Hi all!

We've been working on few issues recently that you may have encountered. Check out the patch notes below and dive back in!

• added Featured Videos widget in main menu

• fixed a bug where scenes in video editor didn't play correct media on set's video screen

• fixed a bug where preset videos of video screen sets didn't play correctly on Steam Deck

• fixed a bug in file dialog where no folders were shown when displaying the top-level drives (e.g. C:)

December is the perfect time to unleash your artistic vision and create some wild, festive movies. Join our #MyBBMovie activation and share your creations with us! We've added a special panel within the game's menu, where your videos will be displayed!

By posting your videos on the social media of your choice (Facebook, Instagram, X, etc), you have a unique chance to be featured on the homepage of our game and get added to the official playlist on our YouTube channel! All you have to do is to add #MyBBMovie tag and we will find you. 👀

Stay cozy and drink lots of winter tea! ☕✨

Hello, aspiring movie directors!

We're thrilled to announce Blockbuster Inc.'s very first Autumn Sale! 🍂 This is the perfect opportunity to grab the game at a great price and see all the exciting changes we've made so far.

📅 Sale's time frame: from the 27th of November to the 4th of December

There's no better time to take part in our #MyBBMovie activation as well! Share your in-game movie with us, and we’ll showcase some of your amazing creations inside the game itself! Whether you're new to the game or a returning player, there's never been a better time to step into the director's chair and build your movie empire!

Here’s how to participate!

• Create something spectacular in Blockbuster Inc.
  
• Share it on the social media platform of your choice
  
• Tag it with #MyBBMovie so we can find it!

It's a great possibility not only to be added to our official youtube playlist, but it's also a unique chance to see your movie in the special section of the main menu in-game!
Let’s celebrate creativity and bring your visions to the silver screen! The Autumn Sale won’t last forever, so don’t miss out! 🍂

Have you ever thought about adapting your favorite movie in Blockbuster Inc.? 🎬🍿🥤
Maybe you’ve already done it? It’s time to stop hiding your cinematic masterpiece in the corner and show it to the world!
💥 Let’s start the #MyBBMovie activation! 💥

By posting your videos on the social media of your choice (Facebook, Instagram, X, etc), you have a unique chance to be featured on the homepage of our game and get added to the official playlist on our YouTube channel! All you have to do is to add #MyBBMovie tag and we will find you. 👀

To make things easier, we’ve prepared a short tutorial video on how to create such a movie in Blockbuster Inc: 👇
Remember, the sky's the limit and nothing holds you back except your imagination. The most creative and well-made films will be appreciated by us and will definitely not go unnoticed! 🏆

In the meantime, feel free to check out the videos that are already on our playlist!
Now it's your time to shine!

With time, Blockbuster Inc. becomes a better game with a wider variety of mechanics and enhancements - designed to keep you satisfied and coming back for more. Today's major patch is the showcase of our recent hard work, and we hope it meets your expectations. We're still constantly working on the game, so even more things to come! Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Patch 1.9.0! 🎉

Especially for this occasion, we’ve prepared a video showcasing the changes over the past few months!
✔️ customizable backgrounds
✔️ up to 15 actors on scene
✔️ regency and superhero updates
✔️ subtitle system
✔️ new lightning options

Let’s not forget that this week we’re celebrating Halloween! 🎃👻🍬 To mark the occasion, you’ll find a new Ghostkiller theme, costumes, and set designer objects in the game!

Apart from the cosmetic additions, a lot has changed in the game mechanics too! The full list of changes is below!

• Facial Expression Controls: New sliders for facial expressions (happiness, anger, surprise) in the Animations tab within Direct Scene.

• Lighting Control: A Lights tab in Direct Scene allows you to adjust environmental light color and intensity for better scene ambiance.

• Copy Scene Properties: A “Copy to Other Scenes” button in Product Creation lets you transfer scene settings quickly to other scenes.

• Employee Search Upgrade: A new “Find More Candidates” button in the Hire menu lets you pay to find more or higher-quality employees.

• Quarterly System: Each in-game day now represents a quarter instead of a month (Q1-Q4), with awards held every second year.

• Added difficulty setting that can be chosen in the new game menu and can be changed anytime in Settings. Available levels: Sandbox, Easy, Normal, Hard. The differences of each level are shown in the difficulty selection menu

• Trending Themes: Now, two themes trend each year, boosting product hype when used.

• Rival Studio AI Improvements: Rivals now make smarter hiring, firing, and product release decisions.

• Bankruptcy Mechanic: Rival studios can go bankrupt, pausing operations for a year before returning.

• Shared Consumer Pool: A new, limited sales pool (starting at 1M in 1920) grows over time, creating competition for sales among studios.

• There is now a fixed-size shared consumer pool, which means there is a limited amount of sales to be achieved per year and is shared among studios and products. If there are many products being released by many studios at the same time, the people will prefer the ones with the higher hype and quality, leading to reduced sales for the rest of the products. The consumer pool size starts at 1 million sales in 1920 and slowly increases, reaching the limit of 5 million in 2020

• Employees may now become stressed if overworked, and can issue resignation notices if unhappy for extended periods.

• Employees will now give a resignation notice if they stay unhappy for longer than 3 days. During this time, you can offer them a raise using the Negotiate button to persuade them to stay. If you don't, or if they don't accept your raise offer, they will leave the studio and can't be hired again for one year

• Firing employees with unpaid salaries may lead to union actions, requiring you to pay owed salaries.

• You can now use the Negotiate menu anytime to offer a raise to your employees for a happiness bonus and to guarantee they won't quit for some time

• Employees will now become unhappy if they feel that they are underpaid, in which case you can give them a raise to appease them

• Employees now have higher salary expectations if they have high skills, long employment record, or worked on many products

• If you fire employees that have unpaid salaries, you will need to pay the owed salaries before hiring them again

• if you fire too many employees that have unpaid salaries, at some point when you will have enough money to pay them back, their Union will take legal action against you and demand that you pay all the salaries you owe

• The Hire and Manage Employees windows now use pagination instead of scrollbar and have multiple sorting options

• Radio Lines: Random radio lines play throughout the day (disable in Settings if needed).

• Custom Sound Effects: Import custom sounds in the Video Editor for unique productions.

• Bank Loan Payoff Option: Instantly repay bank loans.

• The Studio Charts now show the number of employees and products of each studio as well as the studio status (active/bankrupt) and the number of bankruptcies so far

• The tooltip of the happiness bar in Character Sheet now show positive/negative effects with green/red text respectively

• A warning is now shown if you try to import the same custom-made character twice, but you can ignore the warning and proceed, which simply creates a clone

• Extra scenes can now be added only in movies, not in TV shows. This is to prevent a complex bug that caused some scenes in TV shows to be deleted

• Product sheet now lists all involved employees, not just actors

🟢studio shares now work properly and bring back a portion of the original studio's revenue every quarter. If that studio goes bankrupt, you lose the shares you bought from them. You can sell back the shares of other studios but you can no longer sell your own studio's shares, as this could often cause a disadvantage that was hard to recover from
🟢 filming tasks are now prioritized over education (e.g. previously actors wouldn't go film their scenes if they were in a classroom)
🟢 sorting options sometimes were not working correctly in all types of Charts
🟢 TV show episodes after 1st episode were showing incorrect number of fans and awards
🟢 the set prestige bar in the product score breakdown would always appear half-empty even if the set's prestige was maxed out
🟢 moving the camera downwards by moving the cursor to the viewport bottom was not working in Build Mode

Feel free to join our Discord[discord.gg]!
Thank you for everything and have a great Halloween! 🦇

Hi all! In the past week we released 2 small patches for known issues:

• Patch 1.8.1d: fix actors sometimes getting stuck and not filming scenes, and fix maintenance workers sometimes not cleaning certain rooms.
  
• Patch 1.8.1e: fix "dummy" characters appearing over normal actors in stunt scenes.

Thank you for your feedback which helps us fix issues like these and improve the game!

During August, our team took the time off to rest and gather even more power to bring you more and more cool updates, and we are totally back with a brand, new content! 🎉

We are pretty sure that the following update will bring even more fun, as we decided to give you more freedom and the possibility to customize your set in your sole discretion. 👀

Let's introduce custom set's screen backgrounds! 🎬
Is there a better way to fulfill oneself as a film director than deciding how a particular scene will look?
Now it's possible with our new customization option. 💥
You are able to select one of many backgrounds that were previously prepared by us, but also... you can upload something of your choice!

👇 Here's a quick instruction on how to do it!

1. Build a Screen set
   
2. Assign it to the product scene in Product Creation
   
3. Open Direct Scene
   
4. Go to Screen Visuals tab
   
5. Choose a preset or custom photo/video to show (please note, that the photo format should be bmp/jpg/png, and mp4 when it comes to the video)

It isn't the only thing we are bringing to you with this update.
A new House Interior set is also waiting for you, along with new objects! 🏠
Here's a little sneak peek!

Check out the list of additional changes below, download the update and let us know how you like it!

🎁 What’s new?
🟡 new/updated hair and added facial hair in Character Creator
🟡 customizable controls in Settings
🟡 added controls in Camera Movement tab of Direct Scene for changing camera position and motion
🟡 duration of producer/writer work is increased and is proportional to product size

🔧 Bug fixes:
🟢 fix bug where some fire/fog/rain machines would not produce visible effects in the filmed scene
🟢 fix bug where actors would sometimes appear floating or sinking into the set floor while filming
🟢 fix bug where build mode could be toggled during Awards Ceremony by pressing Tab

If you have any questions or feedback join us on Discord[discord.gg]!

Get ready! We are leveling up with the ultimate power boost - Superheroes! 🦸‍♂️✨
Dive into the action with the indestructible claw-man and the iconic samurai. 🗡️💪🏼👹
This dynamic duo is bringing their unique blend of claws, charisma, and chaos to your favorite game.

We’re also thrilled to make a little surprise for you - new movie sets are being added to Blockbuster Inc.! You might have seen glimpses of them in our trailers and promotional assets. Now, they’re available for all of you to use and bring your movie-making to the next level! 🎥
💥 We added the following themes: Super Hero 2, Blonde Doll, The Roof (including set designer themes, set designer objects, costumes!). 💥

Aaaaaand, remember about our last huge update - now you are able to place up to 15 actors in Direct Scene! 🎭 Don’t forget about this super big change while setting your own scenes! In Product Creation, on the other hand, you can select up to 12 supporting actors in addition to 1-3 starring ones. Isn’t it a change we’ve been all waiting for? 👀

Check out the list of additional changes below, download the update and let us know how you like it!

🎁 What’s new?
🟡reworked visuals of all 2010s set equipment ✨
🟡reworked visuals of all fire & fog machines 🔥
🟡steam achievements based on earned awards count are now given only when the day changes (previously were given as soon as the awards ceremony starts, which is a bit spoilery) 🏆
🟡added button in Set Info window to quick-upgrade all set equipment to best available options 🕹️
🟡allow placement of actors anywhere on the set floor in Set Designer and Direct Scene even if they clip into objects, to allow e.g. placing them inside jail cell 🎭

Look at the sneak peek here! 👀

🔧 Bug fixes:
🟢bug fix where the player was unable to replace VFX/SFX employee working on a film
🟢bug fix where the icon of a previously renting actor is displayed above the house
🟢bug fix where the player add a stunt scene and then add a normal scene afterward, the set from the previous stunt scene gets removed
🟢bug fix where adding extra normal scenes deletes stunt scene from the film
🟢bug fix where the player get achievement “experienced filmmaker” too early
🟢bug fix where sometimes movie reviews were not generated
🟢bug fix where actors have costumes in places where they shouldn't have them

We wish you a great start of the week 💚
If you have any questions or feedback join us on Discord[discord.gg]!

Nothing better on a hot and sunny day than checking our newest update!
Steamy VFX that will put your movies on fire with hype! 🌞
Achievements to burn your checks and explore new challenges you didn't know existed! 😎
Burning bug fixes ♨️

Check out our list below, download the update and let us know how you like it!

The list of changes:
🟢added 16 new Steam achievements
🟢added VFX to some actor animations and stunts: Sorcery VFX, Mythology Weapon Magic VFX, Cigar smoke, Mythology ritual VFX, More Sorcery VFX, Laser from eyes of the superhero, Portal Open, Portal Enter, Portal Exit
🟢various graphics optimizations that should improve fps
🟢faster loading of savegames list
🟢restored max unlockable studio lot size to its original (larger) limits
🟢increased cost of unlocking plots around the studio lot
🟢bug fix where player could unlock plots outside of build mode
🟢fix double music overlapping in Character Creator
🟢bug fix in Direct Scene where actors would sometimes appear partially inside the floor and could not be moved
🟢added option to rename employees (edit button next to employee's name in character sheet)
🟢bug fix where new TV show episodes could not be filmed if the original filming sets are deleted


Have a great day, enjoy your summer and if you have any questions or feedback join us on Discord[discord.gg]! We accept memes and cute animal pictures 💚

- new windows added in Build Mode -> indoors -> windows
- fix TV show episodes after 1st episode showing as rank 0
- fix bug where double-clicking the Continue button in tutorial could skip a step and softlock the tutorial
- employees will now always reach task locations (desks, movie sets, tables) even if they are completely blocked by obstacles
- add Reset button in Product Creation for returning the planned product to default state
- TV shows category in product charts now shows all active shows (i.e. released and not retired) even they don't have all their episodes released yet
- the RP gain rate from Researchers has been adjusted and increases per decade, which should improve the Research pace, also the average RP gained per month is now shown in Research menu next to the player's current RP
- fix bug where tenant bubble popups of city houses were hidden when saving and loading while in city view, and were shown again only if you exit & re-enter city view
- save menu now stops the progressive loading of savegames list if the menu gets closed