Author Archive : Patrick

Since we announced modding support for Game Dev Tycoon late last year we have seen a great deal of interest in modding and in a short time the community has created some impressive mods. To check out some of the best mods have a read through our first Game Dev Tycoon Modding Spotlight.

Here’s a summary of these mods:

1. The EPM mod adds many more topics, platforms, events and even some advanced features like the ability to create your own PC’s or to set your own sales price.
2. The Cheat Mod finally allows you to cheat to your hearts content without endangering your save files by manually editing them.
3. The Tweak Mod supercharges the settings menu, allowing you to speed up the game and gives you even the power to turn some of the notifications into less invasive text popups.
4. The InfoStatMod adds more statistics to the game.
5. The Camelot Expansion pack adds a whole lot of additional game options and UI tweaks (check out the feature list through the link).

There are also a few experimental mods with a promising future:

1. The Platform Randomiser turns your real world market knowledge useless and offers a greater (albeit currently some times extremely unfair) challenge.
2. The Competitor Mod adds virtual competitors to the game.
3. The Multiplayer Mod allows you to compete with other real players.

If this list doesn’t impress you then check out our full mod list. To learn about how to install mods check out the modding FAQ. Please be aware that mods can turn your current save files inoperable so be careful when you install mods.

Introducing The Ultimate Suite

Today, we are not just celebrating a whole lot of awesome mods but it is also my pleasure to introduce the Ultimate Suite, a mod editor and mod library created by our veteran modders Francesco Abbattista  (aka @alphabit) and Chad Keating (aka  @SirEverard).

Ultimate Mod Editor

The Ultimate Suite includes the Ultimate Mod Editor or UME for short. With the UME anyone can produce Game Dev Tycoon mods by using a simple wizard mod creation tool. No coding experience or JavaScript knowledge required!

UME not only allows you to add custom topics, platforms, engine items and events but also allows you to add your own achievements and lab researches.

How cool is that? Answer: Substantially!

Ultimate Lib

While the Ultimate Mod Editor is a great tool for novice modders, the Ultimate Suite also gives more power to advanced modders through the release of the Ultimate Lib. The UltimateLib essentially expands on the features offered through our official modding API and provides many more additional features.

Supporting our Modders

Clearly our community has embraced modding in a big way and we can’t wait to see what’s next. Given the interest our fans have shown we think we have also a responsibility to further support modding. Last month we already published changes in our Modding Agreement that allow modders to accept donations. For good measure, and as a small thank you, we have made some donations to prolific modders ourselves and have other surprises planned. We have also dished out some ‘Advanced Modder’ titles on the forum and are working on a badge system for our forum to further give modders the recognition they deserve.

Finally, we have started working on Steam Workshop support. At the moment this is in early stages but we are looking forward to giving our modders more exposure through the Steam community.

Since we opened up Game Dev Tycoon for modders through our modding API we have seen a great deal of interest and activity. We are going to talk more about exciting developments in the modding scene soon but today I just want to announce a small change to our Modding Agreement.

The previous agreement prevented any monetary gain from mods outright unless a modder had prior consent in writing. The same clause is still intact today but we have added the following clause to expressly allow modders to receive donations or use ads on their websites subject to the following rules:

Other Monetary Benefits and Donations
Usage of advertisements, other revenue-generating elements and donations are subject to the following rules:
(a)    you may not add advertisements, other revenue-generating elements or call for donations inside the mod or game itself;
(b)    advertisements or other revenue-generating elements, may only be facilitated on your own website and must not be used in mod listings;
(c)    you may ask for donations on your website or in mod listings but such requests must follow after the mod description, title or download link and must not obscure these elements or be visually intrusive to users.
(d)    the mod must be available as a free download and must not be gated behind forced advertisements or other revenue-generating elements;
(e)    the download link to a mod must remain clearly identifiable and must not be obscured by advertisements;
(f)    you may ask for optional donations but donations must not give exclusive benefits. Everyone should have access to the same mod;
(g)    installation of mods must be free from advertisements or other revenue-generating elements;
(h)    the mod or the mod-installer may not add or install other third party elements, such as toolbars, system utilities or anything not related to the game itself;

What this Means: You can help offset the cost of hosting your website and development of a mod by using ads on your website and/or asking for donations from players. You may not ask for donations within the game or use revenue-generating elements in a way that lessens the user experience or withholds the mod or specific features from players.

We think this will ensure that players have a good experience while also allowing modders to accept donations.

This new agreement is effective immediately. You can read the full agreement here.

Both our Modding Agreement and EULA are published under a CC Attribution-ShareAlike license so if you are a software developer you can adapt these documents for your own needs.

To put it in Game Dev Tycoon’s terms, Greenheart Games is moving to level 2! We are looking for great talent to forge a team with which we can tackle our next projects. Since we operate from different countries and work remotely we don’t need to move to a new office, but that also means that the jobs are available to applicants world-wide.

If you have what it takes to create great games then head over to our brand new jobs page.

A unique opportunity

“A unique opportunity” sounds a bit trite but having looked around the scene, it seems that not many indie developers who are lucky enough to be successful actually hire people to join their team. Even fewer seem to be looking for game designers or writers, which seems a bit odd considering how much of an impact good game design and good writing have on a game. If you are passionate about game development, graphic design, game design or writing and have the skills to back it up then we want to hear from you!

To our players

This is a big step for us and a scary one as well. It is risky to substantially increase our running costs in order to forge a great team but that risk is necessary if we want to create better, more polished games within a reasonable time frame. In the end, the great reception that Game Dev Tycoon has received, particularly on Steam, allows us to take this risk and we believe it’s the right time to do so.

Discuss this post on our forum.

The upcoming release of Game Dev Tycoon (1.4.5) will ship with a new EULA and a new Modding Agreement.

The new EULA is not only easier to read but also changes a few important things:

1. You can now monetize your ‘Let’s Play’ videos of Game Dev Tycoon without having to ask permission first.
2. Using mods is now allowed for the paid version of the game.

The new Modding Agreement finally enables modders to create mods for Game Dev Tycoon.

Modding

Modding support is currently in beta but we are already seeing some impressive mods.

We still have to tidy a few things up before going out of beta but the next update should come with mod support and a bunch of mods to play with 🙂

Yay, legal documents, adapt it for your own projects

If you are not just into game development while playing the game but you are also into software development in real life then we have even better news for you. We believe in giving back to the community and that’s why we put our EULA and Modding Agreement under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. What does this mean? You can adapt these documents for your own games (incl. commercial games) free of charge. All you have to do is keep the attribution paragraph intact.

These aren’t just documents we threw together. Both documents were prepared by IDEALAW, a law firm specializing in Australian IT law. Massive kudos to IDEALAW for enabling us to release these documents under such a license. If you have further requirements (and you are in Australia) we highly recommend IDEALAW for their down to earth, straightforward and professional business practices.

Please note: Neither Greenheart Games, nor IDEALAW in any way imply that these documents are fit for your purposes. They were created specifically for Greenheart Games, applying Australian law, and may not be suitable for your particular needs.

1.  EULA
2. Modding Agreement

I might add that it’s very rare that companies publish legal documents under such a license. Enjoy, and tell your developer friends 🙂

Discuss this on our forum.

UPDATE: The FSF has reinstated our rights to use glibc.

On September 5th, the Free Software Foundation informed us that they have terminated our license to use ‘glibc’, the standard C library commonly used with Linux applications and which the distribution of Game Dev Tycoon for Linux dynamically links to.

glibc is licensed under the Lesser General Public License (L-GPL) and is thus fit for use in a commercial application through dynamic linking but we failed to inform our users that this library is in use and failed to provide a copy of the license file.

We respect copyright just as we expect our own copyright to be respected and promptly stopped distributing the Linux version of Game Dev Tycoon when the Free Software Foundation terminated our license and have since worked closely with the Free Software Foundation to address the issue. This blog post is part of the process to have our rights reinstated and we hope to be able to resume our distribution of the Linux version in the next few days.

We have updated our credits page to include direct download links to the license files of third party components. This page already listed third party components which were included in the distribution before,  but failed to mention the dynamically linked glibc component for the Linux distribution. This is now corrected. We have also added an updated license directory in the deployment of Game Dev Tycoon to make this readily available to users and the next version of the Linux release will include this directory. As always, players can also contact us at support@greenheartgames.com if they have any questions or concerns.

Background

This was not the result of a wilful infringement but simply a lack of knowledge on how to properly distribute an application powered by node-webkit on Linux. Unfortunately, we did not know the intricacies of licensing requirements for dynamically linked libraries and neither did our contractors who prepared the Linux distribution. Node-webkit itself does also not include any information about the use of glibc and we suspect that others who use node-webkit might thus also be in non-compliance with the glibc license. We will try to contact the node-webkit community about this issue and hope that we will remain the only ones who have to go through the official complaint process with the Free Software Foundation.

We received the first letter from the Free Software Foundation almost a month ago, during a stressful time while preparing for the Steam release, and unfortunately it took a while to clarify that there was indeed a problem. As an indie developer, receiving a formal letter from a legal department of a well-known organization is as scary as it gets and this uncertainty was the primary reason why we stopped updating the Linux distribution and why we delayed the Steam release of the Linux version. I want to apologize to our Linux players for the lack of open communication. We drafted a blog post to be more open but found it very difficult to word it so that blame was not put unfairly on the Free Software Foundation. In the end, they simply did their job and responded to a formal complaint. We wish that whoever made this complaint to the FSF had tried to contact us first. This would have saved us a lot of trouble, angst and the costs involved with a formal process.

Next Steps

This blog post is part of the process to resolve this issue. In this post we aim to inform our Linux players about our use of glibc and provide them with a copy of the license through our credits page. Once the Free Software Foundation approves of our changes we should receive a letter re-instating our rights to use glibc and we then plan to resume distribution of the Linux version via our website and introduce a Steam release, all of which will have copies of the necessary licenses included.

To comment on this post please head to our forum.

Back in May, thanks to many tens of thousands of players voting for us (thank you!), Game Dev Tycoon got the green light for a Steam release. We saw the Steam release as an opportunity to polish the game a little more and respond to player feedback.

In the past months we have gone over many details of the game and have updated it to make it more enjoyable. Some of the features of the updated version:

• A longer story line, extending the playtime and adding new story elements as well as new platforms.
• New artwork (by our original talented artists).
• Ability to unlock multi-platform games.
• Rebalanced topics and platforms to make choices more interesting and results more understandable.
• Rebalanced review system to address sudden spikes in difficulty.
• New game mechanics (Post-release game reports and company expertise) to provide more feedback to the player.
• Small but often requested changes such as support for longer game names and ability to edit game name before release.
• And much more: A full change log is available here.

Thanks to our players for the many many suggestions and ideas for additional features and tweaks. We read through hundreds of pages and worked through many of the ideas. Ultimately, and after a few prototypes of more drastic changes showed us that most ideas are probably better for a sequel, we settled on changes that enhance the current gameplay and make the game more enjoyable without drastically altering the game. Anyway, we certainly have lots of material for the sequel (Game Dev Tycoon 2 some time in the future is very likely but it won’t be our next project). Back to the Steam release!

Availability

The new, updated version of Game Dev Tycoon will come to Steam August 29th (next week!). The updated game will be priced at $9.99 USD with a launch discount of –20%, bringing it down to just $7.99.

The Steam release is for PC and Mac platforms. A Linux version will likely follow soon. We will also update the Windows Store version of Game Dev Tycoon as well as the one available through our website. More information on the availability of these updates will follow.

Steam keys

As stated all along we aim to provide Steam keys to existing owners of the game and will announce details about availability and how to claim your key closer to the release date.

Next plans

Our next plans, beside the Linux release and updating our other distribution channels, is to release the first translated versions of Game Dev Tycoon. Thanks to our volunteer translators we are quickly approaching full translations for our first languages (Spanish and German seem to be first). Before we can release those, we will need to update the translations with the changes of the updated Game Dev Tycoon version. There is no ETA yet but we are optimistic.

–

Patrick

Greenheart Games

We are looking for an experienced developer who knows web technology and can help us serve our players better. Some of the tasks you will work on:

1. Conceptualize, design and write plugins or custom tweaks for Discourse (discourse.org) to better serve our needs on the forum.
2. Design, implement and maintain a customer portal and implement webservices to support product updates and sales support (eg. looking up order numbers and managing steam keys).
3. Implement a webservice to enable confirmation of Windows 8 Store purchases (http://goo.gl/cYC8P)

Required skills:
1. A solid software engineering foundation.
2. You can and have created solutions from scratch: from design, to implementation, to deployment and maintenance. You know the process.
3. You must be pro-active and self-motivated. We don’t (want to) micro-manage anyone.
4. Active experience with OSS.
5. Experience and a strong interest in UI design.
6. Attention to details!
7. We offer this contract for remote work internationally via odesk (link below) – you must be willing to use odesk.

Experience with Discourse or Ember.js is a plus.

Please provide us with links that demonstrate your skills (github, OSS contributions, stackoverflow, recent projects etc.).

This is a temporary contract but if you’d love to work for Greenheart Games longer then this is a chance for you to prove your skills.

We are an international team and you must be available on skype voice-chat. When applying for this job please provide general times when you would be available in both your local time and the UTC+10 time zone. A concise and informative job application is appreciated.

Please apply via odesk. Do not contact us outside of odesk.

Patrick
Greenheart Games

Let me start this blog post by saying

Thanks for sharing our story, for supporting us by buying our game and for voting for us on Steam Greenlight! Your support means that we will not only be able to spend a little more time on Game Dev Tycoon, to improve and adjust it based on player feedback (more on that below) but it will also be likely that we will create a bigger and better sequel some time in the future.

I’m happy to report that my brother Daniel can finally transition out of his full time job to focus exclusively on Greenheart Games. The support from paying players (who are still outnumbered by pirates) is what makes all this possible. We will still have to remain a small and lean start-up, focusing on small-ish games – the funds we have would evaporate extremely quickly if we suddenly started hiring a team of game developers – but we are very grateful that we can continue our path.

Our blog post about piracy caused a lot of reactions and we plan to publish a follow-up blog post about it but first we want to talk about the future of Game Dev Tycoon.

The future of Game Dev Tycoon

The big news is that Valve gave us the green light so Game Dev Tycoon will come to Steam!

Steam is a big deal; it’s one of the few systems where a lot of players genuinely support developers and, unlike in app stores, any new game is vetted for potential and featured on the front page when it releases.

We would have released on Steam as soon as possible a few weeks ago, but since our story was reported we had a big influx of players (both paying and pirates) and, while it’s clear that many players enjoy their experience with Game Dev Tycoon, we also saw some frustrations and have to admit that Game Dev Tycoon could use some more polish. From the feedback we received and from watching players play the game we can see that there are some flaws which hinder the game’s potential and lessen the game experience.

Listening to player feedback – We want to do better

When we developed the mechanics for Game Dev Tycoon, we noticed early on that creating a sophisticated rule-set is hard. That’s probably the reason why most social tycoon games simply rely on grind-mechanics. In those games you can just level up this, spend money on that and while there is some strategy involved, it largely doesn’t matter what you do as you’re guaranteed to succeed. Game Dev Tycoon has similar elements but the core mechanics don’t work like that. In Game Dev Tycoon you can create a good game from the start but you can also create a bad game with a great team. We like this and want to keep it that way but admittedly the balance is sometimes off. The problem is that the game is tuned for some play styles but not for others. The game can be too punishing at certain stages and, what’s worse, it doesn’t give you enough feedback to be able to adapt your strategy. Sure, you could play following a wiki with a calculator at hand but we never wanted the game to be played this way and playing according to a wiki only ensures that you lose out on any fun and sense of achievement you might have otherwise had.

Our next goal is to address these balance/feedback issues and to take a bit of time to improve and polish the game further. Don’t expect any major additions (that’s what a sequel is for!) but you can expect some improvements/small additions and a more polished game experience.

ETA for the update

Fixing the game balance and adding features isn’t easy and one sure way to mess it up is to hurry a patch out the door. That’s why we cautiously set the estimated release date for the updated version to August 2013. We plan to release this updated version on Steam first and all customers will get it for free through their Steam keys. Once this update is out, we will also look to get the game on other distribution platforms and back-port the updated version to the Windows Store.

While these larger changes are under way we will continue to release service updates fixing crashes or bugs (1.3.10 is in the works) but the large balance and content changes will not happen incrementally.

Steam Keys

For technical reasons we are not able to generate Steam keys before the game is close to be released on Steam. We will announce how and when Steam keys are available closer to the release date.

You don’t have to wait

We think it’s important that the initial Steam release addresses those balance issues but if you are really eager to play the game now then you don’t have to wait. You can buy it from our website and we will send you a Steam key once the game is ready on Steam.

Patrick
– Greenheart Games ♥

If you want to comment on this post please do do it on this forum topic.

When we released our very first game, Game Dev Tycoon (for Mac, Windows and Linux) yesterday, we did something unusual and as far as I know unique. We released a cracked version of the game ourselves, minutes after opening our Store.

I uploaded the torrent to the number one torrent sharing site, gave it a description imitating the scene and asked a few friends to help seed it.

A minute after we uploaded it, my torrent client looked like this:

Soon my upload speed was maxed out (and as of the time of writing still is) and my friends and I had connections from all over the world and for all three platforms!

How does piracy feel?

The cracked version is nearly identical to the real thing except for one detail… Initially we thought about telling them their copy is an illegal copy, but instead we didn’t want to pass up the unique opportunity of holding a mirror in front of them and showing them what piracy can do to game developers. So, as players spend a few hours playing and growing their own game dev company, they will start to see the following message, styled like any other in-game message:

Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally.
If players don’t buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt.

Slowly their in-game funds dwindle, and new games they create have a high chance to be pirated until their virtual game development company goes bankrupt.

Some of the responses I found online (identities obscured to protect the guilty):

Is there some way to avoid that? I mean can I research DRM or something …

And another user:

Why are there so many people that pirate? It ruins me!

As a gamer I laughed out loud: the IRONY!!!

However, as the developer, who spent over a year creating this game and hasn’t drawn a salary yet, I wanted to cry. Surely, for most of these players, the 8 dollars wouldn’t hurt them but it makes a huge difference to our future!

Trying to appeal to pirates

I know that some people just don’t even think about buying games. They will immediately search for a cracked version. For this reason, when we released the game, we also published a page which targets people who search for a cracked/illegal version. Unfortunately, due to my lack in search-engine-optimization skills, that page has had no impact yet, but I hope it will convince some to buy the game in the future.

[…]if years down the track you wonder why there are no games like these anymore and all you get to play is pay-to-play and social games designed to suck money out of your pockets then the reason will stare back at you in the mirror.

I do think it’s important to try to communicate what piracy means to game developers to our consumers. I also tried to appeal to a particular forum a day earlier after someone who I gave early-access to the Store seemed to have passed on the copy to others:

We’re just a start-up and really need your support. The game is only 7.99USD, DRM free…

Clearly, my post hadn’t worked too well since on the same forum someone posted the earlier screenshot (“Why are there so many people that pirate? It ruins me!) just a bit after I made my appeal and this was followed by many others complaining about piracy.

I still hope that it made a difference to someone.

Anyway, how many really did buy and how many did pirate our game during this first day?

The awesome/depressing results

Today, one day after release, our usage stats look like this:

Genuine version: 214 users

Cracked version: at least 3104 users

Over 93.6% of players stole the game. We know this because our game contains some code to send anonymous-usage data to our server. Nothing unusual or harmful. Heaps of games/apps do this and we use it to better understand how the game is played. It’s absolutely anonymous and you are covered by our privacy policy. Anyway, the cracked version has a separate ID so I can separate the data. I’m sure some of the players have firewalls and some will play offline therefore the actual number of players for the cracked version is likely much higher.

To the players who played the cracked version!

I’m not mad at you. When I was younger, downloading illegal copies was practically normal but this was mostly because global game distribution was in its infancy. To be fair, there are still individuals who either can’t make a legal purchase because of payment-issues or who genuinely cannot afford the game. I don’t have a quarrel with you. To the rest who could afford the game consider this:

1. Would you like to see a bigger/better sequel of Game Dev Tycoon in the future? Buy the game! Creating this game was already expensive and this was just a small game. If we ever want to make a bigger/better version we need a lot of support!
2. Do you hate the trend towards social or pay-to-play free games? Buy games from independent developers! (start with ours :))
3. Do you hate the recent trends in the industry? Buy DRM free games.

We are not wealthy and it’s unlikely that we will be any time soon, so stop pretending like we don’t need your 8 dollars! We are just two guys working our butts off, trying to start our own game studio to create games which are fun to play.

The game is DRM free, you can use it on up to three of your computers for your own use, you get copies for Mac, Windows and Linux, you can continue your game before piracy wrecked your company and we even aim to provide you with a free Steam key once the game is on Steam. All for a mere 8 bucks.

If you just want to try the game then there’s the free DEMO:

Final words

Do we need DRM?
Whether or not to use DRM isn’t clear at all to a new start-up. The main argument against it is that all it does is to inconvenience genuine customers. Fact is that any game can be cracked, so all you do is spend time on something that in the end just annoys your real customers while only slightly delaying the inevitable. The only way to protect yourself is to create an online game. I guess that’s why so many studios focus on these types of games and it’s probably a driving force to eradicate traditional single player games.

Personally, I love single players games and hope to be able to continue down this path and if more people would buy our game, we might even be able to.

Would I do this again?

This was a unique opportunity. You need a game development simulation game to make this particular joke work. The more general idea/experiment to release a cracked version which inconveniences and counts pirates can probably work for any game and might work in the long run.

If pirates are put through more trouble than genuine customers, maybe more will buy the real game. Sadly, for AAA games it is currently the other way. Customers get the trouble with always-on requirements and intrusive DRM, while pirates can just download and enjoy. A twisted world.

To our genuine customers

Thank you for your support. Your purchase is more important to us than you might think. We hope to be able to bring you more games in the future. Also, please update to the latest version of the game by using the download link from your purchase email. Before writing this blog post I’ve fixed most of the known issues 🙂

Patrick Klug
– Greenheart Games ♥

If you want to comment on this post, please do so on our forum.

If you just want to try the game then there’s the free DEMO:

We have just updated our website and unlocked our official Store. Now, you can get Game Dev Tycoon for Windows, Mac (OS 10.7+) and Linux directly from our website. We decided to keep the price of the game the same low price as the Windows Store version: just 7.99USD (or similar in your currency).

With your purchase you get the game for all three platforms and you can install the game on up to 3 of your computers for personal use. The game is also DRM free so there is no hassle in installing and running the game.

We also aim to provide Steam keys to existing customers when and if the game gets on to Steam. If you would like to see a Steam version you can cast your vote here.

A dozen players tested the Store and the different versions and it all seems to work well but if you do find any issues please let us know at support@greenheartgames.com

Have fun and if you enjoy the game, tell your friends about it!

Patrick Klug
– Greenheart Games ♥

If you want to comment on this post please do this on our forum.