News & Updates

The merging algorithm on poker tournaments had all sorts of issues, so we re-wrote it from the ground up to assure that tables stay as balanced as possible. This should also fix some of the freezing issues that were still persisting. However, this is a very difficult feature to fully test, so please let us know if you see anything strange.

Added an option to the game settings to hide your location from your friends list.

Clicking on an address in a player's profile now selects the text so you can easily copy/paste it.

Buildings become transparent during the Lost Address missions to help with finding the person to talk to who may be behind a building.

Made some tweaks on the client and server to provide various performance improvements.

Updated the time sync system on our new servers to keep the game time perfectly in sync with real-world time.

Made some tweaks to the balance in bomb prizes (some of the rare items were a little too rare).

Vastly improved touch interaction when playing on the Windows App or Internet Explorer on a Microsoft Surface tablet.

Fixed a visual bug with blackjack that stopped showing your winnings on the table in the last update.

Fixed an issue that caused some items to fail to repair with the new bulk-repair tool.

Fixed a few issues with the ordering of the friends list (all online friends should show first).

The crew battle challenge list will no longer show crews that are currently in an active battle.

Fixed some rendering issues on Internet Explorer.

Prevent quick chat from covering the phone on smaller screens.

The Blackjack dealer no longer continues to deal to himself when heads up with a player that gets a blackjack.

Prevent incorrect battle start notice from being sent after a crew withdraws.

Paging too quickly in the friends app no longer causes the numbers to go below 0.

The phone icon that loads your properties window now makes a lot more sense - it actually launches your shiny new phone! Right now you have a standard black phone with a blue background, but future updates will bring customizations. You can open the phone from anywhere in the game and it launches with 5 apps (more are in the works). It can be opened/closed from the phone icon or by pressing the 'o' key.

Properties App: This replaces the previous Manage Properties window and now lets you see your stats even while inside.

Tools App: This is a feature for power-builders that unlocks after you open your 3rd casino. We know it can get tedious manually fixing broken items and picking up the special garbage that your janitors miss. So, you can now take care of all of that instantly with one simple click and a small convenience fee.

Friends App: You can now see a list of all of your friends and when they were last online. Clicking on their avatar opens their profile window. You can also see where they are in the game right now if they are currently online.

Camera App: Everyone these days has a camera at the ready in their phones, so why not in the virtual world as well? You can now take photos (also known as screenshots) anywhere in the game. You can then get the direct URL to the photo or share it on social networks/e-mail.

Photos App: This is where you can access your collection of photos and take action on them (get the link, share, delete, etc). Everyone can store up to 25 photos, and citizens get room for 100.

Your phone also comes with a clock that shows the same game-time for everyone. This is now the time that is displayed everywhere in the game (such as the poker lobby) to make it easier for people in different areas of the world to communicate times.

In addition to the new limited edition item, there are 7 new decorative light items available for casinos and crews.

Fixed a visual Blackjack bug that sometimes caused stats to get out of sync.

Changing global/crew chat settings now updates correctly.

Global chat is fully hidden when checking the box (no more reload needed).

Fixed a few issues that sometimes prevented the bush man from showing up when he was supposed to.

The maximum number of players in the following sprints is now 8 instead of 6: slots, roulette, solitaire and poker.

Fixed a few issues with client stats getting out of sync with the server.

Fixed an issue that sometimes caused away players in tournaments to not automatically be removed.

Fixed a visual bug in the bartender job that caused some of the drinks to not properly fill.

Tweaked Chip Race 4 so it isn't covered by a casino.

Prevent getting stuck with a contract on your head if you sell your casino.

Fixed a few more issues with the new player tutorial.

Various other bug fixes and tweaks.

Added new tutorial mission for new players to learn about crews.

The Real Estate map now shows the lot numbers over each lot.

The icon that shows where you are on the mini-map has been tweaked to be easier to see.

Improved odds of getting casino items instead of condo items in party bombs.

Improved placing of items on touch screens.

Fixed an issue that would sometimes cause party bomb animations to be broken.

Doubling and busting on the first set of a blackjack split no longer auto-stands the second set.

Fixed bug that sometimes prevented visit notices from being sent.

Fixed bug that would cause the character customization screen to get stuck when changing clothes too quickly.

The help text for casino metrics are now being rendered correctly.

More cross browser audio fixes.

Fixed a few more missing addresses.

Fixed some bugs relating to rotation of contractors.

Fixed a few visual bugs with NPC's.

Fixed several random bugs around the game.

Lots of new tiles: 40 outdoor and 88 indoor!

There is now a setting to allow quick chat to display on table games.

There is a new trophy, GoldFire Flame Trophy, that is awarded top the top 10 in each month's overall rankings.

Crew members can now have the permission to transfer funds without having the permission to edit members.

Tweaked the starting speed of the janitor job to prevent issues on higher levels.

Players that sit away from a paid poker tournament are now removed after 30 minutes (still 15 for freerolls).

When buying Gold as a gift for another player, their avatar now shows next to their username to help you make sure you are gifting the right person.

Fixed an issue with the display of the mail rush mission window.

Fixed a few bugs with outdoor audio.

Fixed an issue where some roulette mission givers weren't accessible.

Players currently in the tutorial no longer appear to come from the elevator instead of the front door.

Various bugs and tweaks around the game.

The game settings have been updated with two new options. Instead of "hide quick chat," there is now the option to "hide global chat" and "hide crew chat." You can check both boxes to completely hide quick chat, or you can select which of the two you want to see. If you are only showing crew chat, the "/c" will be auto-filled into the quick chat input box.

Native alert/confirm popups don't work inside of the Windows app, so the few places we were using them now use standard game modals instead.

There is now an instructions screen on the janitor job with a start button.

When getting bonus spins in slots, the spins remaining counter will now pulse to show the updated total.

Fixed a few different bugs that could cause poker tournaments to freeze.

Fixed bug at Auction House that would sometimes prevent bids from being placed after the first.

Fixed an area of the city map that was mis-aligned in one corner.

Clicking to unlock a username change should now work correctly from within the Windows app.

The issue with party bomb drops disappearing should now be fixed.

Updated the Desura app to fix a few issues.

Prevent multiple job boards from opening after completing janitor shift.

Fixed mirrored countdown text on elevators.

Prevent typing chat bubble from sticking to seat when player gets removed from poker table.

Fixed several bugs in the new player tutorial.

After last week's outage, we've put a lot of time into developing a self-recovery system for our server architecture. What this means is that in the rare event that none of us are around to fix something if one of our server's hardware fails or there is some other issue, the system will automatically fix the problem and bring the game back up. If hardware fails, this will still lead to around 10 minutes of downtime, but our next step is building a failover system that will prevent any downtime at all.

Fixed an issue that would sometimes cause table items to not expire.

Closed a loophole that allowed playing multiple sprints at once.

Fixed several server issues that in rare cases could lead to a myriad of strange bugs.

Want more insight into what we've got in the pipeline? Then this new feature is just for you! Some things we are working on are to remain as a surprise, but everything else major will be listed on the new development status page.

14 amazing new items are now available for your casinos and crews (some are added to the jungle theme and the rest are generic).

The button to open the feedback window now also includes a contact form to open a support ticket if you are having an issue that doesn't fit in the forums or feedback page.

There is now an RSS feed available for this news page: click here for RSS.

The chat shortcuts (/c, /w, /r) are now case-insensitive, so that if you accidentally type '/C', your message will still go to the crew instead of to the global chat.

We've made several updates to the new player tutorial to try and help make the process of getting started easier, and we are now testing this alongside the previous intro tutorial.

Changed the font color of the Head CA so that it doesn't look like crew chat.

Any players that have been a member for 90+ days must now wait 30 days after acquiring a lot/casino to list it on the market.

Fixed a bug that sometimes prevents sprint re-invites from working.

Casino metric histories are now correctly stored for the last 30 days instead of 14.

Fixed sizing of long crew names in the battle display.

A rare occurrence of the days consecutive medal not getting awarded has been fixed.

Fixed a few bugs with the previous update to auto setup new poker cash games.

Fixed a few visual bugs with the loading screen.

The error modal now auto-adjusts its height for longer error messages.

Rotating an item such as a slot machine now correctly updates its position without needing to save first.

Fixed a visual voting bug with wars.

We've moved all of the game's servers to a new hosting provider that offers dramatically improved network speeds and processing power. This will vastly improve speeds, disconnect issues and lag issues. This also means that the disconnect caused by game updates will be drastically shorter.

The system that load balances between the game servers has been completely rebuilt and can route requests up to 2-4x as quickly (so, even more speed improvements).

New sticky poker cash games will be created automatically when the previous fills up (for example, if there are 9/9 at Low Rollers, a new Low Rollers #2 will become available).

There is now a minimum value calculated for each property based on the type of casino, items, etc. This value is displayed when listing a property for sale and is also the minimum that a casino can be listed for sale.

Lots with a closed casino can no longer be listed for sale on the market.

Combined gains from owning multiple casinos have been increased by lowering the break rates on casino items even further.

Colors for admins and community ambassadors are now shown on their usernames over their characters and in quick chat.

When a player receives a chat ban, it is now shown in the global chat.

There is now a confirmation popup when placing bids in the Auction House.

Upgrade costs in crews are now increased for crews with more than 25 members to maintain cost balance/fairness with smaller crews.

Fixed a big list of bugs dealing with the previous rendering engine update.

Fixed a few small visual issues with the Water Wall items.

We've completed a huge overhaul to our rendering engine with a focus on performance. Lower-end systems should see the most improvement, but others should see memory usage improvements as well. Otherwise, you shouldn't see any difference, and if you do, please be sure to report it as there are likely to be some visual bugs here and there after such a large update.

To make replying to whispers easier, we've added a '/r' option. Typing this with your message after it will send a whisper back to the person that last whispered at you.

Players that are away during poker tournaments are now auto-folded even when they are all-in.

The Large Chat Text game settings option now also makes quick chat text larger.

Tweaked the look of the main menu text to be easier to read.

Tweaked up the speed of the Sci-Fi Slots bonus game.

A casino's address is now displayed next to its name inside the casino.

Fixed a bug that was causing some players to see the wrong time on battle countdowns.

Improved touch-screen compatibility with global chat.

Some older versions of browser and some Android browsers would show a bottom section of the screen cut off in full-screen.

Hovering over buildings causes them to highlight, and this also caused some weird visual bugs with animations. These have now been fixed.

Keep audio muted when changing volume with "mute all" checked.

Fixed a broken animation with the orange solitaire table item.

Walking out of the Real Estate building in the main square no longer sends you into a shrub.