Industry Idle's server will soon enter its 5th year of service. The game has a small but active player base, and the server has been instrumental in keeping the community together. However, running a game server comes with challenges — there are ongoing costs, and maintaining anti-cheat systems (especially for a game available on six different platforms) greatly increases those costs.
For the past year or so, the game has not been making enough revenue from Expansion Packs to cover the server expenses. In fact, I’ve been using income from CivIdle and my own funds to keep the server running.
To make the game sustainable, the community has suggested introducing a player trade limit, which would help reduce the cost of anti-cheat measures. If completely preventing cheaters is too expensive, the next best approach is to make sure cheaters can only ruin their own experience — not everyone else’s.
How the Player Trade Limit Works
Every player will be subject to a daily trade limit (based on trades made within the past 24 hours):
- Limited Account: 1T
- Verified Account: 1Qt
- Account with 1 Expansion Pack: 3Qt
- Account with 2 Expansion Packs: 5Qt
With This Change
- The current trade limit for Limited Accounts will be replaced by the new daily limit.
- Trade Tokens will be retired. (They have caused issues with save transfers under poor Internet connections — this change should make save transfers smoother.)
- The Leaderboard will be shut down.
- Existing player trades will be canceled or wiped when the change goes live.
This is only a proposal at this stage — the decision to adopt it or not should be made by the community, not me. The goal is to improve the overall player experience.
You can comment on this post to share your feedback.
Cheers,
FishPond