Hey everyone! Super excited to release this update, its a culmination of a ton of improvements over the past month that really elevates the experience.
Also, while I'm here, let me address the elephant in the room, new levels. We are hard at work on new levels and plan to release multiple in the next major update! Expect it to take a couple of months but we think you all will really enjoy the new content! In the mean time, we will be working to constantly improve the game, releasing regular updates.

• Improved Low Settings Performance by up to 2-4x!
  
• Improved Medium Settings Performance by 20-30%
  
• Added Extra Inventory Row
  
• Dramatically Improved Controller Feel/Experience
  
• Added Traditional Chinese, Spain Spanish, Portugal Portuguese and Hungarian
  
• Add Vignette Tied to Sanity Heartbeat
  
• Improved Feel of Item Hitboxes
  
• Improved Network Performance in Multiplayer Games
  
• Remove Bandages from Loot Table if Solo
  
• Revamped Objectives UI
  
• Increase Player Names Outline Amount
  
• Enable Nvidia Reflex to Reduce Input Latency
  
• Updated DLSS
  
• Various Visual Improvements

• Fix Items not Being Cleared after Dying in Purgatory
  
• Potential Fix for Voice Chat Sometimes being Non Spatialized
  
• Fixed Bugs with Sometimes Being Unable to Control Your Player On Spawn
  
• Fixed Issues with Dragging Items in Inventory Being Off, Especially when Windowed
  
• Fix Bug that Made the Mouse Unresponsive on Load unless Alt + Enter was Pressed
  
• Overhauled Player Init Sequence, Should Fix Lots of Bugs Related to Network Latency and Make Things More Responsive
  
• Fix Bugs with Entities Grabbing Players in Bad Latency Environments
  
• Fixed Light Turn off Sounds Not Playing in 0 and 1
  
• Fixed Inventory/UI Sometimes not Working After Going to a New Level
  
• Fix Crash when there are More than 6 Players in a game. This may be a mistake.
  
• Various Crash Fixes

• Lowered Bacteria Peripheral Vision by 30%
  
• Non Objective Related Events Will No Longer Repeat Until that Objective is Completed. Avoids getting two blackouts in a row when all you need is an alarm, vice versa.
  
• Fixed Bacteria Searching for a Player After it Killed them
  
• Level Fun:
  
• Overhauled Parkour Area
  
• Improved Carpet, Foam Tile, and Bounce House Materials
  
• Expanded Starting Area to Teach About Exit Locators
  
• Made Music Timer Reset Upon Player Entry in the Warehouse
  
• Lowered Exit Locator Cost to 2 Coins
  
• Add Exit Locator to Every Level Fun Door
  
• Small Bug Fixes
  
• Minor Environmental Tweaks

• Tweak Pipe Sounds
  
• Fix Issue That Caused Stutters When Walking Against the Pipes If Host is on Low Settings and the Client is Not
  
• Scratcher Searches More Randomly Now
  
• Fixed Scratcher Bug Where it Would Pause in front of Lockers
  
• Level 3:
  
• Added Clump Jump scare
  
• Improved Clump Animations, Fingers Now Move
  
• Improved Graphics Quality
  
• Added Lights to Generator
  
• Made Hitbox Larger for Jail Doors
  
• Guarantee 1 Gas Canister Per Hub
  
• Make Fuses Spawning in Hub More Predictable
  
• Moved Wires Next to Terminals
  
• Lowered Clump Hearing Range by 20% and Increased Jail Door Noise by 20%
  
• Made it More Difficult for Clump to Grab You
  
• Fixed Clump Spawning into Stairs
  
• Fix Bugs with Repairing Wires + Fuses

• Made Level 33% Smaller if Solo
  
• Added Environmental Enhancements

• Major Performance Improvements

• Fix Splashing Sounds Playing In Doorways

Hi again! Here back with another mini update, enjoy!

• Reduced Wire's Size to 2x1
  
• Removed Final Door (Exposing Catwalk) to Reduce Confusion
  
• Jail Doors Now Drop their Fuses When Your Inventory is Full
  
• Jail Doors Now have a Slight Cooldown Period to Avoid Accidentally Reopening if Spamming
  
• Removed Large Fuse Panel Lockers
  
• Removed Gas from First Sector
  
• Fixed Various Bugs with Level 3 Objectives
  
• Improved Level Loading Speed
  
• Minor Visual Tweaks

• Added Interactable Light Switches to Each Room to Track Where You Have Searched
  
• Overhauled Graphics, Especially on the Windows
  
• Removed Similar Puzzle Colors to Avoid Confusion
  
• Fixed Lights and Windows not Being Visible On Low Settings
  
• Various Performance Optimizations

• Added Level Run Ending to the Beginning of Level Fun
  
• Minor Visual and Performance Improvements

• Locked Levels Now Show as Locked Doors Instead of Not Spawning
  
• Improved Level Loading Speed

• Bacteria Can no Longer Grab You in a Hole
  
• Bacteria Now Requires Both Arms to be Close to Grab You, Allowing Players to Sometimes Slip Past

• Fixed achievements sometimes not being given to players
  
• Minor Performance Improvements to All Levels (Low: +2%, Medium: +1%, High & Ultra: >1%, Older laptops may see higher gains)
  
• Added Invite Button in Multiplayer Lobbies for Quick Invites to Your Steam Friends
  
• Jumping Now Cancels Looking Back with Alt
  
• Adjusted Interact Progress Bar to Better Signal When to Hold
  
• Overhead Player Names Now Hide When that Player is Running
  
• Decreased Size Slightly of Overhead Names
  
• Improved Text Quality of Overhead Names

Hey everyone! Here with an exciting release packed with QOL and tweaks. This brings an almost entire overhaul to level. Why did level 3 get an overhaul? To be frank we weren't proud of what the level was gameplay wise. We want every new level to be our best yet and Level 3 didn't meet those standards.
For those of you who have already played level 3, I highly recommend you play again! It feels like a new experience. For easy access, use the new "Return to the Hub" feature in the menu to travel to Level 3 through the hub.

As a side note for transparency, with this update comes a price raise to $9.99. Our last price raise was over 1 year ago and I think the game has come a long way to warrant the $2 uplift. Since release, we have generally done a $2 price raise every year. That being said, at $9.99, we will probably be staying here for a while! Thanks for supporting BET for so long :)

• Added Option to Return to the Hub Allowing you To Freely Replay Levels

• Level Difficulty Now Scales Per Player (Much easier solo now)
  
• Major Performance Improvements
  
• Removed Majority of Dead Ends from Level Generation
  
• Minor Visual Tweaks

• Added Floating Name Tags Above Players When Looking at Them (Can be disabled)
  
• Added In Game Multiplayer Settings Menu (Kick players, change max players, get code, change public lobby status)
  
• Implemented Steam Invites and Joining off Of Your Friends Via Steam Overlay
  
• Added Live In Game Player Count When Searching for Lobbies

• Ticket Penalty Decreases When More Players are in a Red Light Green Light Minigame
  
• Fix Traffic Light Switching When a Player Enters a Mini Game
  
• Lowered Max Minigame Playplace Size by 10%

• Fixed Issue That Caused the Camera to Clip into the Player Model When Downed
  
• Fixed Bug that Sometimes Left Players Rag-dolled Even After Being Revived
  
• Fixed Numerous Issues Causing Players to Sometimes be in "Ghost" Lobbies Where Joining is Broken

• Optimized Medium Settings for a 2% Performance Improvement (Up to 4% on some hardware and levels)
  
• Optimized Enhanced Raytracing on Medium and High Settings for a 12% Performance Improvement
  
• Minor (>1%) Additional Performance Improvement for Medium, High and Ultra Settings

• You can Now Drag Items to Use or Drop Them
  
• Added Trophy Icon to Any Save that Has Unlocked the Hub / Beaten all Levels
  
• Game Audio and Voice Chat Now Works When Tabbed Out
  
• Fixed Items in The Hub Floating
  
• Glitched Furniture Now Moves When Spectating
  
• Level Transition Fades Are Now More Consistent and Do Not Restart When Spammed
  
• Updated Localization

Hello again! Squeezing in another hotfix for today, with a few bug fixes, items dropping on death, and brining DLSS 4 to the Backrooms!

• Upgraded to DLSS 4.0
  
• Players Now Drop All of Their Items Upon Death!
  
• Fixed Bug Causing Level ! Scratcher to Not Play Animations on Low Settings
  
• Fixed Crash that Affected Some Users on Game Load

• Greatly improved quality and improved performance for RTX 20, 30, 40, and 50 Series
  
• Multi-frame generation for RTX 50 Series
  
• Greatly improved Frame Gen performance for RTX 40 and 50 Series

Note: While Ray Reconstruction is now included with DLSS 4 (and it looks amazing) I haven't enabled it due to major performance issues. I'm currently working with Nvidia to optimize DLSS-RR for UE 5.5.

Hi again everyone. It's been amazing to see everyone playing and enjoying the new update. I've been monitoring feedback extremely closely and listening. Level 3 is definitely too hard! We've made some changes today that should help the level feel a little more balanced. Let me know how the changes feel!

• Reduced Clump Top Speed by 15%
  
• Clumps No Longer Spawn on the Top Floor
  
• Clumps Now Pause and Stare for Longer Before Attacking (Giving you a chance to get your butt out of there!)
  
• Doubled Fuse Spawn Rate in Jail Doors
  
• Made Jail Doors 20% Faster to Open and Close
  
• Doubled Electrical Tape Amount
  
• Increased Wire Amount by 50%
  
• Increased Size of Top Floor by 10%
  
• Decreased Number of Hallways in the Middle Floor by 15%
  
• Increased Potency of Gasoline, it Now Fills Up the Entire Fuel Gauge (Also decreased gas in world to compensate)
  
• Granola Squares now Remove the "Tired" Effect that Blocked Sprinting for 4 Seconds
  
• Slight Modification to Locker Materials

• Fixed Bug that Allowed Players to Pickup Items From Inside Locked Lockers
  
• Fixed Potential Crash on the Host when a Client Drops an Item
  
• Potential Fix for Some Players Crashing Upon Loading into the Main Menu

• Added Level Fun
  
• Added Level 3, the Electrical Station
  
• Added Level The Hub, Which Allows you to Replay Your Favorite Levels
  
• Added 2 New Entities
  
• Added 10 New Items
  
• Enhancements to Almost Every Level
  
• Significant Graphics and Performance Improvements
  
• Significant Bug Fixes
  
• Multiplayer Lobbies Overhaul
  
• Added Journey Summary to End of Game
  
• Various Quality of Life Improvements

Hey everyone!!! I've been pretty active in our Discord lately, but for some of you it's been a while! As a quick summary and explanation for the long delay between updates, I had an injury in early November that sidelined me for 2 months. I was the only one working on the game at the time, so things sat in limbo while I recovered. Since the beginning of this year I've been back in the development seat and have been tirelessly working on expanding the team. Expansion is a long and arduous process of finding the right fits so don't expect any crazy increase in output for the next few months. Its vital to take the time to ensure every new team member is hungry to improve the player experience for you guys!

In the mean time, Ethan, myself, and a new developer have been working to give the game a much needed make over, this update is the collection of our efforts for the last 2 months. Thanks for sticking around and enjoy!

- Blake

• Added New Achievements for New Levels
  
• Added Ability to Kick Players
  
• Added Ability to Copy Lobby Code by Clicking
  
• Current and Max Players Now Show in Lobby UI
  
• Fixed Entitles Sometimes Camping Downed Players
  
• Upgraded to Unreal Engine 5.5
  
• Reduced Lights Sparkling When Viewed at a Distance
  
• Greatly Reduced Ghosting/Smearing
  
• Performance Improvements and Major Performance Improvements for Some Hardware
  
• Increased Lighting Quality
  
• Greatly Increased Level Generation Load Times
  
• Potentially Fixed Bug that Stops Voice Chat From Being Spatialized
  
• Fixed Bug that Stopped All Movement When Using Items in Your Inventory
  
• Fixed Bug that Prohibited you From Joining Lobbies You've Left
  
• Various Reverb Audio Fixes
  
• Greatly Reduced Stuttering when Using Hardware/Enhanced Raytracing
  
• Added Icons For Every Button and Key
  
• Rebound Controller Mappings for More Natural Gameplay
  
• Reworked Controller Look Axis/Stick Feel
  
• Added Dead-zone to Controller Movement
  
• Added Emotes to Controller
  
• Added Controller Vibration on Death
  
• Remove Psycho Settings
  
• Fixed Bug that Caused Shadows to Be Pixelated After Going to Medium Settings
  
• Fixed Inventories Wrongly Persisting or Wiping After Level Travel
  
• Jump Now Cancels Crouching
  
• Fixed Steam Deck/Linux Proton Prompting to Install Files Every Time
  
• Added Hungarian Language
  
• Updated Localization
  
• Fixed Issue With Achievements Sometimes not Applying
  
• Allow Players to be More Spread Out When Encountering "Exit Requires All Players" Doors
  
• Fixed Sanity Heartbeat Sometimes not Being Audible
  
• Fixed Potential Crash on Clients After Traveling to a New Level
  
• Remove Gamemode Select Screen
  
• Various Tweaks to Item Stats
  
• Increased Footstep Sound Volume
  
• Increased Item Pickup Interaction Boxes
  
• Fixed Feet Sometimes Not Being Fully Planted on the Ground
  
• Renamed Hardware Raytracing to Enhanced Raytracing

• Made Pitfall Mold Marking Spawn Randomly Now
  
• Updated Caution Tape Path Look
  
• Fixed Pitfall Task not Working
  
• Fixed Smiler Record Task Sometimes Not Registering
  
• VRAM Optimizations

• Increased Level Size by 25%
  
• Increased Number of Generators
  
• Needed Generators Now Increase with Player Count
  
• Added Exit Sign to Exit Door
  
• Fixed Items Floating in Level 1 Spawn
  
• Lighting Tweaks
  
• Performance Improvements in Storage Rooms
  
• Smoothed Generator Restart Progress Bar
  
• Minor Audio Tweaks

• Lowered the Sound Generated By Footsteps
  
• Added Chance of Items Inside of Lockers
  
• Fixed Bug that Made Interact Text Persist After Opening Valve on Client
  
• Switched Valve Indicator Light to Green for More Clarity

• Fix Level 6 Wire Sometimes Not Appearing
  
• Redid Level 6 Wire for a More Realistic Look
  
• Changed Wire Endpoint Logic
  
• Level 6 Drop Rooms Now Show their Respective Color
  
• Level 6 Doors Do Not Open Until All Buttons Are Pressed
  
• Added Informative Objectives to Level 6
  
• Added Pitfalls to Second Section to Pose Hazard
  
• Added More Items and Loot to Level
  
• Portrait Background are Now Blue
  
• Removed Colors in Puzzle That Could Be Mistaken for the Same
  
• Minor Performance Improvements

• Various Fixes to Textures
  
• Fixed Crash on Clients During Level Generation

• Morgue Door Control Panel Now Flashes When Open

Glad you asked! Everything you see above is new features that weren't in the beta (0.9). Below are changes that specifically pertain to the beta content. We've spent the majority of our time dialing in the game feel of the new levels!

• Reordered Level Progression: 0 > 1 > 3 > 2 > 4 > 6 > 37 > ! > FUN > The Hub
  
• Greatly Reduced Stuttering in New Levels

• Clumps Are Now Faster
  
• Increased Item Amount, Especially Bandages
  
• Increased Gasoline Amount
  
• Each Floor Item Crate Requires an Increasing Amount of Fuses
  
• Gasoline Drain Rate is Now Different on Each Floor
  
• Bolt Cutters are Now Found in Lockers
  
• Fixed Clumps Camping Floor Entrances
  
• Fixed Clumps Spawning Inside of Shelves
  
• Added Wire Hazards that Can Stun You
  
• Implemented Unique Hallway Generation Per Floor
  
• Terminals Now Show the Item the Floor Provides
  
• Fuse Amount is Now A Fixed Ratio Instead of Random
  
• Fixed Multiple Bugs with Control Room Levers
  
• Jail Doors now Alert and Attract the Clump
  
• Decreased Tape Amount
  
• Major VRAM Optimizations
  
• Fuses Can Now Be Found in Various Lockers and Shelves
  
• Polished Control Room Environment
  
• Polished Clump Animations
  
• Added Sounds to Cat Walk
  
• Fuse Panels can Be Closed
  
• Minor Performance Improvements
  
• Fixed Issues with Clump Sounds not Playing
  
• Ending Door Now Requires Bolt Cutters
  
• Minor Ambient Audio Tweaks

• Decreased Ticket Penalty When Moving in Red Light Green Light
  
• Added Hint When Minigame Reward is 0
  
• Increased Lights on Duration
  
• Added Chance for Lights to Turn off Within 7 Seconds of Turning on
  
• Added New Ending
  
• Fixed Bug that Caused Partygoer to Become Immediately Hostile After Lights Come On
  
• Fixed Issue That Crammed Players into Play Place Upon Teleport
  
• Increased Quality of Various Meshes in Level
  
• Small Updates to Arcade Rooms
  
• Added Safe Zone to Start of Minigame That Will Not Deduct Tickets When Moving
  
• Fixed Chance for Minigame to Deduct Tickets for Players Outside of Play Place
  
• Lights Now Only Turn off in Warehouses and Parkour Play Places
  
• Exit Locator Now Plays for Client
  
• Lights Now Stay On in Warehouse Rooms
  
• Exit Locator has a 33% Chance to Spawn Instead of 100%
  
• Random Decrease Coin Cost of Larger Rooms
  
• Cleaned Up Teleportation Logic For Smoother Transitions
  
• Minor Adjustments to Warehouse Room Layouts
  
• Tweaked Coin Spawn Chances
  
• Optimized Play Place Performance
  
• Teleport Holes are Now Green In Play Places
  
• Decreased Food Item Spawn Chances
  
• Increased Spawn Chances of Cupcakes and Cookies
  
• Fixed Issue that Caused Partygoer Head to Snap
  
• Fixed Exit Locators Having Collision
  
• Increased Balloon Count
  
• Various Performance Improvements
  
• Decreased Effectiveness of Cupcakes and Cookies on Sanity
  
• Minor Fixes to Numerous Mesh's Collision
  
• Minor Graphical Issue Fixes

• Minor Visual Tweaks
  
• Fixed Issue that Caused Journey Summary to Sometimes Not Show
  
• Fixed Time Calculation on Journey Summary
  
• Minor Journey Summary Tweaks

Hey everyone,

First and foremost, I want to apologize for the delay and lack of communication. This past day has been hectic preparing for release. I know you all are extremely excited but I hope you can understand there was no malicious intent. I love this community dearly and I am extremely grateful for everyone who plays my game.

Secondly, I am ecstatic to announce the release of Level 3, Level Fun, and the Hub, along with 2 new entities and a plethora of new items. To get the update, all you need to do is select the Beta branch to start playing right now!

Over this past day, I’ve come to realize BET has grown far past its small roots. The past couple of months have seen a 50x growth in player count. Bugs no longer impact a few people, but rather hundreds. There is a certain level of bug-free polish and game balancing that is needed for the game to hold well in Steam’s limelight.
These are definitely growing pains and not insurmountable but I haven't had time to scale BET for the level of polish that the player count reflects. Since June of this year, I’ve been working on the Journeys and Junctions update nonstop. With this update out now, I will have a lot more time to focus inward and build a sustainable base to meet expectations. I think BET has outgrown me a little bit recently but hopefully, I can reel things in with some team building.

For the reasons mentioned above, it will probably stay in beta for a few days while we tweak the gameplay of the levels. Your feedback is crucial to this, we want to make the levels as fun as possible so please, voice what is good about the levels, and what sucks. Don’t hold back!
I know a beta is annoying, and a few months ago I would’ve just pushed this update live, but with all the people now enjoying BET, I want to get it right.

This is a very fair question. 12 hour delays are unacceptable and for me to try to justify it would solidify my ignorance. The main root cause for those curious was my build machine throwing out errors, two hours before release, meaning I couldn't push to Steam. I had to drop everything and troubleshoot which put a huge wrench in the content roll out. This build machine packages updates almost hourly without fail, so its just unfortunate circumstance.
Regardless, this isn't an excuse, moving forward, I will be sure to have the update uploaded to Steam before I announce a time.

I’ve seen a lot of people upset about the discord being locked down, but it was the only option to avoid our server being banned by discord. 5,000 people joined in one day and by the end of the day, there were rampant slurs, nsfw content and people threatening other members in DMs. Discord has a standing policy that it is the server owner's duty to moderate and disallow those things, otherwise that server is shut down. I wasn't involved in the moderation process, but our mod team consists of a handful of my friends and no one wants to lose sleep over a discord modding role. Our server is usually a kind and friendly environment for backrooms enthusiasts so no one was prepared. After this message, there will be a slow unlocking of channels to ease back into things.

Finally, some feedback for me. Addressing thousands of people is extremely difficult, along with managing getting the update out. I am well aware though of the situation being handled poorly but if I can ask for some feedback on how to better address the community, it would help me build a protocol to best serve you all. I’ll add a FAQ section to this post so we can have a semi-open discussion.

Hi everyone, this is a tough announcement for me to put out as I am just as excited for this update as you all are, but in order for this update to be truly special, the release date needs to be pushed back 4 weeks, to October 28th.

This is especially hard as I feel like I’m letting you all down in doing this but I feel that putting out rushed content would be letting the community down even more. This month I hired and on-boarded an additional team member but they unfortunately were unable to meet expectations. Scaling a team to meet demand is very difficult, and even more so when working on an update. It was a misstep on my behalf and I apologize. I greatly appreciate the community support over the past few months, and it has given me the resources to build a team that can make this the best backrooms game as possible. Unfortunately there’s a lot more nuance than money spent equals content.

I am the only developer working on BET currently. I am actively working to make this change but in the mean time, I greatly appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding.

As for a little progress update, as you the community is more than entitled to one, I am currently working on the last of 3 levels for this update. An extra 4 weeks gives me plenty of time to add lots of polish, make the gameplay as fun as possible, and maybe even additional content. I’ve also added a sneak peek of an upcoming entity =)

I’m sure there will be a lot of questions, but I predict these to be the biggest of them so i’ve answered them ahead of time. I will be in discord and steam forums, answering any additional questions.

This was a delay I thought I was able to avoid, even with the reasons mentioned above. Delaying the update is the last thing I want to do, so I wanted to give it my best effort to make the deadline. I realize now that this would mean shipping rushed content and the community does not deserve that.

I know delays suck for everyone, and the last thing I want is to mislead expectations. 4 weeks guarantees there will be no future delays and it also gives me more time to add even more content to make this update.


Sorry again,
Blake