With this update, we are making it something of a tradition that every time we release Game Dev Tycoon on a new platform, we update all existing platforms with some new features.
Two years ago we released the game on mobile and brought a big update to Steam including lots of UI improvements, as well as the ultra-difficult "pirate mode".
Cross-platform save sharing
This time, to celebrate yet another platform release (hint: something something Ninvento Swap), we are bringing a brand new feature to Steam: cross-platform save support.
With cross-platform save support you can take your save file to wherever you want to play, regardless of which platform (PC, mobile, Switch etc.) you play on.
To use this new feature, wait for Steam to update your game installation to v1.7.0. After that, you can access this feature in the loading screen, simply click on the little cog icon next to the slot you want to upload, acknowledge the usage policy, click upload and a few seconds later you will have a short code that you can then use to download that same save somewhere else.
Here's a quick demonstration.
Play Game Dev Tycoon with us!
This is not only useful if you want to continue your game session on a different device, but can also be used to share your save file with friends, or even play collaboratively. On our Discord server we made great use of this feature yesterday, where players take turns running a single company and hopefully completing a run-through together.
If you want to join, check out our Discord server and take a look in the #gdt-discord-plays channel.
Other changes
The update contains some other smaller fixes and changes, Farming and RPG is no longer a terrible combination (fair enough Stardew Valley), and we've fixed a particular spiffy exploit were you could gain lots of money by clicking on the side bar notifications repeatedly. Hey, if you want to cheat, just install cheat mod, okay?
Some of you might also have spotted another small addition: you can now delete a save slot... finally. It only took us eight years to add that 🤣 seriously though, there's reasons we didn't touch it for so long. It was surprisingly difficult and tricky to do right.
Known Issues
We are working on a fix for an issue where performance on the Mac version is significantly slower than it should be. It seems to be a Catalina/Notarization-related problem (but happens on all Mac OS versions). We are actively working on a fix but don't have an ETA yet.
Behind-the-scenes
This feature was actually implemented in our upcoming game Tavern Keeper first and the team just found it so super useful that we wanted to back port it to Game Dev Tycoon too. Oh, I wish we had this feature years ago, when we debugged all these different save states!
Anyway, we thought it would be an easy undertaking but wow, we were wrong. First, the mobile and PC versions of Game Dev Tycoon used a different save structure so we had to spend quite some time to sort out all the differences and then we ran into so much trouble implementing this for the PC version. Who would have thought that uploading and downloading a file would be so difficult in an HTML5 game.
Anyway, I hope you like this little update. As always, if you want to stay up to date with news and our upcoming game, make sure you follow our developer page and sign up to our newsletter.
Patrick 💚