 to 1969 on April 21, 2019. (Super close to 2000!).

Bugfixes and changes this week

• Third floor added to the HQ building.
• Removed framework max level limitation to allow for modding.
• Fixed HTML in Korean speech bubbles.
• Increased aging speed by 33%.
• Removed landing page as a premium feature option.
• Fixed a bug causing contracts not to be cancelled when firing sales executives.
• Fixed bug where an employee could have two demands for firing the same employee.
• Fixed bug allowing players to generate components for free by cancelling current task.
• Fixed keyboard shortcuts that did not work.
• Increased maximum negotiation bid for expert candidates to $25.000.
• Fixed bug making it hard to unlock the Researcher achievement.
• Adding sorting to Sales Executive leads and sort default by time of creation.
• Removed framework max limit limitation for mods.
• Fixed bug making it impossible to move items or workstations between floors.

New citymap planned for Beta 24

Bruno has returned and is working on the new citymap. We still need to make it more obvious what buildings are rent-able and some additional details, but overall I'm pretty happy with the result already.

Community Translations

Localizor, our upcoming game translation tool from Hovgaard Games is soon going into beta testing. The tool will be used to allow you guys (the community) to mainly help translate Startup Company into more languages, but also to improve the existing translations. If you're interested in joining the beta, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter at the Startup Company website and following Hovgaard Games on Steam. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That's it for this week! Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-04-28 10:01:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Usually I don't post announcements for minor updates, but this one is special. Today my designer sent me the third floor of the new headquarter building! Instead of waiting till Beta 24, I decided to include the new floor with Beta 23.5 right away! If you haven't already received the update, simply close the game and restart your Steam client. I hope you all enjoy the extra space! :-) Have a great Monday! Best, Jonas

[ 2019-04-22 17:24:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Today's Deal: Save 50% on Startup Company!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time

[ 2019-04-20 17:10:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Daily Deal! Grab it while you can!

Today were launching the last big discount before leaving early access! (Date will be announced soon) For the next 48 hours you can snatch up a copy for yourself, or a friend, for 50% off! This means that Startup Company will be available for purchase for only $4.99 (or your regional equivalent)!

Newly appointed CEOs

For new players, we recently released Beta 23, which includes a brand new Help System, giving you the tools you need in order to establish your own company and grow it to dominate the market! The new Help System is currently only available in the English language but will be translated to the other supported languages as soon as possible.

The future of Startup Company

Even thought we'll soon be leaving Early Access it doesn't mean we'll stop developing the game. There's still a bunch of fixes, changes and brand new features in the pipeline to be released after the "full release". Weve been in the Early Access program since August 2017 and have released more than 72 updates, which means that on average weve put out 3-4 updates per month! Im incredibly excited to see new players be founding new companies and look forward to your experience, feedback and impression of the game! In case youre gifting a friend a copy of Startup Company, a big thank you for your continued support of the development of the game. Also, feel free to join the official Discord server of Startup Company, which is linked below (click on the image). Its the perfect place for receiving tips from experienced CEOs (our supporters are ready for all your questions), sharing highscores or simply have a chat with our amazing community. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. I hope youll have a ton of fun with Startup Company! Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-04-20 17:04:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! schappy Beta 23 is now available. Restart Steam to get it right away! On paper Beta 23 might not be a super exotic update. Fortunately it feels very different once you start playing. The brand new time machine and the additional play speed comes as the main changes. Together with tons of "rebalancings" across all parts of the game the overall gaming experience is now much more smooth (I know, this sentence is bad. Help!). As with each Beta release we just want to make sure that youre aware of the fact that there might be some bugs or other unexpected issues. Jonas is on standby, ready to make sure that any discovered issues are fixed as soon as possible. If you find any bugs or experience any issues make sure to either let us know on the community hub or by joining our Discord!

Help System

The new help system is introduced in Beta 23. The system will help you understand every aspect of Startup Company, this is especially interesting for new players. The system will first be introduced in English only. Once we're sure everything is covered, we'll have to translated later to the other languages.

3x speed

Finally! Many of you requested one more play speed and I can happily say that it is included in Beta 23.

Time Machine: Version 2

Some time ago I received a review on Steam where the time machine was described as: "It feels like one of those annoying popup ads" I never really received any other complaints about the time machine but I completely understood what was meant by it. After some investigating, I've found a way to simultaneously allow the time machine to run and still allow you to work on your company! The updated time machine is also shipped in Beta 23.
Switching tabs while the time machine is running.

Achievements, achievements, achievements

Achievements in Startup Company have always been extremely popular. Therefore Beta 23 will include 8 brand new achievements: [table] [tr] [td]Support[/td] [td]Resolve 1000 support tickets[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Reseacher[/td] [td]Research everything available[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]The Collector[/td] [td]Collect 100,000 research points[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Not So Creative[/td] [td]Use a name from the real world for a website[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Bankrupt[/td] [td]Go bankrupt[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Super Speed[/td] [td]Get 1 or more employees with a base speed of more than 480%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]World Domination[/td] [td]Become Top #1 of all website types[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Small But Efficient[/td] [td]Reach 1,000,000 users while staying in the small office building[/td] [/tr] [/table]

New components and modules

Beta 23 includes new components and modules. I've been focusing on 3 things:

• Designers: Will now be even more relevant, especially late game. The designer is now able to merge designer components into brand new designer modules. There are now components for Beginners, Intermediate and Experts.
• SysAdmins: The SysAdmin is now able to merge SysAdmin components into new SysAdmin modules. There are now also components for Beginners, Intermediate and Experts just like the Designer. Configuring servers will require different components/modules depending on the type/throughput.
• Website features: Rebalanced current feature upgrade requirements to better fit the progress of the game. High level features will now require high level modules.

New investor milestones

Beta 23 introduces new late-game milestones making the journey to Top #1 more smoothly. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That's it for Beta 23! Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-04-16 16:10:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, It's been a pretty efficient week, lots of progress and testing!

3x speed

Finally! Many of you requested one more play speed and I can happily say that it will be included in Beta 23.

Time Machine: Version 2

Some time ago I received a review on Steam where the time machine was described as: "It feels like one of those annoying popup ads" I never really received any other complaints about the time machine but I completely understood what was meant by it. After some investigating, I've found a way to simultaneously allow the time machine to run and still allow you to work on your company! The updated time machine will also be shipped in Beta 23.
Switching tabs while the time machine is running.

Achievements, achievements, achievements

Achievements in Startup Company have always been extremely popular. Therefore Beta 23 will include 8 brand new achievements: [table] [tr] [td]Support[/td] [td]Resolve 1000 support tickets[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Reseacher[/td] [td]Research everything available[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]The Collector[/td] [td]Collect 100,000 research points[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Not So Creative[/td] [td]Use a name from the real world for a website[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Bankrupt[/td] [td]Go bankrupt[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Super Speed[/td] [td]Get 1 or more employees with a base speed of more than 480%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]World Domination[/td] [td]Become Top #1 of all website types[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Small But Efficient[/td] [td]Reach 1,000,000 users while staying in the small office building[/td] [/tr] [/table]

New components and modules

Beta 23 will also have a few new components and modules. I've been focusing on 3 things:

• Designers: Will now be even more relevant, especially late game. The designer is now able to merge designer components into brand new designer modules. There are now components for Beginners, Intermediate and Experts.
• SysAdmins: The SysAdmin is now able to merge SysAdmin components into new SysAdmin modules. There are now also components for Beginners, Intermediate and Experts just like the Designer. Configuring servers will require different components/modules depending on the type/throughput.
• Website features: Rebalanced current feature upgrade requirements to better fit the progress of the game. High level features will now require high level modules.

Changes concering the office building floors

With the introduction of the new headquarters building a lot of players have complained about two things:

• The new HQ isn't large enough compared to the skyscraper.
• Losing the office layout (furniture and workstations) of floors 3, 4 and 5 if you upgrade from the skyscraper is unacceptable.

Because of the feedback I've ordered an update for the HQ to add one more floor. The designer is still immensely busy with the creation of a new city map, so I don't have an ETA on this update. The amount of floors the skyscraper has will be reduced to 3 floors to fix the issue where you lose the floor layout when upgrading. This change will only affect new savegames. If you already use a 5 floor skyscraper nothing will change.

New investor milestones

Beta 23 will introduce new late-game milestones making the journey to Top #1 more smoothly.

State of Beta 23

Beta 23 went into public testing last week on our Discord server. The community found some ugly bugs that I'll be fixing next week. I still don't have a release date for Beta 23, but it will be soon and definably before the end of April. All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That's it for this week! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-04-07 17:55:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, In this week I have mainly been working on the new help system in Startup Company (which is incredible time consuming task to create). I've found some time to ship a couple of hotfixes for Beta 22 as well. (see #news on our Discord server.)

Help System

The new help system will be introduced in Beta 23. The system will help you understand every aspect of Startup Company, this is especially interesting for new players. The system will first be introduced in English only. Once we're sure everything is covered, I'll have to translated later to the other languages.
All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game.

Updated Roadmap

The roadmap has been updated to represent my current expectations.
Click the thumbnail to see full size.

Leaving Early Access

It's already been 1 years since Startup Company was released in Early Access on Steam. The game has been undergoing huge changes and is now in a much more stable and accessible state than when it was released. We feel confident that with the release of Beta 23 the quality of the game is suitable to leave Early Access and become a full release. An official full release date is yet to be determined. So does this mean development of Startup Company will stop? Absolutely not. We just want to stop sending the signal to new players that the game is a buggy and bad experience, because we really think it's not. I will still continue to follow the roadmap and release new features after the full release.

How do you feel about a paid DLC?

As most of you know, all development of Startup Company is done by me (Jonas). This is great as it keeps expenses down, but it also slows down how often new features can be introduced and how big they can be. This is why I want to ask how you feel about a DLC. My idea is that the income from the DLC covers the expenses of hiring another developer who could work exclusively on new content. As always, you guys, the community, comes first. So please let me know what you think. Should I drop the idea and just continue working solo or would you gladly pay for a DLC in order to get more content faster? All feedback is very much appreciated! Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That's it for this week! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-03-25 15:05:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! Beta 22 is now available. Restart Steam to get it right away! Beta 22 introduces quite a big list of new features, changes and improvements to the game. We're very excited to see how all our players will adapt their companies to these changes and how new companies will use them to prosper! We're very eager to share this all with you! As with each Beta release we just want to make sure that youre aware of the fact that there might be some bugs or other unexpected issues. Jonas is on standby, ready to make sure that any discovered issues are fixed as soon as possible. If you find any bugs or experience any issues make sure to either let us know on the community hub or by joining our Discord!

New office building

After enormous demand from you guys, it's finally time to introduce the new office building. You get 2 floors and an 400 employees high limitation. Enjoy!

Improvements to Sales Executives/Leads

Beta 22 introduces two big changes to the Sales Executive: First, the maximum amount of leads has been increased. For individual Sales Executives the numbers will be: [table] [tr] [td]Beginner[/td][td]3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Intermediate[/td][td]6[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Expert[/td][td]9[/td] [/tr] [/table] However, if you choose to team up multiple Sales Executives using a Manager, you'll be able to share leads between your executives! The lead limits for teams will be slight lowered like so: [table] [tr] [td]Beginner Manager[/td][td]9[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Intermediate Manager[/td][td]18[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Expert Manager[/td][td]27[/td] [/tr] [/table] The second exciting update to the Sales Executive is filters. You'll now be able to choose the minimum and maximum impressions you're looking for. No more rejecting offers because the impressions don't fit your time-slot. This has been heavily requested by the community.

Manual Saving

Startup Company has always been using auto-save for handling savegames. This is convenient as players don't have to remember to save. However, with a tycoon game like Startup Company, you sometimes want to try things out without having to start over if it goes wrong. Beta 22 introduces manual save functionality. You'll now have to save your game manually and choose a name for your savegame (basically "slots" as you know it from other games). The game will still auto-save (now every 5 minutes), but instead, save to a new "hidden" savegame and not overwrite your existing savegames.

Website Logo and Name

Beta 22 includes another highly demanded feature: Changing your website's name and selecting a logo.

Improved Employees Menu

I've been able to put some hours into the Employees Menu. For a long time, it has been missing a "multi-employee actions" feature. The list was also incredibly laggy later on in the game. The new menu introduces a couple of new features:

• Added icon next to speed to show if the employee is ready to be upgraded.
• Show if an employee is unseated.
• Remember the selected sorting order when re-opening the menu.
• Added mass action functionality allowing you to apply the following actions to multiple employees at once: remove from desk, fire, send home (1/3 days), start/stop training and release from manager.
• Greatly improved performance and removing lag when having more than 200 employees.

Employee Switcher

A brand new "Employee Switcher" will also be introduced in Beta 22. It will allow you to quickly cycle through your employees. The switcher will follow the order of your Employees Menu allowing you to customize the sorting. When changing employee, the switcher will automatically stay on the same tab if it's available for the employee type.

Paying a Bonus

Beta 22 offers you the ability to pay your employees bonuses. Paying a bonus will instantly increase your employee's mood to 100%. The price is based on a combination of the employee's salary and their current mood. The bonus is meant as an alternative to sending your employees home in order to restore mood. Once a bonus has been paid you'll have to wait 30 in-game days before paying another bonus.

Ad Contracts Daily Payment

The number one question asked since Ad Contracts were introduced has been "Why do I lose money when the finance overview says I earn money every day?". Most players never noticed that contracts were paid upfront and if you had a contract running for 7 days (for example) it would mean you'll have 6 days with no payments. Beta 22 changed this and instead made payments happen daily. I personally wasn't too happy with this change, as I liked the realism of having to take into consideration when contracts were paid out (I know a few of you agree with me). However, the frustration and confusion for new players simply wasn't worth it.

Scheduled Training Days

HR Managers will be updated too. Scheduled training days work identically with "Days Off" by simply allowing you to define weekdays in which the employee should train. Once an employee starts a training day this cannot be cancelled (same with days off). "Days Off" and ''Training Days'' cannot be scheduled to the same weekdays (obviously). Limitations have also been added: Setting "days off" requires an Intermediate Level. Setting "Training Days" requires an Expert level.

Improved Queue System

The current production system for developers, designers, etc. allows you to switch between the Repeat and Queue functionality. In Beta 22 those two functionalities are combined into one: an ''Infinite Repeating Queue''. The queue size has also been increased to 10. Components will remain in the queue after they have been produced. The blue background indicates which component is currently in development.

Updated employee demands

• "Fire Employee" is now rarer and will only occur for existing employees, and not new candidates.
• Employees' demands are now more realistic, especially with desks, including demanding the correct Programmer/Executive desk at Expert level.
• Differ the number of new demands generated on employee upgrade based on level.

New loans

Beta 22 brings two new loans allowing you to loan 1 and 2 million. Loans will only be available if you meet the minimum company valuation (valuation of all websites combined). Fever Inc (the 600k loan) has also been limited to companies with a minimum valuation of 1.2 million.

Last chance before bankruptcy

I've added an additional mechanic which gives the player a last chance before the company is declared bankrupt. The offer only comes if the player owns more than 15% of his website, hasn't bought out the investor and no loan options are available in the banks.

Improved hosting stats

The stats in the bottom of the hosting centre has been improved to support larger numbers. A "bottleneck alert" has also been added to make it easier to understand what to increase in order to increase produced CU.

Furniture/desk inventory

When removing furniture and desks from your office they will now be added to your "purchase inventory", allowing you to save items for later use.

Improved UI for placing unassigned employees

Beta 22 makes it much easier to find the right employee when you have a lot of unassigned employees. The new table allows sorting and introduces a "Hired" column, making it easy to find the newly hired employee.

Changes:

We made a lot of minor changes as well, which are outlined in the bulleted overview below:

• Fixed bug causing employee not to quit if ignoring competitor offer.
• Fixed bug causing employees with missing requirements not showing as flashing overlay.
• Fixed two memory leaks causing lag in late-game.
• Fixed bug causing merging competitors to fail or end prematurely.
• Fixed bug causing events to be launched too early (at game start)
• Fixed bug causing hosting building temperature not to update correctly.
• Fixed bug causing employee name changes not to update on overlays.
• Added support for panning using arrow keys.
• Added PageUp/PageDown keyboard shortcut for changing floor.
• Added Q/E keyboard shortcut to toggle between employees (switcher).
• Improved sliders when buying/selling competitor stocks.
• Added time limitation to investment offers.
• Limited feature efficiency from a maximum of 104% to a maximum of 100% (only affects new savegames, not existing ones).
• Changed overlay label to "At home" when not at the office.
• Added "sell" feature to rack devices
• Added the new 6-frame hand animations.
• Suppressed "office upgrade"-confirmation when renting the very first office.
• Show relevant Research category when clicking on "Research more" tips.
• Added hovering + sorting to Manager's employee list.
• Improved UI of rack stats and (mass)configure view.
• Added localisation for watt, kilowatt and megawatt.
• Added popup to the rack's Add Device view, allowing you to see throughput and size before buying.
• Added warning when trying to add a device to a rack with no space left.
• Added tooltip explaining manager bonus. Lowered the bonus when a manager isn't at the office.
• Improved demands view in employees' stats menu.
• Allowed employees to demand for "Coffee Machine" to be fulfilled by "Industrial Coffee Machine"
• Features' level marked with blue if at framework's maximum.
• Changed "Sell Out" achievement percentage from 10% to 50%.
• Fixed bug causing duplicated "Fire co-worker" demand.
• Stopped action-depending events from firing when the time machine is active.
• Changed the minimum marketing campaign conversion rate from 0% to 1%.
• Improved UI of "change desk" view.
• Added "Go to Manager" button to all employees.

As always, we're dedicated to making sure everything runs smoothly by fixing potential issues, listening to the community and continuing the development by working towards Beta 23. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. All the best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-03-15 20:40:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, This last week the main focus has been bugfixing, performance optimizing and searching for memory leaks. The new 400 employee limitation is really (really) hard to optimize, but we're am getting closer to a solution. Fortunately there's some great news this week!

Improved UI for placing unassigned employees

Beta 22 will make it much easier finding the right employee when you have a lot of unassigned employees. The new table allows sorting and introduce a "Hired" column, making it easy to find the newly hired employee.

Beta 22 release date

It's finally time to announce the release date of Beta 22: March 15. If you have been following the Devlogs you probably know that Beta 22 will introduce a ton of changes and add a bunch of new features. This means I'm going to spend the remaining time until release on testing and fixing bugs. Therefore there won't be any Devlog next week.

Minor changes

• Fixed bug causing employee not to quit if ignoring competitor offer.
• Fixed bug causing employees with missing requirements not showing as flashing overlay.
• Fixed two memory leaks causing lag in late-game.
• Fixed bug causing merging competitors to fail or end prematurely.

All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That's it for this week! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-03-03 18:02:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! This week I've continued the work on improving usability and adding "Quality of Life" features. Together with below, I've also been putting some time into preparing the game for Japanese. Today I can confirm that Beta 22 will officially add official support for Japanese!

Updated employee demands

• "Fire Employee" is now more rare and will only occur for existing employees, and not new candidates.
• Employees demands are now more realistic, especially with desks, including demanding the correct Programmer/Executive desk at Expert level.
• Differ the amount of new demands generated on employee upgrade based on level.

New loans

Beta 22 brings two new loans allowing you to loan 1 and 2 million. Loans will only be available if you meet the minimum company valuation (valuation of all websites combined). Fever Inc (the 600k loan) has also been limited to companies with a valuation of minimum 1.2 million.

Last chance before bankruptcy

I've added an additional mechanic which gives the player a last chance before the company is declared bankrupt. The offer only comes if the player owns more than 15% of his website, hasn't bought out the investor and no loan options are available in the banks.

Improved hosting stats

The stats in the bottom of the hosting center has been improved to support large numbers. A "bottleneck alert" has also been added to make it easier to understand what to increase in order to increase produced CU.

Furniture/desk inventory

When removing furniture and desks from your office they will now be added to your "purchase inventory", allowing you to save items for later use.

Minor changes

• Fixed bug causing events to be launched too early (at game start)
• Fixed bug causing hosting building temperature not to update correctly.
• Fixed bug causing employee name changes not to update on overlays.
• Added support for panning using arrow keys.
• Added PageUp/PageDown keyboard shortcut for changing floor.
• Added Q/E keyboard shortcut for toggle between employees (switcher).
• Improved sliders when buying/selling competitor stocks.
• Added time limitation to investment offers.
• Limit feature efficiency from maximum 104% to 100% (only affects new savegames, not existing ones).
• Changed overlay label to "At home" when not at the office.

All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That's it for this week! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-02-24 18:35:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, This update is similar to the update of last week, I've been working around the clock to get as many "Quality of Life" improvements and fixes ready for Beta 22. I'm close to "feature locking", which means testing (which will be very intensive this time) and translation of the new strings in Beta 22.

Centralized Clockrate Controller V2

After the first version of the CCC was released I noticed very few players used the "rules feature". Although I still continued to get the question "What can I do against DDoS attacks?". What I learned was that the current CCC simply was too complicated for most players. Very few players fully understood the activation and deactivation functionality and thereby avoided using it at all. To fix this, Beta 22 will introduce a greatly simplified CCC. You no longer define activation and deactivation percentages, but instead simply set the clock rate you want the racks to switch to in case of a DDoS attack or a viral boost. I hope this makes the CCC easier to use and easier to understand.

Improved Employees Menu

I've been able to put some hours into the Employees Menu. For a long time it has been missing a "multi employee actions" feature. The list was also incredible laggy late game. The new menu introduces a couple of new features:

• Added icon next to speed to show if the employee is ready to be upgraded.
• Show if an employee is unseated.
• Remember the selected sorting order when re-opening the menu.
• Added mass action functionality allowing you to apply the following actions to multiple employees at once: remove from desk, fire, send home (1/3 days), start/stop training and release from manager.
• Greatly improved performance and removing lag when having more than 200 employees.

Employee Switcher

A brand new "Employee Switcher" will also be introduced in Beta 22. It will allow you to quickly cycle through your employees. The switcher will follow the order of your Employees Menu allowing you customize the sorting. When changing employee, the switcher will automatically stay on the same tab if it's available for the employee type.

Paying a Bonus

In Beta 22 you'll be able to pay your employees bonuses. Paying a bonus will instantly increase your employee's mood to 100%. The price is based on a combination of the employee's salary and their current mood. The bonus is meant as an alternative to sending your employees home in order to restore mood. Once a bonus has been paid you'll have to wait 30 in-game days before paying another bonus.

Ad Contracts Daily Payment

The number one question asked since Ad Contracts was introduced has been "why do I lose money when the finance overview says I earn money every day?". Most players never noticed that contracts was paid upfront and if you had a contract running for 7 days (for example) it would mean you'll have 6 days with no payments. Beta 22 will change this and instead make payments happen daily. I personally wasn't too happy with this change, as I liked the realism of having to take into consideration when contracts was paid out (I know a few of you agree with me). However, the frustration and confusion for new players simple wasn't worth it.

Scheduled Training Days

HR Managers will be updated too. Scheduled training days works identical with "Days Off" by simply allowing you define weekdays in which the employee should train. Once a employee starts a training day this cannot be canceled (same as with days off). "Days Off" and ''Training Days'' cannot be scheduled to the same weekdays (obviously). Limitations has also been added: Setting "days off" requires Intermediate Level. Setting "Training Days" requires Expert level.

Improved Queue System

The current production system for developers, designers, etc. allows you to switch between Repeater and Queue functionality. In Beta 22 those two functionalities will be combined into one: an ''Infinite Repeating Queue''. The queue size has also been increased to 10. Components will remain in the queue after they have been produced. The blue background indicates which component is currently in development.

Minor changes

* Added the new 6-frames hand animations. * Suppressed "office upgrade"-confirmation when renting the very first office. * Show relevant Research category when clicking on "Research more" tips. All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That's it for this week! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-02-17 15:43:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, This week I've been working exclusively on Beta 22. It's been very different compared to the last 6 months of development, as the only new feature of Beta 22 is the bigger office (called Headquarter). Instead Beta 22 introduces tons of improvements and fixes to existing features, all requested by the community (you guys).

Improvements to Sales Executives/Leads

Beta 22 will introduce two big changes to the Sales Executive: First, the maximum amount of leads are being increased. For individual Sales Executives the numbers will be: [table] [tr] [td]Beginner[/td][td]3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Intermediate[/td][td]6[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Expert[/td][td]9[/td] [/tr] [/table] However, if you choose to team up multiple Sales Executives using a Manager, you'll be able to share leads between your executives! The lead limits for teams will be a bit decrease: [table] [tr] [td]Beginner Manager[/td][td]9[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Intermediate Manager[/td][td]18[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Expert Manager[/td][td]27[/td] [/tr] [/table] The second exciting update to the Sales Executive is filters. You'll now be able to choose the minimum and maximum impressions you're looking for. No more rejecting offers because the impressions doesn't fit your timeslot. This has been heavily requested by the community. I hope you all like it! :-)

Manual Saving

Startup Company has always been using auto-save for handling savegames. This is convenient as players doesn't have to remember to save. However, with a tycoon game like Startup Company, you sometimes want to try things out without having to start over if it goes wrong. Beta 22 will introduce manual save functionality. You'll now have to save your game manually and choose a name for your savegame (basically "slots" as you know it from other games). The game will still auto-save (now every 5 minutes), but instead save to a new "hidden" savegame and not overwrite your existing savegames.

Website Logo and Name

Beta 22 is also including another highly demanded feature: Changing your website's name and selecting a logo.

Minor improvements

• Added hovering + sorting to Manager's employee list.
• Improved UI of rack's stats and (mass)configure view.
• Added localisation for watt, kilowatt and megawatt.
• Added popover to rack's Add Device view allowing to see throughput and size before buying.
• Added warning when trying to add device to a rack with no space left.
• Added tooltip explaining manager bonus. Dimmed bonus when manager isn't at the office.
• Improved demands view in employee's stats menu.
• Allow employee demand for "Coffee Machine" to be fulfilled by "Industrial Coffee Machine"
• Feature's level marked with blue if at framework's maximum.
• Changed "Sell Out" achievement percentage from 10% to 50%.
• Fixed bug causing duplicated "Fire co-worker" demand.
• Stopped action-depending events from firing when time machine is active.
• Changed minimum marketing campaign conversion rate from 0% to 1%.
• Improved UI of "change desk" view.
• Added "Go to Manager" button to all employees.

All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That's it for this week! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-02-10 19:30:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! Beta 21 is now available. Restart Steam to get it right away! Weve just launched Beta 21 after extensive testing and made it available for everyone! Beta 21 is an exciting Beta version as it adds a lot of new features that add a whole new dynamic to the game, including features that were highly requested by players in our community. As with each Beta release we just want to make sure that youre aware of the fact that there might be some bugs or other unexpected issues. Jonas is standing by to make sure anything that might go wrong will get "hotfixed" as soon as possible. If you find any bugs or experience any issues make sure to either let us know on the community hub or by joining our Discord!

Support Tickets

Weve now successfully added support tickets to Beta 21. These are basically questions and issues coming from your users that you will have to handle. It adds a whole new dynamic to Startup Company where you have to make sure that your users will be happy with the support that you provide them.
Tickets has to be handled within 36 hours. Anything later than that will decrease your Support Satisfaction.

Support Team

Tickets come in 3 different complexities (difficulties): low, medium and high complexity. To solve them, you have to hire new employees for a brand new role: Supporter. As with any other employee type the Supporter comes with various degrees of experience such as Beginners, Intermediates and Experts.
All Supporters resolve tickets at the same speed (relatively to their own speed of course), but Intermediate and Expert Supporters will eventually become unhappy if they're forced to solve too many tickets below their level of expertise.

Support Dissatisfaction

If you fail to handle support tickets in time, it will directly impact your website's overall satisfaction. The support dissatisfaction is working a bit different from Features as the decrease is subtracted directly from the subtotal of your current website satisfaction.

Recruiters and Headhunting

Beta 21 will introduce a revised recruitment functionality. You'll now have to use a "Recruiter" (or your CEO) in order to find and headhunt new employees. You'll be able to poach (better known as steal) employees from your competitors and negotiate salaries and signing bonus in order to persuade them to take you up on your offer. The new feature also allows you to research the candidates demands.

The CEO

A highly requested and popular demand of the community was the ability to add the CEO to the game. Beta 21 will deliver on that promise and will allow you to introduce "yourself" to the game as the CEO (Chief Executive Officer). The first time you launch Beta 21 you will be required to customize your CEO. All CEOs will have a personal "bonus" that affects the rest of the game (see screenshot for more details). The CEO will act identically with the new "Recruiter" employee type, however uniquely for the CEO he won't require a salary or age at all (I know, it's unrealistic, but imagine the Steam reviews if I retire the player themselves).

Age & Retirement

A new and very important feature will be added to all employees: age. As time goes by, your employees will start to age. It won't affect performance (mood or speed), but once the employee reaches the age of 65 he/she will retire. Note: All employees from existing save games will be set to an age between 25 and 30 years old.

New office building postponed until Beta 22

In previous Devlogs we mentioned that a new office building will make its way into Beta 21. However, we were unable to optimize and test the new office building for Beta 21. It will make its entry in Beta 22 instead. As always, we're dedicated to make sure everything runs smoothly by fixing potential issues, listening to the community and continue the development by working towards Beta 22. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-02-02 19:05:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there, The past week has been very productive. Beta 21 is almost ready (more about that) and the development preparations for Beta 22 has started.

New office building almost ready

The new office building has been announced in an earlier Devlog from December 2018. The new building will be available in Beta 21, so you'll have to wait a little bit longer, but the building is so big I wanna make sure we have enough time to improve the performance.

Change to the Supporter

In the last Devlog, it was announced that the Supporter employee would introduce a new mechanic where Beginner Supporters would be faster at resolving "Low Complexity Tickets" than Expert Supporters. A lot of you weren't very happy with this approach, so I decided to change it: All Supporters now resolve tickets at the same speed (relatively to their own speed of course), but instead Intermediate and Expert Supporters will become unhappy if they're forced to solve too many tickets below their level of expertise. I hope this change feels more natural to everyone :-)

Improved arms animations

The animations of arms will be improved from 3 frames to 6 frames. This change is intended to make everything feel a bit more smooth.

Beta 21 release date

We're now at the final stage of preparing the Beta 21 release. All strings has been sent to the translators. I'm targeting a Friday release, but nothing official yet, as I'm still awaiting confirmation from the translators. Fingers crossed! Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. That's it for this Monday! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-01-28 19:29:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

Recruiters and Headhunting

Beta 21 will introduce a revised recruitment functionality. You'll now have to use a "Recruiter" (or your CEO) in order to find and headhunt new employees. You'll be able to poach (better known as steal) employees from your competitors and negotiate salaries and signing bonus in order to persuade them to take you up on your offer. The new feature also allows you to research the candidates demands.

Age & Retirement

A new and very important feature will be added to all employees: age. As time goes by, your employees will start to age. It won't affect performance (mood or speed), but once the employee reaches the age of 65 he/she will retire. Note: All employees from existing save games will be set to the age of 25.

The CEO

A highly requested and popular demand of the community was the ability to add the CEO to the game. Beta 21 will deliver on that promise and will allow you to introduce "yourself" to the game as the CEO (Chief Executive Officer). The first time you launch Beta 21 you will be required to customize your CEO. All CEOs will have a personal "bonus" that affects the rest of the game (see screenshot for more details). The CEO will act identically with the new "Recruiter" employee type, however uniquely for the CEO he won't require a salary or age at all (I know, it's unrealistic, but imagine the Steam reviews if I retire the player themselves).

Progress of Beta 21

Right now we're super busy fixing bugs and testing out the new features. They still need a lot balancing. The new office building is also in the making (we hope to be able to present it in next week's Devlog). Finally everything needs to be translated and tested on all platforms. You should expect a release in 2-3 weeks if everything goes well :-) Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. That's it for this Sunday! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-01-20 20:02:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! This week is an exciting week for us, as we're going to share some of features with you, which are planned for Beta 21. It's always very interesting for us to implement new features and to see how the players will be managing and coming up with ingenious methods on optimizing everything. These new features will effect gameplay up to a certain degree where you'll have to manage another aspect in your Startup Company!

Support Tickets

Beta 21 will introduce support tickets. These are basically questions and issues coming from your users that you will have to handle. It adds a whole new dynamic to Startup Company where you have to make sure that your users will be happy with the support that you provide them.
Tickets has to be handled within 36 hours. Anything later than that will decrease your Support Satisfaction.

Support Teams

Tickets come in 3 different complexities (difficulties): low, medium and high complexity. To solve them, you have to hire new employees for a brand new role: Supporter. As with any other employee type the Supporter comes with various degrees of experience such as Beginners, Intermediates and Experts. However, unlike the other "production" employees the Supporters should be paired with matching ticket complexity. For example: Expert Supporters will be slower at resolving low complexity tickets than Beginner Supporters. To overcome this challenge, you'll be able to set up Support Teams which will limit its members (employees) to the selected complexities.

Support Dissatisfaction

If you fail to handle support tickets in time, it will directly impact your website's overall satisfaction. The support dissatisfaction is working a bit different from Features as the decrease is subtracted directly from the subtotal of your current website satisfaction.
All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. We'd love to know what you think about the new features that are planned for Beta 21, make sure to leave a comment! That's it for this Sunday! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-01-13 16:47:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Beta 20 is now available. Restart Steam to get it right away! Its official, Beta 20 is the first Beta to hit in the year 2019! Because Beta 19 was heavily focused on optimization for the future of Startup Company we were able to add lots of cool new features for everyone to explore in the current Beta. In 2019 well continue our promise to listen to ideas and feedback from the community! With each Beta release we just want to make sure that youre aware of the fact that there might be some bugs. Jonas is standing by to make sure anything that might go wrong will get "hotfixed" as soon as possible.

Research Tree

The new Research Tree is replacing the current tier system and is now live in Beta 20. You will be able to unlock exactly what you want. This means that you don't have to wait anymore for tiers to unlock, you're now completely in control. All the features of Startup Company are unlocked via the Research Tree and not only items that used to be limited by old tier system.
Note: If you were higher than Tier 5 you will get 2.000 Research Points (RP) when you're upgrading to Beta 20.

Centralized Clockrate Controller (CCC)

Weve implemented the Centralized Clockrate Controller (CCC) in Startup Company, which is a highly requested feature by our community. This new unit can control the clockrate for up to 500 servers. A practical example would be: if you reach 90% overall CU usage, the CCC will change the clockrate from 50% to 100%. We're looking forward to see how everyone will make use of this new feature! Together with the new and improved XServers you'll now be able to ensure your company is ready for the future - especially when you're being DDoS'd or get a viral boost!

XServers

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

Huge improvements to hosting/server code

If you have been playing with 100+ racks, you probably know that the game starts lagging when you click a rack or navigate around the server room. We've been able to make this piece of code 80% faster. Hopefully this eliminates lag for most setups. As always, we're dedicated to make sure everything runs smoothly by fixing potential issues, listening to the community and continue the development by working towards Beta 21. In case you're wondering what's coming up in Beta 21 make sure to take a look at our updated roadmap from January 4, 2019. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-01-04 19:00:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Recap - Startup Company 2018

Wow! I dont think words can describe how amazing this year has been for us. We celebrated our one year anniversary (in August 2018), added tons of new features, fixed bugs, built up an even bigger community and also set some clear indicators as to where we want to take Startup Company in 2019. In this post, we wanted to look back at the year and see what new features we added, what mechanics completely changed the game and also tell you about our plans for Startup Company in 2019.

Beta 14 in February 2018

We started the year strong with Beta 14 which added tons of new features. Some of them are no longer in the current version but features such as the tracking stock prices, the activity log and product functionality are still present in the game. After Beta 14 there were many changes and fixes that Jonas worked on within the timespan of a few days, a promise that hes dedicated on keeping. Once all the bugs were fixed it was time to move onto Beta 15.

Beta 15 drops on April 12, 2018

Beta 15 revolved around adding more personality to the game, giving it a stronger startup-feel and focusing more on the new players. The game became a lot more appealing and user-friendly, which was something that we noticed in the comments on the forums and Discord at that time.
We simplified the infrastructure tab and changed a lot of wording to make everything more clear. We also fixed a LOT of issues and bugs that we had back in that period, making the game a lot more stable and fun to play.

74 days later, Beta 16 releases

On June 25, 2018 we released Beta 16. It had been a while since Startup Company had seen any big updates on the default branch where the majority of the players are playing from. For Jonas it was the biggest update he worked on. So as you can imagine, he was very proud of that achievement! Beta 16 completely rewrote how the hosting functionality worked by introducing the hosting buildings. We not only added the buildings, but we also added the functionality for racks and servers. Jonas also needed a new and more immersive way to display all these new buildings. That is how the City Map was born:
Other things such as acquiring competitors, receiving investment offers, milestones and a bunch of fixes were also introduced in Beta 16. This Beta version was incredibly big compared to all the previous ones!

Beta 17 just after the anniversary!

Just 13 days after we celebrated the first year anniversary (release on Steam) Jonas launched Beta 17 for everyone on the default branch. Beta 17 added the most complicated mechanics ever seen in the game, and he was very nervous (but also excited) on getting feedback from all the players. The marketing functionality had been completely rewritten. You no longer had to constantly restart campaigns. Instead, Jonas was inspired by the real world, where your campaigns success will be based on your ability to correctly target the relevant audience. Beta 17 also introduces a new variable to your products: Satisfaction. Youll now have to improve features based on user feedback. Maybe the most significant change has been that Jonas changed how Features for your product worked. Features of your product are no longer just for increasing your potential users. They are now also for creating new revenue channels. Youll be able to choose between Text Ads, Banner Ads, Video Ads and Subscriptions. Basically you started earning money from selling ads and no longer from completing contracts, which was removed completely. This might have been the most discussed change by the community weve ever had!

Beta 18 releases in October 2018

Releasing new features is always exciting, as players get to experience the game on a whole new level. Its especially exciting when were introducing features that are requested by actual players, so were always keen to receive feedback so that we can further improve Startup Company and make it as fun as possible! Beta 18 was such an update. We introduced the highly requested queue feature, making the early game less of a chore. We also implemented lots of handy features such as the contract expiration bar, random events (DDoS attacks), viral boosts and more. Beta 18, for the first time ever in Startup Company, allowed you to beat the game. Once you've completed everything there is to do in Startup Company you will now be awarded a high-score, which lets you measure yourself up against other CEOs playing the game!

Improving the performance of Startup Company

Beta 19 released earlier this month and was focused on improving a lot of stuff that will prepare Startup Company for 2019. You can now employ a lot more employees (from 180 to 260) and this limit will be increased in the future. We also added some new overlays, improved the clickable area and added a bunch of new items to decorate your office with. You can read all about it in our Beta 18 release on Steam here.

2019, the year of Startup Company!

We cant wait for 2019 to start. Were going continue developing Startup Company according to our updated roadmap from December 7, 2018 but also include highly requested features/fixes from our players. Were currently working very hard on Beta 20, which will introduce a Research Tree, new X Servers (more info about it in Devlog 32) and various UI optimizations. We hope to ship this update to everyone as soon as possible. In the future were going to add a bunch of new features such as: - Website Support. You will have to manage customer service and handle complains/questions from your customers. - A new hiring system that will allow interviews, negotiations and more. -Addition of CEO to the office - UI and QOL Overhaul. Everything will be improved with a focus on usability and quality of life. - In-game help system. Helping new players find their way around the game more easily. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. We wish you all a Happy New Year and were looking forward to bringing you more amazing updates for Startup Company in 2019! All the best, Jonas & Robert https://store.steampowered.com/app/606800/Startup_Company/

[ 2018-12-30 14:50:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Christmas is coming up and the New Year is just around the corner. For Startup Company that means a new year of exciting updates, but also some other cool features that we've got planned for the next Beta. In addition to that, Startup Company is on sale with 35% off during the Steam Winter sale. It's the perfect time of the year to potentially gift Startup Company to one of your friends and let them become CEO of their own company!

Centralized Clockrate Controller

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

The CCC interface and rules

Here's a sneak preview of the new interface. In this example I've created a small cluster of racks that can be used to defend yourself against a DDoS attack. Normally the clock rate is at 0% (Top left corner), but I have created a rule that triggers once my website's server usage reaches 100%. It will then speed up the servers' clock rate to 100%. Once the attack is over and server usage is back at below 50% the servers will shut down again.

XServers implemented and specs defined

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

Huge improvements to hosting/server code

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

Sneak preview: The last office building

In the last few days of 2018 Bruno has been super busy designing the last office for Startup Company. In terms of size you can compare it to the largest hosting building. The building comes with two floors, and will be able to seat 500 employees! Another cool things about the office, it's not completely square! Here's a very early work in progress image of the new office building:
All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That's it for this Sunday! We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! All the best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2018-12-23 16:12:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

Research Tree

We've talked about this before, and now it's finally done, except from some final balancing to make it perfect! The new Research Tree is replacing the current tier system. Instead you will be able to unlock exactly what you want. This means that you don't have to wait anymore for tiers to unlock, you're now completely in control. All the features of Startup Company are unlocked via the Research Tree and not only items that used to be limited by old tier system.

Beta 20 Release

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

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

It's a small release, but as the Research Tree is changing a lot of things, we don't want to overwhelm everyone with too many changes. Next week we're starting with the localization and play-testing. We're planning the release just after Christmas. If you want to join the play-testing of the new upcoming Beta, make sure to join our Discord group for more info! All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. That's it for this Sunday, thanks for reading! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2018-12-16 18:56:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Beta 19 is now available! Restart Steam to get it right away! Beta 19 is now live, which mainly focused on optimizing the game - making sure its ready for the future of Startup Company! We fixed a lot of issues and listened closely to what the community had to say. As always, were incredibly excited to hear your ideas, while also being nervous at the same time - since new Betas are always scary for developers! With each Beta release we just want to make sure that youre aware of the fact that there might be some bugs. Jonas is standing by to make sure anything that might go wrong will get hotfixed as soon as possible, but it should be a smooth sailing with this release since we tested it a lot.

Performance Improvements

Since the Early Access release Startup Company hasn't been the most optimized game and everyone who had 180 employees know what we're talking about. The main reason for the bad performance has always been the way the office was rendered (DOM elements). This was a decision we took early on, as Startup Company at the time wasn't that "big" of a game. People usually had 10-20 employees. Now as the game has progressed, it's time to move on to WebGL and something called canvas. This is all geek talk, but what it really means is the game is going to be incredible efficient compared to the latest Beta 18. Here's some early stats showing the improvements (all based on i7 7700K and a GTX1060): [table] [tr] [th]Test[/th] [th]Beta 18[/th] [th]Beta 19[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]30x30 office with 100 employees[/td] [td]84 fps[/td] [td]144 fps[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]60x60 office with 200 employees[/td] [td]27 fps[/td] [td]144 fps[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]150x150 office with 400 employees[/td] [td]Unable to load[/td] [td]102 fps[/td] [/tr] [/table]

More employees in the Skyscraper

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

New desks

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

New overlays

Weve included new overlays which shows a lot more information in a much cleaner way!

Improved-Clickable-Area

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

New location for Mods

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

FAQ about Beta 19

Beta 19 feels much slower than Beta 18. Shouldnt it be faster? This can be the case if your setup is below our minimum requirements. Beta 18 was relying mainly on the CPU. Beta 19 is different and is now utilizing the GPU instead. Make sure to play the game with a dedicated graphics card. Is there a way to upgrade existing racks to the new 42U rack? Unfortunately not at this time. Its on our radar, together with a ton of other features. The toggle overlay and the new desks are missing translations. Is this intended? Yes, as Beta 19 almost contained no new translations, we have postponed translation of some strings until Beta 20. As always, we're dedicated to make sure everything runs smoothly by fixing potential issues, listening to the community and continue the development by working towards Beta 20. In case you're wondering what's coming up in Beta 20 make sure to take a look at our updated roadmap from December 7, 2018. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2018-12-07 16:25:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

Beta 19 is on the beta-branch

Beta 19 is focused on optimization and making sure that people who reached the end-game can continue growing their company with even more employees and bigger offices! Make sure to check out some of the previous Devlogs that cover some other features and optimizations that will be present in the new Beta version of Startup Company. You can now join the fun yourself, as we've published Beta 19 on the testing branch. Below we've listed the steps that you need to complete in order to get on the Beta 19 branch. - Go to your Steam library. - Right click on Startup Company and select ''Properties'' - Go to the ''BETAS''-tab. - Enter the password: ''startupcompany19'' to unlock the branch - Select ''beta 19'' from the drop-down menu. - Close the window and you should automatically download Beta 19. Please note: Beta 19 is still very unstable, which means there might be game-breaking bugs present. If you encounter a bug, or something that you don't (or do) like, please post a message on our community hub, or report it on our Discord channel. (Link to the Discord channel is below this post.) Once we've fixed some bugs in Beta 19, implemented community feedback and are happy with how everything looks and feels we'll release it for everyone on the public branch! We do not have a solid release date yet, but we aim to release Beta 19 for everyone in December 2018.

New Server Racks (Beta 20)

Recently we announced the new programmer and executive setup for your employees. This time around we want to share new server racks with you, as displayed in the image below:
Again, these assets might change over the course of the development of Startup Company. Rack Sizes [table] [tr] [td]Rack Type[/td] [td]Size[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Small Rack[/td] [td]10[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Medium Rack[/td] [td]20[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Large Rack (new)[/td] [td]42[/td] [/tr] [/table]

Centralized Clockrate Controller (CCC) - Beta 20

We're currently working on a Centralized Clockrate Controller (CCC) in Startup Company, which is a highly requested feature by our community. This new unit can control the clockrate for up to 500 servers. A practical example would be: if you reach 90% overall CU usage, the CCC will change the clockrate from 50% to 100%. It will be cool to see how everyone will make use of this new feature! Together with the new and improved X Servers this will allow everyone to make sure that your company is ready for the future - especially when you're being DDoS'd or get a viral boost to handle all the traffic!
Please note: the CCC, new rack and new servers are scheduled for Beta 20.

New X Servers

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

Steam Autumn Sale

Startup Company is now on sale during the Steam Autumn sale. You can now get a copy with 25% off! Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. That's it for this Monday, hope you all will have a great week! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2018-11-26 11:57:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

Beta 19 - An update for performance

Beta 19 will be focused on making Startup Company a smoother experience, while also taking the future of the game into account. This pretty much entails that the amount of maximum employees will be increased significantly, which also put some other wheels in motion that will make sure your new employees will feel right at home! A new office building will be available on the map, which will give you the ability to accommodate more employees. Other than that you will see a significant increase in managers and experts joining your company after Beta 19 has been released.

New desks

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

New overlay

We're also planning on updating the overlay of employees, providing some additional details.
The overlay is still subject to change, as we're still trying to figure out if we're happy with these changes. Please let us know in the comments below what you think about it!

Improved-Clickable-Area

It has been a pain to move certain items, especially when you had a bigger office with more items in there. We've now significantly improved the clickable area from where you can select items that you previously placed on the office floor. This will allow you to remove and/or change items in your office a lot easier.
Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. That all for this week. Thanks for reading! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2018-11-11 19:39:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, First of all we'd like to welcome all of the new players who have joined us (both on Steam and Discord) while the game was featured on Daily Deal on Steam. Concurrent players has again been above 600, something we haven't seen since the Early Access release back in August 2017. In the last couple of weeks we've been busy, writing more complicated code than usually. Beta 19 is all about performance improvements and that is going to be visible in the devlogs the next couple of weeks/months.

The Research Tree

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

Performance Improvements

Alright, this one is HUGE! Since the Early Access release Startup Company hasn't been the most optimized game and everyone who had 180 employees know what we're talking about. The main reason for the bad performance has always been the way the office was rendered (DOM elements). This was a decision we took early on, as Startup Company at the time wasn't that "big" of a game. People usually had 10-20 employees. Now as the game has progressed, it's time to move on to WebGL and something called canvas. This is all geek talk, but what it really means is the game is going to be incredible efficient compared to the latest Beta 18. Here's some early stats showing the improvements (all based on i7 7700K and a GTX1060): [table] [tr] [th]Test[/th] [th]Beta 18[/th] [th]Beta 19[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]30x30 office with 100 employees[/td] [td]84 fps[/td] [td]144 fps[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]60x60 office with 200 employees[/td] [td]27 fps[/td] [td]144 fps[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]150x150 office with 400 employees[/td] [td]Unable to load[/td] [td]102 fps[/td] [/tr] [/table] As you can see, Beta 19 is going to be insanely fast and it opens up brand new opportunities when it comes to office sizes. Obviously increasing the maximum workstation count is coming, but we are also looking into much larger office buildings. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That all for this week. Thanks for reading! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2018-10-28 18:05:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there, Today is an exciting day for us, as we're featured on the front-page of Steam with a Daily Deal, which last for 48 hours starting from 10AM Pacific Time! The game is currently discounted for 40%, which means you can grab a copy of Startup Company for only $6! (Or your regional equivalent.) https://store.steampowered.com/app/606800/Startup_Company/

Special message for our new players

We've just released Beta 18, which introduces a bunch of new features and fixes to the game - which is exciting for both new players and players who already own Startup Company. You can read all about it in our other announcement which we released yesterday. We're heavily committed to continue to develop new features, fixes and implement features that are requested by the community. We've already released a significant amount of updates since the original release date of August 11, 2017. More than 40 updates have been released ever since, and we'll continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In case you're wondering what's coming up in the near future make sure to check out our updated roadmap.
Feel free to mingle on the Steam communtiy hub (as we're very active on there), join our Discord channel (click the big image of Discord below) or check out our Conflux board if you want to leave your ideas/suggestions on how we can further improve the game! Regards, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2018-10-22 19:26:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Today's Deal: Save 40% on Startup Company!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Wednesday at 10AM Pacific Time

[ 2018-10-22 17:11:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Beta 18 is now available! Restart Steam to get it right away! With Beta 18 being live right now we've added a bunch of new features, fixed a lot of issues and listened closely to what the community wanted. We're very excited and nervous at the same time, as releasing new features that change the game in many different ways result in a lot of new feedback and buzz in our community. As always, with an update there might be some bugs. But rest assured, we're focused on making sure that everything gets fixed as soon as possible with potential hotfixes. We're going to release hotfixes on a daily basis until everything is stable but it should all be good - as we tested stuff internally as well.

New Queue Feature

Weve implemented a new queue system for all production employees (Developers, Designers, Lead Developers, SysAdmins and Marketeers). This is very useful during the early game when players are not able to employ a manager. You can also toggle it to Repeater-mode (top right corner) to make it all work smoothly!

Contract Expiration

This new handy bar will show you when a contract is about to end, making sure you can plan accordingly with your Sales Executives.

Highscore

Once you've completed everything there is to do in Startup Company you will be rewarded a (high)-score, which lets you measure yourself up against other CEO's playing the game! Once this feature is up and running the most seasoned CEO's will be able to earn bragging rights by posting their highest scores!

'Random Events'

''Random Events'' are now in the game, which as the name suggest happen on random occasions during the game to spice things up. Some of the random events that you will encounter once BETA 18 has been released: Viral Boost: your product goes viral and generates a lot of new users. DDoS attacks: an unknown group will attack your servers. Poaching: your competitors will try to steal your best employees. Employee decisions: employees want raises or else they quit. Random events only happen if you have more than 100K users using your product. In addition to that you can only get the random viral boost effect if your user satisfaction is above 70%.

Other features

Ad Deals are now called Ad Contracts Time slots are now implemented We updated the Sales Executive dialog We added a money animation

Solved bugs & issues

Fixed bug where developer dialog would crash with some old save games. Fixed bug causing the game to crash while running at full speed and moving workstations between floors. Fixed bug causing game to fail startup on slower machine Removed employee specific events when employees gets fired. Fixed bug causing the game to break if an employee with an active contract was fired. As always, we're dedicated to make sure everything runs smoothly by fixing potential issues, listening to the community and continue the development by working towards Beta 19. In case you're wondering what's coming up in Beta 19 make sure to take a look at our updated roadmap. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2018-10-21 16:59:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi all! This week were gearing up towards the release of Beta 18. Were working on a bunch of different features and bug fixes and were sure that many of you will like some of the changes that were implementing! We're expecting to release Beta 18 the upcoming week and we'll make sure to keep you all posted.

New Queue Feature

Were implementing a new queue system for all production employees (Developers, Designers, Lead Developers, SysAdmins and Marketeers). This is very useful during the early game when players are not able to employ a manager. You can also toggle it to Repeater-mode (top right corner) to make it all work smoothly!

Bruno, the old designer is back

Were currently working on a bunch of new graphical assets for the game. Our old designer, Bruno, is now back on the team and will start creating assets that we need in order to continue developing the game from a graphical perspective.

Contract Expiration

This new handy bar will show you when a contract is about to end, making sure you can plan accordingly with your Sales Executives.

Big UI/4K support improved & rendering performance improvement

Beta 17 all UI had to be optimized for 4K monitors which resulted in a worse experience than running without Big UI enabled. This has been changed so it now works automatically, giving 4K users an equally great experience. At the same time rendering has been improved by 50% in Beta 18, going from 255KB of CSS rules to 128KB. This will especially improve performance on slower computers.

Other features

Other features that will make it into Beta 18 are the ''Random Events'' and Highscore feature which we mentioned in Devlog #28 from last week. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. Alright, thats all for Devlog #29. Thanks for reading, make sure to let us know what you think about the current progress of Startup Company by submitting a review (as we monitor those closely) or by leaving a comment below! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2018-10-14 17:22:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! This week was a very busy week. Jonas has been releasing a bunch of hotfixes that address various issues and bugs that were present in the game. The following issues/bugs have been solved:

Solved bugs & issues

Fixed bug causing the game to require internet connection. Fixed issue with old savegames containing references to previous contract work functionality. Fixed issue with old savegames containing old marketing campaigns. Fixed issue where Ad Contract's completed days was shown incorrectly. Fixed bug where crashes occurred when deleting a product and the marketing tab was open. Fixed bug making it impossible to uninstall specific mods. Fixed bug where Sales Executive couldn't create new contracts if all competitors were merged. Fixed bug causing game to crash when deleting a savegame while viewing a hosting building. Fixed error being thrown when timeslots window open.

Progress on 'Random Events'

As we announced last week we're working on a new feature named ''Random Events'', which as the name suggest happen on random occasions during the game to spice things up. We're working on adding a bunch of these events, and more will be added over time to continue building upon this feature. (And of course by taking community suggestions into account!) Some of the random events that you will encounter once BETA 18 has been released: Viral Boost: your product goes viral and generates a lot of new users. DDoS attacks: an unknown group will attack your servers. Poaching: your competitors will try to steal your best employees. Employee decisions: employees want raises or else they quit. Random events only happen if you have more than 100K users using your product. In addition to that you can only get the random viral boost effect if your user satisfaction is above 70%. In Devlog #27 we posted a screenshot of what it looks like when your company is under a DDoS attack and when an employee wants a raise. This week we'll be showing you what it looks like when your product goes viral and when a competitor wants to steal your employee.

Highscore

Once you've completed everything there is to do in Startup Company you will be rewarded a (high)-score, which lets you measure yourself up against other CEO's playing the game! Once this feature is up and running the most seasoned CEO's will be able to earn bragging rights by posting their highest scores!
Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board.

Renaming ''Products'' to ''Websites''

It was unclear for a lot of players that your product is actually a website. Based on feedback from our players on the Steam community hub, our Discord channel and through emails we've decided to change it to make it more clear for (new) players of Startup Company.

Updated Roadmap

In case you're wondering what's coming up in the near future make sure to check out our updated roadmap Alright, thats all for Devlog #28. Thanks for reading, make sure to let us know what you think about the current progress of Startup Company by submitting a review (as we monitor those closely) or by leaving a comment below! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2018-10-07 17:28:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! We’ve worked very hard on getting a new update ready for everyone.This update will include pretty much everything mentioned in Devlog #26 and is now available for everyone. We’ve made a couple of adjustments here and there and added a bunch of tool-tips, warnings and fixed a couple of annoying bugs too!

Time slots are now implemented.

The Ad Space Calendar has been removed from the game and has been replaced by something that we call ‘’Time Slots’’. By default you only have one slot (full day) allowing you to have one contract. You can choose to split that into multiple slot slots, allowing you to run multiple contracts on the same feature.

Ad Contracts

Ad Deals are now called Ad Contracts. When you go into a contract, you now decide how many impressions per day you want to guarantee. The customer (lead) sets the maximum, but if you can’t meet their expectation you’ll have to lower it. This results in you receiving a smaller payment from the customer. Contracts can be cancelled but you will incur a penalty amounting to 20% of the payment. This is the reason why increasing your contract length increases your payment.

Updated Sales Executive dialog

Because of the new features as mentioned above we also had to make significant changes to the ‘Sales Executive’ dialog. It now features a graph that shows you how well the ad contract you’re running is performing. In addition to that you will be able to monitor all the leads. The employee will be able to manage one contract, but will simultaneously look for better leads. The prices are based on the initial CPM’s that were offered by the customer, which can be improved and raised by negotiating. In addition to that, all the contracts can be auto-renewed. This means that you no longer have to accept or deny offers deals. You will only be able to negotiate new contracts with your customers if your daily impressions (better known as online users) have increased significantly.

Money animation

The money animation as mentioned in the Devlog #26 is now available.

Gearing up towards Beta 18

Now that we've released these new features we're going to continue building on new features, as outlined in our roadmap. First up we'll focus on bringing random events to the game. This will spice things up, especially during the mid-game and in the later stages of the game. These random effects will cause you some additional headaches, or can be used to your advantage to get some quick market-share! In addition to that we're of course always listening to the feedback of the community and make changes if appropriate to the existing features - such as the ones we're releasing today. Wondering what our roadmap looks like? Make sure to click here! Here's a little sneak preview of what the random events feature will look like:
Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. Alright, that’s all for Devlog #27. Thanks for reading, make sure to let us know in the comments what you think about the update! Best, Jonas & Robert [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2018-09-30 17:17:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Some of you might have already seen me hanging out in our Discord channel while others might have seen my messages on either the Steam community board or on social media. Im helping out Jonas by handling the customer support, community stuff and giving him a helping hand when it comes to advising him on the marketing of Startup Company. I just wanted to briefly introduce myself let you all know that Im looking forward to making Startup Company an even better business simulation sandbox game! Im super excited to help Jonas out, as Ive known him for a few years now - even before Startup Company was officially released on Steam. If you ever encounter an issue with the game, discover an annoying bug or simply have a question about the game - feel free to hit me up!

Steam Trading Cards

A couple of days ago (on September 21, 2018 to be exact) Steam approved our submitted Steam Trading Cards, which are now obtainable simply by playing the game. We made a bunch of cool trading cards with in-game items such as the watercooler, a whiteboard and the legendary Ping Pong Table!
The badge progress is listed below: Intern Coordinator Manager Director Vice President Chief Executive Officer (Foil Badge) In addition to that weve also added a bunch of backgrounds for your profile and emoticons for you to discover once you collected all the cards. [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]
Alright, thats all for this post. Thanks for reading! Best, Miedemantus

[ 2018-09-23 16:40:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, First of all, sorry for the following wall of text. I have already tried to reduce the length but with no luck :-)

The Beta 17 release was awful

For various reasons, the Beta 17 release was not as great an experience as I had hoped it would be. I’d like to apologize to all of you who had a bad experience with the new beta. While I always try to do my best, I’m still learning and with Beta 17 a lot of mistakes became obvious: Translations were not ready on time When I started translating Startup Company into multiple languages, I didn’t have the money to pay translators to do the work. Instead, I asked the community for help and a lot of people have been helping out over and over again, translating each new beta in their native language. This has been amazing and I’m very thankful to everyone who helped out over the years. Unfortunately for this release, I was still missing translations for six languages one day before the release date. My solution was to start contacting professional translators and pay them to translate the missing strings within 24 hours. It was obviously quite expensive but also the reason why I had to postpone the release. To ensure this won’t happen again, I have chosen to outsource all translation work to a professional translation company. The transition from Beta 16 to 17 was too steep A lot of players experienced their companies shutting down shortly after booting up in Beta 17. The combination of changing the income model (revenue features) and also introducing product satisfaction was simply too much for a lot of players. It resulted in lots of rage quits and a lot of very angry emails coming my way. The reason is obvious – I was way too ambitious. I wanted Beta 17 to be super exciting, so I introduced a lot of big changes in one big update. To fix this, I will start releasing more (and smaller) updates, but each one only containing one major change. The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

RIP Ad Space Calendar. Welcome to time slots.

Overall, I’m quite happy with how the new ad space/deals work, but there are some obvious flaws that have to be fixed. The first thing is to get rid of the ad spaces calendar as it didn’t really serve any purpose. Instead, new time slots have been added. An ad contract now runs for a specific number of days. By default, you have one time slot (full day) allowing you to have one contract. You can choose to split that into multiple time slots, allowing you to run multiple contracts on the same feature.

Ad Contracts

Ad Deals are now called Ad Contracts. When you go into a contract, you now decide how many impressions per day you want to guarantee. The customer (lead) sets the maximum, but if you can’t meet their expectation you’ll have to lower it. This results in you receiving a smaller payment from the customer. Contracts can be cancelled but you will incur a penalty amounting to 20% of the payment. This is also the reason why increasing your contract length increases your payment.

Updated Sales Executive dialog

Considering the above changes, I obviously had to also change the Sales Executive dialog. It now features a cool graph that shows you how well the ad contract is performing. You’ll also be able to see all leads. The employee will be able to manage one contract, but also continue searching for better leads. The prices is the initial CPMs offered by the customer, which can be improved by negotiating. All contracts can be auto renewed, meaning you’ll no longer have to constantly accept or deny deals!. You only negotiate a new contract if your daily impressions (online users) have increased significantly.

Money animation

It’s not a biggie, but I think it’s really cool. You can now see every time you gain or lose money.
Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. I plan to release the above changes within the next couple of weeks as a hotfix for Beta 17. There will not be any official release date for this one. Alright, that’s all for this devlog. Thanks for reading! Best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]
Note: Starting from today the future devlogs will be posted on Sundays 9:00AM Pacific Time.

[ 2018-09-14 13:19:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Beta 17 is now available! Restart Steam to get it right away! 60 days. That’s the number of days since the last major update, which is 14 days less than with the Beta 16 release! Beta 17 adds some of the most complicated mechanics ever seen in the game. I’m both excited and nervous to get your feedback on this update as balancing the game has been hard. I wanted the game to increase in difficulty, but at the same time remain friendly to new players. I am really keen to get your feedback on this one so please let me know what you think. As with any big update, it is guaranteed that there will still be a ton of bugs, we just haven’t found them all yet. If you come across any, please let me know in the Bugs forum (https://steamcommunity.com/app/606800/discussions/1/). I’m going to release hotfixes on a daily basis until everything is stable.

The Big Marketing Update

The marketing functionality has been completely rewritten. You will no longer have to constantly restart campaigns. Instead, I was inspired by the real world, where your campaign’s success will be based on your ability to correctly target the relevant audience. Campaigns can run for much longer and the amount of hired marketers is much lower than before.

Product Satisfaction

Beta 17 also introduces a new variable to your products: Satisfaction. You’ll now have to improve features based on user feedback. The total satisfaction is based on the average of all features. Satisfaction will directly impact your conversion rate when running marketing campaigns. Running a product with just a landing page won’t be very interesting anymore.

New revenue-based features

This change is huge! Features are no longer just for increasing your “potential users”. They are now also for creating new revenue channels. You’ll be able to choose between Text Ads, Banner Ads, Video Ads and Subscriptions. Each one will take up one feature slot of your product. Until you create a revenue source, your product’s will generate $0 by default.

Revenue from subscriptions

If you choose to add a “Subscriptions” feature to your product, you can offer specific features as a “premium” offering to your users. This means that your users will have to pay a monthly subscription in order to access the feature. The higher the monthly fee and the more features affected, the less happy your users will be. However, it will also increase your revenue. Balancing this out is hard. You generally need a very good product to get away with subscriptions.

Revenue from selling ads

Another way of generating revenue is adding banner/ad spaces to your product. Adding a feature will take up one “feature slot”. Once added, your Sales Executives will be able to search for clients interested in running ads on your product.
Once a deal is accepted, you’ll have to schedule when the ad should be run. All “ad space deals” have a specific pay per 1000 impressions.

Other changes

• Contract Work has been removed from the game.
• New marketing components added: AB Testing, Analytics Research, Behavior Observation, Phone Interview, Survey and User Feedback.
• New base features: Item Listing, Live Streaming and Offline Content.
• Mods and “contract work” related Steam achievements have been removed.
• New achievements added: “Sell Out”, “Addicted”, “Fireworks”, “The Zuck” and “The Overclocker”.
• Organic growth activated again.
• Balanced loss rate of product progression (caused by new satisfaction variable).
• Various changes to feature’s level upgrade requirements.
• New research point requirements for both features and frameworks.
• DevOps renamed to SysAdmin.
• “Delete All” and “Mark All As Read” buttons added to the inbox.
• Fixed bug that allowed players to exceed the maximum number of virtual servers.
• 28 other minor changes that didn’t make this list :-)

Quality of Chinese localization

Due to issues with my Chinese translator I have been forced to use Google Translate for this update. This is obviously unacceptable, so I'll work through the weekend to ensure a high quality translation will be provided as fast as possible. So that’s Beta 17. To be honest, it has been one of the tougher releases and has required lots of complicated code to be written. I expect the next two weeks to be all about hotfixing Beta 17, which is why there won’t be any devlogs until September 14. Once Beta 17 is stable, I’m moving straight on to Beta 18, which will introduce the new “event system” that I know a lot of you have been looking forward to. This will introduce random events to the game, that you’ll have to deal with in order to protect your beloved company :-) Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy Beta 17. All the best, Jonas

Beta 17.1 (hotfix)

• Changed the way product satisfaction is calculated by using positive percentage instead of negative (Text Ads is now 30% instead of -30% for example). This greatly increases product satisfaction.
• Temporary disabled userloss for existing savegames to make transition for Beta 16 players easier.
• Updated Chinese translations to professional version.
• Fix bug where Sales Executive would get stuck with "Awaiting instructions" message.
• Show product name in negotiation view.
• Fixed bug where negotiation view would throw error when auto-repeat wasn't enabled.
• Fixed bug causing wrong reach to be calculated (NaN value) for marketing campaigns.
• Added Downgrade button for features for easier balancing of features.
• Added error stack to error dialog for easier recognizing of mods failing.
• Increased number of decimals for CPM price in ad space deals view.
• Fixed bug causing Linux version to fail loading the Sales Executive view.

Beta 17.2 (hotfix)

• Fixed bug causing Sales Executive view to fail

Beta 17.3(hotfix)

• Fixed bug causing revenue feature satisfaction decrease to work the opposite way.
• Reduced revenue feature satisfaction decrease
• Fixed error being thrown when booting up the game under specific scenarios.
• Fixed bug causing that you sometimes couldn't upgrade framework when coming from Beta 16.
• Changed "happy satisfaction" to start from 70% instead of 85%.
• Fixed error being thrown shortly after renting the first hosting building.
• Changed how satisfaction was calculated for subscriptions.

Beta 17.4 (hotfix)

• Fixed bug causing product satisfaction to be incorrect (very low) in some savegames.
• Updated Chinese translations.

Beta 17.5 (hotfix)

• Re-active user loss for old savegames if product satisfaction is above 50% for more than 8 days.
• Added marketing expenses to finance view.
• Fixed bug causing feature downgrade button to return too many ressources.
• Fixed issue where "tall rack" wasn't tall enough.
• Fixed bug where Beta 15 savegames couldn't upgrade feature levels.
• Updated hosting throughput "max level" color from white to green.
• Fixed bug where subscription satisfaction wasn't shown correctly when added.
• Fixed bug where "requred CU per user" on features view would show slightly wrong value.
• Fixed bug causing overall satisfaction to be too low for ads based features.

[ 2018-08-24 20:34:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, The last two weeks have been dedicated to playtesting, balancing and bug hunting. Beta 17 is a big update and really changes the dynamics of the game, which subsequently requires intense re-balancing. This was also the reason for postponing the devlog last week. I literally had nothing to show you as it was all just bug fixing and balancing. The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Improved “Add Feature”

After the new revenue features were added, it became very hard to understand the difference between features. The view has now been updated to better explain what you get by adding a feature. You might notice that features are now showing stars. The more stars, the more potential users per level. A couple of new features have also been added: Item Listing, Offline Content and Live Streaming.

New “Ad Space Deals” dialog

As playtesters started playing, it quickly became clear that we needed a way to list all the negotiated deals. This is now possible including sorting by clicking on table columns. By clicking “Cancel”, the Sales Executive will then start negotiating with the customer again, allowing you to reach a higher CPM (or you can opt to completely ignore the customer).

New milestones have been added

The investor milestones have been improved and now contains a total of 20 milestones. I still feel a couple more should be added, so that’s probably coming in the future.

Beta 17 Release Date

This is probably the main reason why you’re reading this devlog right now, so let’s get right to it. The Beta 17 release date will be Friday, August 24th. I actually wanted to release it this week, but balancing has been tough on this one. Therefore, we will spend another week testing things out. Finally, I want to thank everyone on Discord who have been helping out testing Beta 17 so far. I would never have been able to catch all those bugs without you guys! <3 Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. Thanks for reading! Best, Jonas

[ 2018-08-17 12:13:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Just finishing off another busy week (as always!). I was considering postponing this devlog, but I’m really eager to show you the new negotiation feature! Beta 17 has really come together these last couple of weeks. The new features are in place and I’m now entering the test and balancing phase. The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Sales Executive: The Negotiation

Beta 17 introduces new revenue-based features, including Text Ads, Banner Ads and Video Ads. Adding any of these features to your product allows you to sell ad space on your product to generate revenue. To sell this ad space, you need a Sales Executive to search for deals (just like the old contracts feature). Once a deal is found, you’ll have to do the negotiation. When dealing with a customer, it’s important to consider both their mood and the offers they submit. If a customer becomes too angry during the negotiation, they will simply leave in a huff. On the other hand, if you negotiate correctly, you can get much better deals, leading to higher revenue for your product. The feature is very complicated so I won’t go into too much detail right now. If you’re worried about having to do the negotiation manually every time, I can assure you that this won’t be the case. Once a deal with a customer is in place, you can stick with the agreed price in the future.

“Contract Work” removed from Startup Company

Yes, you read that right. Contract work will not feature in Beta 17. Shortly after I released the feature, I had the feeling that it didn’t quite match my vision for Startup Company. After investors were introduced to the game, it became very clear that it was completely unrealistic that a company funded by investors would start doing contract work for other companies. To be honest, I’m a bit fearful of the reactions to this. There is a large portion of my playerbase who are only generating revenue through contract work. Beta 17 will definitely be a huge change for them.

Updated Roadmap

I have updated the roadmap to match the latest progress. As it shows, Beta 17 is planned for release in two weeks. While this isn’t a guarantee, as we’ve still got a ton of work to do, I think it’s a realistic timeframe.
Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. Thanks for reading! Best, Jonas

[ 2018-08-03 11:58:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, The last couple of weeks of coding have been quite intense. The new marketing and “revenue features” are really complex and take up many more lines of code than what I’ve been working on over the last year. Hopefully it will all be worth it! :-) The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Completion of the new marketing feature

I showed the “configuration” of new campaigns in last devlog. I put the final pieces together last week. The screenshot below shows the stats view for the campaign. You’re able to pause campaigns and change the daily budget on the fly. The “Create Report” button gives you insight into variables of the campaign so you can assess whether it is efficient, but not until you have reached 10% of the targeted audience.

New revenue-based features

This change is huge! Features are no longer just for increasing your “potential users”. They are now also for creating new revenue channels. You’ll be able to choose between Text Ads, Banner Ads, Video Ads and Subscriptions. Each one will take up one feature slot of your product.

Revenue from subscriptions

If you choose to add a “Subscriptions” feature to your product, you can offer specific features as a “premium” offering to your users. This means that your users will have to pay a monthly subscription in order to access the feature. The higher the monthly fee and the more features affected, the less happy your users will be. However, it will also increase your revenue. Balancing this out is hard. You generally need a very good product to get away with subscriptions.

Revenue from selling ads

Another way of generating revenue is adding banner/ad spaces to your product. Again, this is a feature you have to add that will take up one “feature slot”. Once added, your Sales Executives will be able to search for clients interested in running ads on your product. Once a deal is accepted, you’ll have to schedule when the ad should be run. All “ad contracts” have a specific pay per 1000 impressions. This allows you to run the highest paid contracts when you get the most traffic (primarily weekends but depends on product type). I have only just started working on this feature this week, so what you see is very much a work in progress and will probably change!

Next week

I hope you all can see how massive these updates are. Beta 17 won’t be the biggest update, but I think it will feel like it. Next week I’m going to continue working on the “Selling Ads” functionality. One thing that I’m very excited about is creating the new “negotiation mode” where you have to negotiate with clients about Ad Space pricing. It will be a bit like the current contract bidding, but much more advanced. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. I’m not 100% sure about next week’s devlog as these features take up a huge amount of time. I’ll let you know via Twitter and Discord if the devlog will be postponed. Thanks for reading! Best, Jonas

[ 2018-07-27 11:37:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, This has been an amazing week! I was finally able to finish hotfixing Beta 16 and go all-in on Beta 17 development.

The Big Marketing Update

I’ve been putting a lot of hours into designing this new update. I’ve read all of your 126 marketing suggestions on Conflux and hope I’ve been able to combine all of the best ideas. You’ll be able to run Text Ads, Banner Ads, Video Ads, Radio/Podcast commercials and TV commercials. The mechanics of marketing have been changed quite a lot. You now start by creating the campaign. Next you can start/stop the campaign and set a maximum daily budget. You are no longer required to constantly restart campaigns. Each campaign will have a potential reach and a conversion rate. The conversion rate is based on a lot of different variables. Not only is the satisfaction of the feature you’re promoting taken into consideration, you’ll also be able to target the correct audience to get a good conversion rate. Once a campaign has reached 10% of its potential reach, you’ll be able to analyze the campaign and get insight into what variables increased or decreased the conversion rate. This insight allows you to create more efficient campaigns in the future. The conversion rate will vary a lot. Creating effective marketing campaigns will dramatically boost your product. Everything is directly inspired by my own experience with marketing and I believe I got quite close to the real world with this one. I wish I could let you try it out right away :-)

New Framework Limitations

A big issue and “immersion-breaker” is the possibility to earn millions of dollars with a product that only contains a Landing Page. This will be fixed in Beta 17. You’ll now have to max out your current framework in order to upgrade to the next one. This means you’re forced to max out all 3 features until you can increase the “max feature level”.

Satisfaction

Beta 17 will also introduce a new variable to your products: Satisfaction. You’ll now have to improve features based on user feedback. The total satisfaction is based on the average of all features. Satisfaction will directly impact your conversion rate when running marketing campaigns.

The return of organic growth

Organic growth will return to the game. The amount of traffic is based on overall product satisfaction.

Reset Peak CU

By popular demand, you will be able to reset the Peak CU counter whenever you like.

Inbox Improvements

Another one by popular demand. You are no longer required to delete emails one by one.
Thanks for reading! All the best, Jonas

[ 2018-07-13 10:13:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Ive had some very busy days since the release of Beta 16. Not only has the Summer Sale attracted a lot of new users, but I have also spent a lot of hours fixing bugs in Beta 16. A total of six hotfixes have been shipped pushing the latest version to Beta 16.6. Heres a list of all the bugs that were fixed: Hide stock options while merging is active. Disable move workstation button while office building is not selected. Fixed various typos/localization issues. Fixed bug causing owned stocks percentage to not show 01% ownership. French version: fixed unavailable framework buttons. German version: fixed typo in product merge text. Fixed bug allowing players to place hosting equipment in their office. Removed incorrect hosting building expenses from product hosting tab. Reduced new product requirements to be 15 completed milestones instead of a complete buyout. Returned missing office items (walls, glass door, etc.) Fixed bug causing rack devices to be lost when buying without any space available. Updated Upgrade Employee Level feature to add one new demand per upgrade. Fixed bug causing product stats to show broken graphs if game was paused. Fixed bug causing New Tier dialog to show on every load. Fixed bug where the running cost of air conditioners was not included. Fixed bug crashing the game after upgrading specific employees. Fixed bug allowing players to create a new product too soon. Added Yesterday product traffic graph for other languages than English. Fixed wrong max. buy amount for buying stocks. Disabled upgrade workstation button when not in office building. Fixed wrong translations in PT-BR version. Show error when player is trying to merge two products of different types. Buffed email marketing campaign. Fixed bug causing wrong ESC behavior after moving an item between floors. Changed office/hosting building quick switcher to a single toggle button Fixed bug causing competitors to stay in Merge in progress state. Fixed bug happening when merging multiple competitors into same product. Increased basement hosting building cost from 10k to 20k to avoid new players renting the wrong building. Disabled ESC key when time machine is running. Changed milestone behavior to only allow unlocking of the next milestone in line. Fixed issue where hosting allocation was 0% for first product. Introduced new one-button building switcher. Hide employee level upgrade tip when max. level reached.

The road to full release

With Beta 16 safely shipped, Im now starting to really work towards the final version of Startup Company. Theres still a lot of work to be done, but its now much clearer to me what needs to be done. To share my vision with you, Ive created this roadmap showing you the future of SC. It will probably change a lot and nothing should be considered as official, but for the first time you can now see where Im headed.

Feature suggestions overflow

Firstly, I would like to thank all of you who send me suggestions and ideas for the game. I really appreciate it and use your suggestions a lot when designing the game. Im currently receiving between 10 and 15 suggestions per day. Thats at least 300 per month! I used to respond to all of your suggestions, but recently I have decided to prioritize developing the game. I still read everything. I hope you understand. :-) Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. Thanks for reading and see you next week! Best, Jonas

[ 2018-07-06 14:49:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Beta 16 is now available! Restart Steam to get it right away! 74 days. That’s the number of days since the last major update. I’m very proud of this release. Not only is it the biggest update yet, it’s also very special to me because Startup Company is now starting to become the game I always envisioned it to be. As with any big update, it is guaranteed that there will still be a ton of bugs, we just haven’t found them yet. If you come across any, please let me know in the Bugs forum (https://steamcommunity.com/app/606800/discussions/1/). I’m going to release hotfixes daily until everything is stable.

Hosting Buildings

Beta 16 is introducing a complete rewrite of the hosting functionality. The first step was adding new buildings dedicated to hosting. There are now three brand new buildings available. Virtual Servers will continue to be part of the game, but a maximum CU cap will be implemented to force players into building their own hosting facilities.

Racks and Servers

In these hosting buildings, you will only be able to place hosting related equipment such as server racks. By clicking on server racks, you will be able to easily configure each rack and design for maximum performance.

City Map

With the introduction of hosting buildings, it was clear that the game needed a better and more immersive way of showing buildings. This will be done with the brand new City Map.

New investor milestones

Beta 15 introduced the new investor milestones which were mainly focused on the early game. Beta 16 adds a bunch of new milestones that get you around both the new hosting center and the new acquisition/buyout feature.

Investment Offers

You will now receive offers from other investors as your product grows. While the investors will own a share of your product, they will also instantly transfer you a ton of cash. This cash can be used to acquire competitors!

Acquire competitors

Once you own 100% of a company through buying all of its stock, you’ll now be able to merge the competitor product into your own product, in the process acquiring the competitor’s users. A merger takes seven days to complete. You’ll have to prepare your own product for new potential users and server demands before starting the merger.

New competitor logos

A new logo pack has also been added to Beta 16. The game now features 100 unique company logos.
So there you have it. I really hope you enjoy this update! Lastly, I would like to say thank you to everyone who continues to support my development of Startup Company. I really appreciate all of your comments and kind words. They keep me going at full speed, even when haters go nuts in the review section! <3 All the best, Jonas

Hotfixes

• Beta 16.1: Hide stock options while merging is active. Disable "move workstation" button while office building is not selected. Fixed various typos/localizations issues.
• Beta 16.2: Fixed bug causing owned stocks percentage to not show 0-1% ownership. French version: Fixed unavailable framework buttons German version: Fixed typo in product merge text Fixed bug allowing players to place hosting equipment in their office. Removed incorrect hosting building expenses from product hosting tab.
• Beta 16.3: Reduced "new product requirements" to be 15 completed milestones instead of complete buyout. Returned missing office items (walls, glass door etc.) Fixed bug causing rack devices to be lost when buying without any space available. Updated "Upgrade Employee Level" feature to add 1 new demand per upgrade. Fixed bug causing product stats to show broken graphs if game was paused. Fixed bug causing "New Tier" dialog to show on every load.
• Beta 16.4: Fixed bug where airconditioners' running cost wasn't included Fixed bug crashing the game after upgrading specific employees.
• Beta 16.5: Fixed bug allowing players to create a new product too soon Added "Yesterday" product traffic graph for other languages than English Fixed wrong max buy amount for buying stocks Disabled "upgrade workstation" button when not in office building Fixed wrong translations in PT-BR version. Show error when player is trying to merge two products of different types. Buffed email marketing campaign. Fixed bug causing wrong ESC behavior after moving an item between floors.
• Beta 16.6: Changed "office/hosting building quick switcher" to a single toggle button Fixed bug causing competitors to stay in "Merge in progress" state. Fixed bug happening when merging multiple competitors into same product. Increased basement hosting building cost from 10k to 20k to avoid new players renting the wrong building. Disable ESC key when time machine is running. Changed milestone behavior to only allow unlocking of the next milestone "in line". Fixed issue where hosting allocation was 0% for first product. Introduced new one-button building switcher Hide employee upgrade level upgrade tip when max level reached.
• Beta 16.7: Added additional file checker to detect missing savegame file while playing.
• Beta 16.8: Fixing bug causing "duplicate rack" feature to fail if not enough cash after SHIFT-clicking.

[ 2018-06-25 11:59:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Wow, what an exciting week this has been. The whole Discord server has been busy testing Beta 16 and fixing the last few remaining bugs. There have been a lot, but hopefully we have fixed most of them by now. Translations for Beta 16 have also been progressing nicely. Last night we completed the last language, which means Beta 16 will instantly be available in all supported languages. The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Another hosting building

Test players quickly discovered that the medium hosting building wasn’t large enough for their needs. To counter this, I’m introducing the Large Hosting Center. With an initial temperature of 10 degrees and a grid size of 30x30, it is the biggest and most expensive building ever in Startup Company.

Investment Offers

You will now receive offers from other investors as your product grows. While the investors will own a share of your product, they will also instantly transfer you a ton of cash. This cash can be used to acquire competitors!

Acquire competitors

Once you own 100% of a company through buying all of its stock, you’ll now be able to merge the competitor product into your own product, in the process acquiring the competitor’s users. A merger takes seven days to complete. You’ll have to prepare your own product for new potential users and server demands before starting the merger.

New competitor logos

A new logo pack has been loaded into the game. The game now features 100 unique company logos.

Beta 16 official release date

As promised last week, here is the official release date for Beta 16: Monday, June 25 at 13:00 CEST Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That’s all for now. I will be back on Monday with the official release note for Beta 16 :-) Thanks for reading! Best, Jonas

[ 2018-06-22 08:08:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

New investor milestones

Beta 15 introduced the new investor milestones which were mainly focused on the early game. Beta 16 adds a bunch of new milestones that get you around both the new hosting center but also the new acquisition/buyout feature.

Hosting Building #2

I received a preview of the upcoming second hosting building just in time for this week’s devlog. The new building comes with a substantial reduction in “initial room temperature”. This allows you to have more servers running with less active cooling.

‘Research All’ button

Wow, we really needed this feature, didn’t we? You can now research all unlocked components/modules with one click. Available for all production employee types.

Auto Start Time Machine

Another convenient feature that a lot of you have requested will be introduced in Beta 16. It will now be possible to automatically start the time machine when the workday is over.

Beta 16 release and next devlog

The next devlog will be out June 22. It will reveal the release date for Beta 16 and a couple of additional features to be introduced. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading. All the best, Jonas

[ 2018-06-08 17:41:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Finally, back at work after a quick 1-week vacation. I’ve been working on balancing and bugfixing the new hosting functionality and I plan to start playtesting Beta 16 next week. The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Air Conditioners

When building your new hosting center, you will quickly start to struggle with room temperature. Even if you add a bunch of rack coolers, your servers will still emit heat into the room. To counter this, you can opt to install air conditioners. While they use up a ton of power, they dramatically reduce the room temperature.

City map v1

The new city map is coming together nicely. It will give you a quick overview of all available buildings, both offices and hosting facilities. In the bottom left corner, you’ll notice a new quick switcher that allows you to switch between your office and hosting building with a single click.

Rack Overlays

I’ve added an overlay to all racks to make it easier to identify and locate overheated or empty racks. The overlay shows the rack’s name (which can be defined by you), status (green = all OK, yellow = reduced performance, red = overhead protection) and the number of used “units” inside the rack.
Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading. All the best, Jonas

[ 2018-06-01 13:42:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Huge progress on the new hosting features this week! The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Racks

As mentioned last week, the new hosting facilities allow you to place racks. Once a rack has been placed, you can install equipment such as servers, coolers, etc. All equipment can be rearranged using drag and drop.

Throughput, overclocking and temperatures

There are now 3 types of servers: web servers, database servers and cache servers. Each instance of a server produces a specific throughput. You’ll have to balance these server times to get the most out of your hosting facility. You can now see real-time stats above the bottom menu:
The new hosting facilities can work side by side with existing virtual servers:

Beta 15 changes

* Show error message when “Disk System” crashes. * Fixed bug causing game to fail when reaching last investor milestone. * Fixed incorrect order of competitors. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading. Next devlog: June 1. All the best, Jonas

[ 2018-05-11 12:59:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, A ton of work has been put into Beta 16 this week. Ive also been working on rectifying a problem causing the first savegame to be lost for a small portion of first-time players. The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Hosting Buildings

Beta 16 is introducing a complete rewrite of the hosting functionality. The first step is adding new buildings dedicated to hosting. The first hosting building to be introduced will be the cheapest option and it will be located in a basement close to the small office. In these new locations, you will only be able to place hosting related equipment such as server racks. By clicking on server racks, you will be able to easily configure each rack and design for maximum performance. Ill describe and show screenshots of the rack configurator in next weeks devlog. Virtual Servers will continue to be part of the game, but a maximum CU cap will be implemented to force players into building their own hosting facilities.

City Map

With the introduction of hosting buildings, it was clear that the game needed a better and more immersive way of showing buildings. This will be done with the brand new City Map. I dont have any screenshots available yet, but I hope to be able to show it in a couple of weeks.

Beta 15 changes

Automatically disable and hide Big UI functionality if screen height is below 1440. If saving to disk fails, the game will now throw an error and stop the game, forcing the player to restart the game. Errors will also be shown to the player for further research. Fixed bug causing the game to allow upgrading efficiency to reach 105% when the maximum is 104%. Added Big UI support to new upgrade feature dialog. Fixed bug causing deleted savegames to reappear. Fixed bug causing load game dialog to crash if two new savegames are created in the same session. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board. Thats all for this week. Thanks for reading. All the best, Jonas

[ 2018-05-04 12:26:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, What an insane week this has been. 14,207 unique players have played a total of 29,678 games since Beta 15s release last Thursday. Safe to say I didn't expect such high numbers one year ago :-) As with all sales, Steam review score is being hammered right now. Went from 76% to 67%. No big deal, we tried this before. This week I have obviously been bug hunting. There have been a couple of UI problems as well as regular bugs. Beta 15.1 was published yesterday, which removed some of the bugs, but I expect to spend at least one more week fixing bugs. The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Improved upgrade feature dialog

By popular demand, the upgrade feature dialog has been greatly improved, and now shows more details about each level. A multiplier has also been added for level upgrades, allowing you to upgrade multiple levels with one click.

Beta 15 minor changes

Fixed bug causing exception when trying to switch floor before the game was fully loaded. Fixed bug causing newly purchased marketing campaign to be instantly canceled. Changed Lead Developer behavior to allow them to select a module even if the requirements are not yet met (missing requirements label shown instead). Fixed bug causing required modules of modules to duplicate if the task was canceled. Rebalanced product type income, making social media less lucrative. Redesigned feature upgrade view. Added confirm button for deleting features. Fixed bug making it impossible to buy NetFix stocks. Fixed bug causing achievements not to be unlocked on Steam. Fixed bug where a milestone payout wouldnt show correctly in the transaction log. Fixed bug making it impossible to click the Move workstation button if the correct floor wasnt selected. Reduced investor buyout price. Increased milestone payouts to allow going through game without completing contracts. Temporary disabled investor's daily cut. Fixed bug causing marketing campaigns to always start at $100.

Whats coming in Beta 16

With Beta 15 successfully released, its time to get started on the next one. While Beta 15 focused on improving the early stage of the game, Beta 16 will focus on improving late-game performance. Firstly, I want to reduce clicks and implement more automation. My first objective is to rewrite the marketing functionality and allow for more complicated setups with much more control. Secondly, Im looking into adding more goals and objectives, especially when it comes to competitors and stocks. Ive received more than 500 unique suggestions from you guys, which Im now working my way through. I hope to introduce something specific in the next week. Thats all for this week. Thanks for reading. All the best, Jonas UPDATE: Devlog #16 is postponed till next week (May 4).

[ 2018-04-20 14:57:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Im delighted to finally announce that Beta 15 is now available on Steam! With this release, Ive been focusing on adding more personality and a stronger startup-feel to the game. I am confident that new players will find the game much more appealing and user-friendly. To all existing players: your savegames are compatible with Beta 15, but please note that the new investor feature is only available on new products. Due to the new interface, feature instances have also been revised so only your activated instances will be included in Beta 15. If you dont like the changes in Beta 15, you can now switch back to Beta 14 using Steams Betas feature. The different versions now use separate savegames.

Feelings & Emotions

In short, the update adds personality, demands and feelings to all of your employees. This week I have been working on emotions. Employees will now express feelings through speech and thoughts.

New Demands System

Work Environment Rating (or WER) has confused players for a long time. Beta 15 will include neither WER nor the office bonus, but instead introduce employee demands. A demand can be specific furniture, benefits, a desk type or short work days. For each demand you fulfill, the employee will receive a speed bonus and will also stay happy for a longer period of time. Employees can generate new demands over time.

Investors

Beta 15 will feature investors for the first time. When starting a new game or creating your first product, youll be asked to select between an investor or bootstrapping. Bootstrapping means taking care of funding yourself. New players should choose an investor. Investors take a cut in revenue but provide both money and advice (tutorial mode). Beta 15 currently only offers one investor, but more will be added later.

Venture Capital and Milestones

The product dialog will contain a new tab called Venture Capital, which replaces the existing Goals feature. In this tab, youll be able to buyout your investor and see a list of all milestones. Milestones are how the investors set their expectations for you. Once you reach a milestone, a fixed dollar amount will be paid out. The dialog also allows you to buy out your investor, meaning you will receive 100% of revenue from then on.

Simplified Infrastructure Tab

A lot of players have been struggling to understand the Infrastructure tab. To make it easier to understand, the tab has been renamed Features. The name change is accompanied by some neat updates:

• To improve instances (now features), you simply have to click Upgrade by hovering over the feature (you no longer need to go to the Lead Dev to improve features).
• Screenshots have been added to visualize the feature.
• The old Quality term has been changed to Level.
• Features can now be upgraded while in use.
• Frameworks now have a limited number of feature slots, starting with three features for the Basic Framework.

Other Beta 15 changes

Discords Rich Presence functionality is now supported. Fixed recruitment bug causing fewer candidates to be put forward if fast-forwarding or using time-machine. Deleted entered email from options.json after subscribing to the newsletter. Improved Big UI/4K support for the product tabs. Fixed bug causing an error to happen when firing employees. Allow mods/workshop items to be installed even if Steam Cloud Sync is disabled. Buffed rate of losing users when potential users are lower than registered users. Adjusted required tiers for unlocking employees to fit new investor feature. Reduced server requirements and increased prices for Virtual Clusters. Increased income per user for all product types. Fixed bug causing changes to mods to be reset when reloading the game. Force player to create a product when starting a new game. Disabled Angular debug info for performance gains. Fixed issue causing an error when switching to the menu while employee dialog is open. Fixed issue causing contracts requiring modules to be too cheap. Fixed issue causing the fast forward function to skip every third in-game minute. Changed click behavior to react to button down instead of button up. Added keyboard shortcut CTRL+1-5 to quickly switch between floors. Added number formatting to product graphs. Increased marketing effect. Nerfed organic growth. Updated product stats page to show new visitors instead of origin.

I hope you enjoy it!

So, there you have it. Beta 15 in all its glory! I really hope you like all the changes. Im now going to take a few days off before getting started on Beta 16, which will introduce at least two big new features! More information coming in future devlogs. Thanks for reading! All the best, Jonas

[ 2018-04-12 13:55:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Great week. I have been doing a lot of playtesting on Beta 15 and am confident everything will be ready for the April 12 release date. :-) The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

New demands

A lot of new demands have been added to the game. As I want users to experience them in-game, I will not go and spoil it by revealing them all here. However, I have provided a taster of one of the new demands in the screenshot above. Here, Mildred Burns is evidently not happy about Scott Currys work effort!

Switching from Steam Cloud API to Steam Auto-Cloud

A number of new players have experienced that their first savegame never gets saved, resulting in a loss of progress. After days of debugging, Ive never been able to reproduce the issue. However, I believe its related to Cloud sync/conflicts. Beta 15 is now using Steams Auto-Cloud feature, which I hope will solve the problem. :-)

Discords Rich Presence

Startup Company now supports Discords Rich Presence functionality. The current in-game day and tier will automatically be shown. The feature can be disabled in your Discord settings.

Other Beta 15 changes

Fixed recruitment bug causing fewer candidates to be put forward if fast-forwarding or using time-machine. Deleted entered email from options.json after subscribing to the newsletter. Improved Big UI/4K support for the product tabs. Fixed bug causing an error to happen when firing employees. Allow mods/workshop items to be installed even if Steam Cloud Sync is disabled. Buffed rate of losing users when potential users are lower than registered users. Rebalanced Adjusted required tiers when for unlocking employees to fit new investor feature. Reduced server requirements and increased prices for Virtual Clusters. Increased income per user for all product types. Fixed bug causing changes to mods to be reset when reloading the game. Force player to create a product when starting a new game. Disabled Angular debug info for performance gains. Im really looking forward to next weeks release. Fingers crossed youll like it! :-) Thats all for now. Thanks for reading. All the best, Jonas

[ 2018-04-06 15:35:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, First of all, sorry for the delay in publishing this devlog. Last week I was hit by a nasty flu/fever and haven’t really been able to work until today (Tuesday). Fortunately, I’ve made a quick recovery and am back at full speed. All DMs/emails/threads/tweets should have been answered by now. If not, please hit me up again.

Rebalancing one more time

Beta 14 introduced a large rebalance of server demands, causing a lot of irritation and complaints amongst users. Unfortunately, I have to do it once more for Beta 15. The good thing is that demands will be lower, meaning more profits for your products. Good thing we’re in Early Access, right? :-) The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Beta 15 official release date!

It’s finally time to set the date! Beta 15 will be released on Thursday, April 12. I wanted to release on a Friday, but I’m not taking my chances with Friday 13! ːsteammockingː Beta 15 will include:

[ 2018-03-27 13:20:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, I feel that the game is really coming together quickly at the moment. The new investor feature is bringing a whole new feeling to the game. As I have said before, Beta 15 is undoubtedly going to be the biggest update to the game so far. While there’s no release date available yet, I expect it to be shipped around the beginning of April. The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Updated Product Creation Page

The product creation page is now being shown as the first page when you start a new game. It has been updated to show competitors for each product type. A new competitor has been added called NetTix.

Simplified Infrastructure Tab

A lot of players have been struggling to understand the Infrastructure tab. To make it easier to understand, the tab has been renamed “Features”. The name change is accompanied by some neat updates:

• To improve instances (now features), you simply have to click “Upgrade” by hovering over the feature (you no longer need to go to the Lead Dev to improve features).
• Screenshots have been added to visualize the feature.
• The old “Quality” term has been changed to “Level”.
• Features can now be upgraded while in use.
• Frameworks now have a limited number of “feature slots”, starting with three features for the Basic Framework.

Updated Researcher

The Researcher will now generate Research Points that you can spend on unlocking features and frameworks. Using a points system makes it much easier to administer compared to the previous solution where you had to choose which framework/feature to research. I plan on using Research Points to unlock other aspects of the game in the future.

The Advisor

Introducing the advisor as part of the new investor update. When you choose to partner with an investor, you’ll now get helpful messages/instructions from your advisor, telling you how to complete the next milestone. Obviously, this works as a tutorial mode in disguise. The advisor can be closed and re-opened by clicking on it. New profile photos for advisors/investors are in the making :-)

Minor Beta 15 Changes

[ 2018-03-09 12:51:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, I’ve had a great week and made a lot of progress on Beta 15! The game’s Steam Review Score has once again fallen below 70%. I believe this is related to the new Steam sales that were made last week. I only shipped one hotfix this week. Beta 14 seems pretty stable now.

Beta 14.2

[ 2018-02-23 13:27:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Firstly, I’d like to apologize for the extensive balancing changes for Beta 14 (and the 14.1 hotfix). I know how annoying rebalancing is for you as a player, but it is unfortunately unavoidable while we’re still in Early Access. One week after the release of Beta 14, I can confirm that it’s probably the most bug-free release so far. I only spent the weekend + Monday fixing bugs. This took almost two weeks for Beta 13! This means I’ve already been able to start work on Beta 15. The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Beta 14 Changes

[ 2018-02-16 16:13:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta 14 is finally here! My priority with Beta 14 has been to iron out features that felt inefficient or clumsy. A general complaint has been that there is too much clicking in the game. I hope Beta 14 removes a lot of these clicks and makes the gameplay less cumbersome. Products have once again been rebalanced. Beta 13 allowed you to gain more users than the population of the world. I’ve fixed this in Beta 14. Take note that your product will now instantly start to lose users if you have more than two billion users. Server demands has also been buffed a lot. This is intended!

Weekends and days off

The HR Manager can now control all employee schedules at once. You can also define which days of the week the employees should take off.

Tracking stock prices

Competitor stock prices are now tracked, making it much easier to figure out when to buy and sell stocks.

The Activity Log

The new activity log replaces the current notification system. Instead of hiding your notifications, you now get a static overview of all activity in the game.

Production Functionality

The new automated production feature is currently being tested. Currently, you have to manually set the minimum stock amount for each available component/module. Once the limit is reached, employees stop working.

Auto-repeat for everyone!

Players have always disliked the first 10 minutes of the game because of the high volume of clicking that is required. Together with the “Production feature”, I’ve unlocked the Auto-Repeat function for all employees, whether they are assigned to a manager or not. Instead, the manager’s main purpose is to help assign tasks and boost productivity by adding the speed bonus. This should help get rid of a substantial portion of early-game clicks :-)

Employee Training

You can now use training to increase the speed of your employees. Each employee has a “Max Speed” or “Potential Speed”. Once you’ve trained your employee to his/her maximum speed, you’ll be able to upgrade the employee. After upgrading, a higher “Max Speed” will now be available, until the employee reaches “Expert” level. The employee’s final “Max Speed” will vary from employee to employee. Putting hours into training employees will result in higher speeds at lower salaries than simply hiring “Expert” level employees.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy Beta 14! All the best, Jonas

[ 2018-02-09 20:12:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, This week I’ve made a couple of improvements to the gameplay that I hope make the game feel less repetitive. The devlog gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Various changes/fixes

[ 2018-02-02 14:54:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, I’ve had another fantastic week in terms of productivity. The number of bugs and error reports has been very low, which has allowed me to really focus on development. The Friday Update gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Bad Reviews and Big Changes

Since December, Startup Company’s review score has decreased from 89% (Very Positive) to 64% (Mixed). To be honest, I don’t entirely understand the reason for this, except that the proportion of negative reviews has increased. In response to this downturn, I believe the best thing I can do is listen and make improvements. This has led to a number of changes in the game:

Auto-repeat for everyone!

Players have always disliked the first 10 minutes of the game because of the high volume of clicking that is required. Together with the “Production feature”, I’ve unlocked the Auto-Repeat function for all employees, whether they are assigned to a manager or not. Instead, the manager’s main purpose is to help assign tasks and boost productivity by adding the speed bonus. This should help get rid of a substantial portion of early-game clicks :-)

Revised vacation controls

The vacation feature is being renamed to “Send home”. You can now choose between 1 and 3 days. 3 days still guarantees that an employee’s mood will be at 100% upon their return to work, but most of the time 1 day is sufficient.

Employee Training

Yes, it’s finally here! Following a large number of requests on Conflux, I have decided to add an employee training feature:
Each employee now has a “Max Speed” or “Potential Speed”. Once you’ve trained your employee to his/her maximum speed, you’ll be able to upgrade the employee. After upgrading, a higher “Max Speed” will now be available, until the employee reaches “Expert” level. The employee’s final “Max Speed” will vary from employee to employee. Putting hours into training employees will result in higher speeds than simply hiring “Expert” level employees.

Various changes/fixes

[ 2018-01-19 15:21:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, This week has been extremely productive! In addition to the changes below, I’ve also been working on launching Startup Company on another large online gaming platform. I recommend following Hovgaard Games on Twitter if you’re interested in finding out more. The Friday Update gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Changes this week

[ 2018-01-12 18:09:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, I hope you all enjoyed the holidays! Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on rewriting the disk operations of the game. A lot of people experienced lag in the game because the game would wait for all disk operations to complete before resuming. All operations have been moved to a second thread, ensuring that the main thread won’t be blocked anymore. It has been a tricky and time-consuming task, but I simply have to prioritize game breaking issues. The Friday Update gives a sneak peek into what has been developed on the game over the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Changes this week

[ 2018-01-05 10:47:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, This week I have been busy with various non-development related stuff. Startup Company is attending the Steam Winter Sales with a 20% discount (first discount ever). I hope to see a lot of new players joining us in the next days :-) The Friday Update gives a sneak peek into what have been developed on the game for the past week. It is not a new release and is not available yet. New features are always released as official Beta releases.

Changes this week

[ 2017-12-22 13:48:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Another great week of work. Here's what I've completed:

Changes

• Resolved an issue causing Lead Devs to break when deleting feature instances they were working on.
• Updated the savegame dialog to support duplicate saves.
• Updated the savegame dialog to filer out savegames not ending with ".json".
• Changed the finance view from showing the last 30 days to showing the next 30 days for your income.
• Added a Christmas Tree (!!)
• Rebalanced competitor offers when bidding for contracts.
• Resolved an issue causing modules to show invalid (and high) production time.
• Resolved an issue where the office bonus was not recalculated immediately when purchasing new furniture.
• Increased mood resting from 0.05 to 0.125 per hour.
• Employees now quit at 15% mood instead of 25%.
• Reduced max users for competitors and own products to ~2 billion.
• Resolved an issue causing competitors to either become too big or go bankrupt.
• Adjusted balancing for product's potential users.

Merry Christmas

The game now includes a cosy Christmas Tree, adding a huge 10% office bonus.

Weekends!

As announced in the previous firday update I've been working on improving the HR Manager's functionality and tweaking the employees' need for vacation. The HR Manager can now control all employees' schedule at once. You can also define which days of the week the employees should take a day off.
This update also introduces "weekdays" to the game's lifecycle. The topbar now includes the current day:

Tracking of stock prices

Competitor stock prices are now tracked, making it much easier to figure out when to buy and sell stocks.
I'm currently designing the new "Team Feature". Basically the feature allows managers to easily control component/module production. This feature is the highest voted ever. You can read about it here: https://startupcompany.cnflx.io/public/ideas/468 That's all for now. Thanks for reading. I'll be back next Friday :-) All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-12-15 15:34:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Super busy week! Because of the release of Beta 13, I've been spending a lot of time replying to comments, fixing savegames and hunting down new bugs. Overall the release has been pretty successful! Lots of players returned to the game. Peak was 188 concurrent players.

Bugfixes this week

• Fixed error message: "1:1:Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'Web' of null"
• Competitors list shown as empty or with $0 valuation.
• Game not able to pause.
• Components/modules in inventory shows as "NaN" or goes to 0.
• Wrong symlinks for Mac build.
• Execute mods safely to avoid game crashes caused by mods.
• Added versioning for error tracking + background worker tracking.
• Fixed contracts stock at #21.
• Execute mod events in safemode, to avoid game breaking when skipping to next day with bugged mods.
• Fixed bug where first new server would crash instantly.
• Added backwards-compatibility for some mods (missing enums).
• Increased potential users.
• Decreased response time by feature instances.
• Fixed bug where corrupted savegames would crash the "Load Game" dialog.
• Cleanup old completed contracts for smaller savegame files.
• Cleanup deleted employees from managers (caused by bug in Beta 12)
• When upgrading efficiency, requirements would show as NaN for every 10th upgrade.
• When creating a new savegame (and not restarting the game), competitors list would be empty after 7 days.
• Increased (2x) CU and price per day for Large Virtual Server.

In total I ended up shipping 7 hotfixes for Beta 13. It seems to be stable now. I do not plan on shipping more hotfixes for Beta 13, but if something comes up, I'll of course look into it. Instead, I'm now going to focus on Beta 14. I don't have a list of planned features, but I'll keep you guys updated every Friday.

The New HR Manager

The most annoying thing about the game (right now) seems to be sending employees on vacation. This will be fixed by introducing "Teams". Each HR Manager will represent one team which has it's own independent schedule. Shared schedule All employees will now adapt to the schedule defined for the team. No more manually setting the schedule for each employee. Weekly day(s) off The HR Manager can now control weekly days off for employees. Enough days off can almost eliminate the need for vacations. You will also be able to switch between "combined" and "spread" mode. "Combined" will send employees on their day off at the same time. Spread will even it throughout the week. That's all for now. Thanks for reading. I'll be back next Friday :-) All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-12-08 19:49:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Finally! Beta 13 is now available on Steam. If you didn't receive it already, simply restart your Steam client. My main objective with this update is to bring more content and extend the lifetime of each playthrough. The new skyscraper ships with 80 workstations. I will probably increase that very soon. Product features have been heavily redesigned. Lots of complexity has been added. I'm really looking forward to your feedback!

New features

• Redesigned product features: http://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791458214897/announcements/detail/2361435517395719727
• New building: Skyscraper! The first building with multiple floors.
• New furniture: Bookshelf, coffee table, glass door and small meeting table.
• 5 brand new soundtracks!
• When upgrading buildings, furniture will be moved to the new location.
• All layering issues fixed (Isodom.js now open-sourced).
• Contracts are now shown as an overlay beneath products (if any).
• Desks can now be upgraded directly from the workstation dialog.
• When running out of money, players are forced to take out a new loan, until no more loans is available.
• Electron upgraded to 1.8.1 (fixes various driver and performance issues).
• Optimized engine, improving performance even more.
• Italian support added.
• Contract sizes are now limited by employee level.
• New candidates get added to the bottom of the table instead of the top.

Bug fixes

• Resolved an issue where items could not be placed at X: 0, Y: 0
• options.json is now automatically recreated in the event of it becoming corrupt
• The game now ignores corrupted save games (malformed JSON)
• Feature Instance: Efficiency upgrades are now based on level (increases every 10th level).
• Removed a component requirement for feature instance bonuses.
• Resolved an issue that caused components to not getting returned when cancelling instance improvements.
• Resolved an issue that caused the recruitment view to show the wrong unlock tier.
• Added the option to fire employees directly from the employee dialog.
• Corrected several typos in loan view.
• Resolved an issue responsible for breaking the game when changing employee working hours.
• Changed the process name from "electron" to "StartupCompany" so the game is easier to spot in task managers.
• Added online error logging (updated EULA to this extent as well)
• Fixed missing localization in mods dialog.
• New employees no longer get 100% mood, but randomize between 70% and 100% (this effectively resolves all employees asking for vacation at the same time).
• The game now shows a warning when attempting to upgrade a framework without having the required amount of money.
• Resolved an issue that would prevent sorting employees by level.
• Changed Steam Cloud saving mechanism; the game will now always prefer the newest version.
• The game now automatically loads the last save game upon starting the game (green Continue button)
• Resolved an issue that would cause the "chargeable hours" to be calculated incorrectly for contracts that involve modules.
• Resolved an issue that would cause the wrong contract number to be displayed when the player has multiple Sales Executives.
• The game now pans to the center of the office upon load.
• Fixed issue where the working schedule didn't update correctly.
• Fixed a bug where rotating an item while pressing SHIFT would drop the item.
• Disable the manager bonus if the manager is not at work.
• Fixed a bug where closing the game while a Sales Executive is awaiting a competitor’s offer would crash the employee dialog.
• Changed "Buy Stock" slider's maximum value to be based on bank balance.
• Fixed a bug where unassigned employees would never complete their vacation or change mood.
• Fixed a bug where employee would still show as auto-repeating after manager quits.

Compatibility

Unfortunately, all your product users will be lost with this update (it was impossible to convert it). If you have been using mods for custom frameworks or product types, the game will try to make it work, but it might reset to the default options. Hope you enjoy it, I really put a lot of effort into this update. See you next Friday :-) All the best, Jonas

Hotfixes

Beta 13.1: Fixed error message: "1:1:Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'Web' of null"

[ 2017-12-01 14:25:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Great week, lots of progress. Here's what's new:

• Resolved an issue where items could not be placed at X: 0, Y: 0
• options.json is now automatically recreated in the event of it becoming corrupt
• The game now ignores corrupted savegames (malformed JSON)
• Feature Instance: Efficiency upgrades are now based on the level (increases every 10th level).
• Removed a component requirement for feature instance bonuses.
• Resolved an issue causing components not getting returned when canceling instance improvements.
• Resolved an issue causing the recruitment view to show the wrong unlock tier.
• Added the option to fire employees directly from the employee dialog.
• Corrected several typos in loan view.
• Resolved an issue responsible for breaking the game when changing employee working hours.
• Changed the process name from "electron" to "StartupCompany" so the game is easier to spot in task managers.
• Added online error logging (updated EULA to this extent as well)
• Fixed missing localization in mods dialog.
• New employees no longer get 100% mood, but randomize between 70% and 100% (this effectively resolves all employees asking for vacation at the same time).
• The game now shows a warning when attempting to upgrade a framework without having the required amount of money.
• Resolved an issue that was preventing sorting employees by level.
• Changed Steam Cloud saving mechanism; the game will now always prefer the newest version.
• The game now automatically loads the last savegame upon starting the game (green Continue button)
• Resolved an issue causing the "chargeable hours" being calculated incorrectly for contracts that involve modules.
• Resolved an issue causing the the wrong contract number to be displayed when the player has multiple Sales Executives.
• The game now pans to the center of the office upon load.

I also managed to add some new features: Updated Competitors View
Valuations are now being calculated every 7th day, making it much easier to see how you're comparing with competitors. Product Goals
Goals is introduced not only to guide the player to improve products, but also to increase product valuation. A brand new building!
The new skyscraper introduces multiple floors, allowing you to seat 100+ employees! That's all for now. Thanks for reading. I'll be back next Friday :-) All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-11-24 19:29:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Welcome to the first issue of the Friday Update.

What is this update about?

People have been repeatedly requesting more information, more updates and more builds. I've been thinking and this is my solution. Shipping new builds (updates to the game) is very time consuming. I have to test them on all platforms and make sure everything works. Even if I just add a single piece of furniture, I can't just gamble and hope for the best. Everything has to be tested. It is because of this I've decided not to change my release strategy. I will continue working towards big updates, bringing you one big update at a time, instead of wasting time releasing the same content in multiple smaller updates. However, what I am changing is how often you will hear from me from here on out. Starting today, come Friday, I will release a Friday Update, showing you exactly what I've achieved in the past week.

Progress overview

Since my last update an enormous amount of changes have been made to the game. Layering issues and isodom.js We've finally managed to fix every single layering bug! This is huge, because this bug has been present for more than 2 years. Furthermore, we've also decided to open source the engine behind Startup Company. We call it isodom.js and you can find it here: https://github.com/hovgaardgames/isodom.js I would like to thank DonnySim for all his hard work on isodom. Much appreciated! New furniture We've managed to put together a couple pieces of new furniture:
Improved marketing You can now customize marketing campaigns by defining a budget and timespan; and text ads no longer demand components. Effectively, this allows you to market your products from the moment you begin the game.
Level based feature instances Feature instances now have a level which will be upgraded as you improve them.
Server crashes! Servers are now capable of crashing, which will force you to implement new ones. This will put a constant demand on your DevOps, making the role much more important throughout the game.
Directly upgrade desks Desks can now directly be upgraded from the employee dialog as opposed to the old mechanism in which you would have to remove an employee manually prior to upgrading.
Real-time dashboards As announced in the previous Startup Company Steam announcement we have been working on real time dashboards. This feature is now fully functional! All the data shown is 100% generated in real time so you will see your server-load and the number of online users constantly changing!
Frameworks improved Come this update, frameworks will really start making a difference. You'll be paying for both users and upfront licenses. Frameworks will improve the efficiency of your features.
Performance optimizations I discovered there were some huge issues with how the game engine handles calculations. With the upcoming update the game will be approximately 40% less demanding. These are just the most exciting updates. I will provide a full changelog when Beta 13 is officially released (within the next 2 weeks). That's all for now. Thanks for reading. I'll be back next Friday :-) All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-11-17 15:18:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, It's been some time since you heard from me. I've been working hard on the upcoming (and first) content update for Startup Company. Beta 13 will contain three remarkable updates:

• Response time and "online users"
• Feature instances
• Huge performance improvements

Response time and "online users"

A picture is worth a thousand words:
The product dialog is now much more exciting than earlier. The new Dashboard shows you realtime analytics! Online users are constantly changing based on time of day, size of your userbase and any active marketing campaigns. Response has been introduced. If your product becomes too slow, users will not convert and your conversion rate decreases. You will also start to lose your existing users if you do not improve the situation.

Feature instances and Infrastructure

The new infrastructure view shows you a breakdown of your product:
Features are now limited to what is available for your selected product type (Social media, shopping platform, etc.). Researchers are able to produce "feature instances" that can be enabled on products. Instances have two properties: Quality and Efficiency. Quality determines how good the feature is and how many users it can attract. Efficiency determines how many server resources the instance will reserve. Keeping a low response time is done by a combination of improving efficiency of feature instances and installing servers. Servers are expensive, but improving efficiency takes time.

Beta 13

The above is only the primary changes. Beta 13 will also contain updates that improves performance (more than ever), changes how marketing and servers work, plus various other improvements. I'm super excited about this release. The update adds much needed complexity. It's targeted to all of us who loves numbers, stats and gauges! Thanks for the continuous support, it's very very much appreciated! All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-10-23 12:35:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Finally the Big UI update is ready! Once again, this was not a small task, as I had to go through all of the UI and optimize it for both regular and large screens. It's now ready and you can enable it in the Options view:
I understand this update is not exciting for anyone but people with 4K screens, but I believe that usability and bug fixing had to be my first priority since release. Good thing is, that I'm done with all bugs/usability issues and can finally start focusing on new content! The next update will be Beta 13 containing brand new content. More about that later. Remember to vote for your favorite suggestions/ideas here: http://status.startupcompanygame.com That's all for now. Thanks for sticking around. I'm really looking forward to introduce new content to all of you. All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-09-22 20:25:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, I know, another one. I would have waited with this update, but I really think these bugs are too important for me to wait till the next big update. This update only kill bugs, no new features, no improvements.

• Optimized building assets for faster rendering.
• Pause UI updates while dragging/panning.
• Allow 15 pixels dragging before disabling click events (it was sometimes hard to click workstations)
• Fixed bug causing multiple achievements not being achievable.
• Fixed bug where you could break the game by switching between employees without closing dialog first.
• Added missing formatting on stock buttons
• Fixed bug where hype could be created by releasing new versions without new features.
• Clean up Chrome cache on startup to fix white-screen issue.
• Changed order of lifecycle execution to avoid items at 100% not being moved to inventory.
• Fixed bug where it was possible to have 2 windows open at once.
• Increased UI refresh rate of in-game timestamp to visualize fast-forward better.
• Fixed bug where animations wouldn't stop when using SPACE key for pausing.
• Changed required XP for Tier 13-17.
• Fixed bug allowing a workstation or furniture to be placed on walls.
• Fixed bug where you would be able to duplicate components using Lead Developer.

Also, remember to vote for your favorite suggestions/ideas here: http://status.startupcompanygame.com That's all for now. Sorry for any frustration the bugs might have caused :-) All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-08-29 10:20:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, I'm super excited to finally release this update to all of you. Since release the biggest complaint has been lag and performance issues when workstation count increases. The solution was not easy and I'm not even done yet. I've been rewriting large parts of the code base to make rendering more efficient. This rewrite also allows me to improve performance further. Hopefully this update will make the game playable for most players. I'm still targeting a lot of performance improvements in the future. System requirements on the Store page have also been increased. I will reduce the requirements as more improvements are implemented.

Beta 12.6 changes (hotfix)

- Issue causing some users not being able to load savegames

Beta 12.7 changes

Features:

• Added Russian localization
• Added Turkish localization
• Disabled user loss for products until it's fully fixed (was causing players to lose all users overnight).

Fixes:

• Optimized the way workstation updates is rendered.
• Detached internal lifecycle from UI.
• Optimized amount of repaints to reduce CPU usage.
• Automatically disable Developer Mode after second launch (some players were not able to start game after enabling it).
• Optimized the way user growth was calculated (was exponentially increasing calculation time).
• Fixed bug where crashing mods could not be unsubscribed.
• Disable F5 and F12 shortcuts if Developer Mode is disabled.
• Increases amount of candidates generated.
• Fixed various translation issues.
• Show managers in HR Managers employee list.

Next up

Even though I would love to keep working on performance, I will now move my focus to fixing bugs. You have all been very active at reporting bugs, so I have plenty of work ahead of me :-) Thank you for your attention, I hope you enjoy this update! All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-08-26 10:09:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, I've been working non-stop since release fixing the current performance problems. Right now my highest priority is fixing game-breaking issues like this. When everyone is able to play the game I'll start fixing regular bugs. I hope you understand my priority.

Changes

* Added safety measures to avoid corrupt savegames when saved to disk (atomic operation). * Small performance improvements when rendering workstation changes. * Improved performance of "Jump to start of day". * Ensure last savegame is not automatically loaded to ensure broken savegames won't crash the game. * Automatically unload savegame and show error message if savegame is corrupt (no more endless loading spinner).

Next up

Next up is rewriting the code that renders workstations. This is by far the most expensive mechanic in the game, so I do expect huge improvements. The rewrite will take time. I don't want to promise anything yet, but a new release will be pushed online as soon as it's done. As always, thank you for all your massive support! Can't wait to start working on all your amazing suggestions. All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-08-18 19:59:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone!

Much feels

Wow. Just wow. This has been the craziest weekend, probably in my life. The Early Access release has been better, than I ever could have imagined. Within a few hours of release, Startup Company was present on Steam Global Top Sellers. More than 1000 concurrent players have been building companies non-stop since the release. I feel incredible humble and grateful. It's hard to believe. All of this would never have happened without you guys, the community. Thank you, really, the support has been tremendous! So those of you who have been following me for some time, know that I'm not a full time game developer. I work as Web Developer and have created SC in my spare time. Well, that's about to change. In the future, I will work full time on Startup Company! As you can imagine, this allows me to put 2 or 3 times more hours into the development. I cannot wait. I got so much amazing feedback from all of you. Now it's time to really make this game awesome! UPDATE: LIRIK just played the game. I'm absolutely starstruck! You can watch it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/166687767?t=01h15m51s

Beta 12.4 hotfix released

No release without the need for an urgent hotfix. If you don't see the "Beta 12.4" in your main menu simply restart Steam for the update to kick in.

• Exit button not clickable on small resolutions (less than 758 pixels height)
• Moving workstation by mistake instead of selecting employee (Changed to left click to select, right click to move).
• Mod archives was corrupted and didn't work on Mac/Linux under some scenarios. All mods has to be republished (sorry).
• The Day 31-email was causing lots of people to believe I accused them for piracy. The paragraph has been removed (that was never my intention, you're my heroes!).

Next update

I'll now focus on the following:

• Users suddenly drops overnight for products.
• Performance/optimization issues in mid/late-game.
• General minor bug fixing

I'm trying to keep up with all the comments, emails, tweets, chat messages and bug reports. I'm sorry if you're still waiting. I'm doing everything I can to keep up :-) That's all for now. Thank you for all your amazing support! See you till next update. Jonas

[ 2017-08-14 00:14:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Time for yet another update. Lots of stuff is happening in the basement (this is where I develop Startup Company).

Steam Workshop/Mods

I've been putting a lot of hours into making a great workshop integration. When you're done creating a mod, all you have to do is click the "Upload to Steam" button. The currently logged in Steam account will be the owner of the mod, and every time you launch Startup Company from this account you will be able to update the mod directly from the game:
Subscribed mods will automatically be installed and updated when the game is launched. I'm working (with help from the community) on improving the Mods documentation. It can be found here: https://github.com/hovgaardgames/startupcompany/wiki/Modding If you need help getting started, we have amazing people ready to help you out in the #modding channel at https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames Spoiler Alert: I noticed a mod under development called "SC Online"!

Beta 12

Beta 12 will be released together with the Steam Early Access release on August 11th. It contains lots of bugfixes and better balancing. A small but super helpful update that I love, is the new hovering effect on items and workstations:
That's all for now. I'm super excited (and nervous) about the Early Access release in 7 days. Fingers crossed that we'll have a great release. Tell your friends! :-) All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-08-04 15:13:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Just a super quick update. I'm going against the recent trend: I'm moving the Steam Early Access release one day backwards.

The release date is changing from 12th to 11th of August 2017.

I hope you find this small change acceptable :-) Steam keys will be send out to all pre-orders very soon, so all you early birds are ready from the beginning. You can redeem the game on Steam, but it will simply now be playable until 11th of August. The Steam release will include Beta 12, containing the Competitors & Stocks update and many other tweaks and updates. That's all from me. All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-07-25 22:01:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! I just wanted to share a neat concept I'm currently working on. A lot of you have asked about the possibility to see competing products. A lot of you have also requested some kind of stock market in-game. Guess what, that's exactly what I'm working on!

The competitors view

This new view shows you information about all the products currently available. All data is live and changes as the market evolves. It will also show your own products including your market share. Clicking a product takes you to the product details views:

The product details view

This view shows you a breakdown of the selected product. This is also where you can buy and sell stocks. I will add a historic timeline showing the progress of stock value later on. You earn money from products you own stocks in. So that's it. Please notice that this is indeed concept work. Nothing official, everything is up for change. However the first playtests of the new feature looks promising. It feels like a great way of spending your money to earn money. What do you guys think? Any suggestions for improvements? Please let me know in the comments below :-) Thanks for the support! All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-07-16 15:46:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta 11 has just been released to all pre-orders of the game.

What's new

• Translations: Added Brazilian Portuguese and Simplified Chinese.
• Bugs and improvements: 35 issues have been solved. See them all here: https://github.com/hovgaardgames/startupcompany/milestone/8?closed=1
• Modding: Even better modding support. See more here: https://github.com/hovgaardgames/startupcompany/wiki/Modding
• Achievements: Added in-game achievements. See them all here: http://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791458214897/announcements/detail/2790391902830786124
• New Recruitment System: Instead of simply headhunting employees you now have to wait for candidates to apply.
• Steam Integration: Behind the scenes Beta 11 is running with Steam integration. Preparing the release 12th of August.

Pre-order now

If you can't wait for the game to be ready on Steam, you can pre-order the game now at The Official Startup Company Website to gain instant access to the private Betas (including Beta 11).

[ 2017-07-07 10:33:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! I'm super happy to announce Beta 11 will contain the long awaited HR Manager. The new employee type will contain the following features:

• List the mood of all controlled employees and send on vacation from a unified list.
• Control and change the working hours of all controlled employees.

I am also considering adding a productivity boost to Managers controlled by the HR Manager. More about that later. Here's some screenshots:

Beta 11 is also very close to be ready. I will keep you guys updated in the following days. All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-07-06 10:25:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Just a quick update. I've added Achievements to the game (integrates with Steam of course). Here is the list of what we got so far: Enjoy Your Stay Hired 1 employee Interviewer Hire 5 employees Employment Machine Hire 10 employees You're Out Fire 1 employee You Aswell Fire 5 employees Amateurs Fire 10 employees Economic Setback Don't complete any contracts for 14 days Starvation Don't complete any contracts for 30 days Into Black Have a monthly profit of at least $0 It's Something Complete your first contract Same But Different Install 1 mod Install All The Mods Install 5 mods A Small Loan of a Million Dollars Take out 1 loan Hope you like it, more will come! :-) All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-06-16 15:56:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! I can finally announce the official release date of Startup Company (Early Access): 12 August, 2017! Right now I'm working hard on getting the Steam integration done for all platforms. Hopefully achievements and Trading Cards will be ready for the EA release. If you haven't already, please consider clicking the "Add to wishlist" button, even if you have pre-ordered already (it will boost the game on Steam!). To everyone who pre-ordered the game at www.startupcompanygame.com: You will receive a Steam key by email shortly after the EA release. That's all for now. if you like the game, tell your friends :-) All help spreading the news is super duper much appreciated! All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-06-12 15:06:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

The newly released Beta 10 includes a revised version of the mod support. The new version allows you to easily create your own mods using regular web technologies like HTML, CSS and Javascript. You can use Chome Developer Tools to develop your game. Simply turn on Developer Mode in the options view in Startup Company. Example and documentation can be found on our Github Wiki: Startup Company Wiki: Modding. If you need any help, please don't hestitate to contact me directly on Discord: Hovgaard Games Discord Server. My username is jhovgaard and I'm almost always available to help you out, just leave me a DM :-) I am currently working on adding support for pushing your mods to Steam Workship directly from the game. More on that later. That's all for now. I am really really looking forward to see all your awesome ideas come to life! All the best, Jonas

[ 2017-06-01 14:10:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta 10 has just been released to all pre-orders of the game. Beta 10 is a small update compared to Beta 9, but it brings very important new features that I wanted to ship ASAP.  

What's new

• Translations: Switch between English, French, German and Spanish in the options view.
• Marketer employee type: Boost your products by using the new Marketer.
• Modding: Modding has been strongly improved. Start building today, it's all HTML and Javascript: Github Wiki: Modding
• UI Optimizations: Various UI optimizations improving usability.
• Bugfixes: Fixed more than 30 bugs.

Pre-order now

If you can't wait for the game to be ready on Steam, you can pre-order the game now at The Official Startup Company Website to gain instant access to the private Betas (including Beta 10).

[ 2017-05-26 16:10:24 CET ] [ Original post ]