Steam Community :: Pixel Privateers

Public Test Now Live, Includes Auto-combat and U5!

Jun 15, 2017

Greetings, Privateers!

Today we’re bringing you a very long awaited piece of news: The ability to preview and test the widely-requested solution to automating combat a bit more than the manual-only approach at launch. What we are rolling out here allows the user to control whether or not to activate the “Stand Your Ground” feature. How does this work? Read on to find out!

When in Stand Your Ground mode, you can command specific privateers to automatically attack anything within the immediate area of that squad member. Selecting another crew member lets you set a different area, allowing you to cover more than one area with automated defense. This feature brings in a way for you to direct your attention elsewhere while combat is ongoing - all while interacting with other crew members - without sacrificing player interaction and control of combat. In situations where you need tighter control, you can toggle Stand Your Ground off, and take full manual control of your crew. When active, the field you defend will be placed again each time you click to move your crew or attack. Using this method, we are able to prevent crew members from pulling aggro on chains of enemy groups before the player wishes to engage with them.

We are initially introducing this feature onto the public test branch. This will allow us to gather feedback and ensure that it is working smoothly for everyone and address the issues the community has stressed/raised to us. We hope to see plenty of players opt in and engage with this beta in order to improve the game and take it in the direction you want to see.

Along with the auto-attack feature, we have made significant performance increases with the change to Unity 5 and resultant changes throughout the game, and are excited to see how those changes function outside of our testing environment. This should make a very noticeable difference to those who were seeing crashes due to being out of memory, as well as slow-downs, lag, or stuttering due to low frame rate. The team is anxious to hear from those who were seeing these issues, and hope you will let us know if this resolves those problems for you.

Once these features are tested with the community, we will be making any necessary changes and then rolling them out to the main branch. We will be reading feedback as it comes in, so please be sure to let us know your thoughts. We couldn’t have made Privateers the game it is today without our community, thanks for being part of our journey!

To opt into the public beta:

-Go to Pixel Privateers in your Steam library, and right click on the title.
-Click on Properties
-Select Betas
-Select the Gamma Testing/Public Test branch
-The game will update to the public test build
-Start game and enjoy!

Please note: Saves that are used while in the test build may not be compatible with the main branch any longer. Be sure to back up any saves you use for public test, or use new ones! You can access your saves from the options menu, by clicking “Open Save Folder.”

Additionally we would like to note that there is a known issue/glitch with the character screen after confirming your stat points. This will be resolved as soon as possible through a patch to the test branch.

Here are the patch notes for the public test branch update today:

New features:
- New Defend Area feature which will toggle crew member to auto attack enemies inside a specific area. You can resize the area by holding left-mouse button on the shield icon on the area and dragging mouse right and left. You can have multiple areas active at the same time. Move commands are prioritized over auto attack.
- New consumable Cosmetic CRISPR allows you to permanently change the appearance of a crew member. These can be bought from market stations.

Optimizations:
- Engine upgrade to Unity 5.6 from Unity 4.6.
- Rebuilt UI for Unity 5.
- Better texture handling decreasing overall memory consumption.
- Numerous miscellaneous optimizations to code decreasing memory consumption and improving performance.
- Space backgrounds rebuilt (improved performance on non-combat scenes).
- Multiplayer code optimization: better handling of packets.
- Creation and destruction of synced objects batched in network code.
- Pathfinding moved to a separate thread decreasing its impact on performance.
- Better handling of extreme packet loss in multiplayer.

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed various buggy status effects (bad serialization).
- Fixed threat system failing sometimes when leaving combat.
- Fixed health sync in multiplayer.
- Fixed quick use icons being offset in relative UI scaling.
- Vanity wings now also animate for jetpack engineers.
- Fixed cases where the game tried to sync parentless status effects.
- Imperium bomb dismantler no longer tries to dismantle other kinds of traps than mines (for example toxic glue).
- Fixed multiplayer sync issues with dismantle ability.
- Fixed issue with multiplayer color picker not working when UI scaling is set to relative.
- Fixed bugs which allowed you to exploit vanity inventory for infinite inventory space.
- Fixed multiplayer desync issue related to rescue prisoners mission.
- Fixed request mission failing when using it at the edge of the galaxy map.
- Fixed bugs with using distress signals in multiplayer.
- Fixed a bug with events which close doors of the room getting stuck in closed mode in multiplayer when only one player's characters all died in the trap room.
- Fixed player "ready to teleport" states being out of sync in multiplayer sometimes.
- Healing chains no longer target pets (for example Trajectory Adjusting Prisms tech).
- Fixed elevator shadow bugging out on short distance movements.
- Fixed tractor beam effect sometimes getting stuck for clients in multiplayer games.
- Fixed bug which prevented vanguards charging through doors if they were too close to the door.
- Fixed selection box being the wrong size if UI wasn’t set to pixel perfect mode.
- Fixed characters using grenades not being able to shoot sometimes.
- Fixed a bug where you could access black market even though the market station didn't have one.
- Fixed a bug where you could aggro president earlier than intended.
- Friendly tumors will now teleport to owner if left behind.

Known Issues:
- After assigning stat points to a character multiple windows will appear simultaneously on the same screen.
- Cosmetic CRISPR UI color picker is offset in some cases and the UI shows crew gear which isn’t intended.
- Door buttons near stairs are sometimes out of sync.

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Cosmic Booster Pack 1 is Now Live!

May 10, 2017

Greetings Privateers!

Today we bring you the first of our content patches, which introduces, vanity gear, pets, and more. We’ve added more than 150 new vanity items for you to find and enjoy! Additionally, players in NG+ will now have the chance to find exclusive vanity gear and pets, to reward adventurous privateers for their hard work. From the community’s wish list, the patch also includes auto-disintegrate and UI scaling features, as well as the ability to sell multiple items on the markets.

To keep the community in the loop, we’ve prototyped a potential solution for the much-wanted auto-attack feature, and will continue to work with that until we’re satisfied that it works and plays well in the game. We don’t have a current ETA for which patch that will come out with, but it is very much on the radar for the team, and is in progress. We are also working on porting the game to Unity 5, which will dramatically improve memory and performance issues in the game. Keep the feedback coming; we’re listening!

Here are the notes for today’s patch:

Changes and New Features:

* 150+ vanity items added (hats, suits, and specials) which now have a chance to drop from hat-o-mats,events, champions, and bosses.
* Pets! You can now have an adorable companion to follow you on your adventures!
* NG+ Exclusive vanity items and pets, to reward those who dare venture there!
* New vanity inventory which has infinite tabs. It can be accessed via vanity inventory button near the character paperdoll in crew screen. This same inventory is also found in replicator screen.
* Vanity items have pink icons on their item tags and inventory icons to more distinguish them from rest of your gear.
* New blueprints tab in replicator. Same blueprints are available for every crew you play. Each blueprint is unlocked when you find a new vanity item for the first time (if it's replicable).
* 5 new random events.
* Option to automatically disintegrate items on pickup (with quality threshold setting).
* New option to use relative UI scaling (available in options menu) which should help with small combat UI on high resolution monitors.
* You can now select multiple items to buy and sell in the market screen.
* You can now buy and sell vanity items in market stations.
* Added new "all" category for markets.
* Buying items in the market no longer resets the view to the beginning of the list.
* Credits rewards from cyborg terminal quests and Saving Lukas event reduced. Rewards are now consistent with other quest and mission rewards.
* Warning message for cloning is now more clear on how codex points and unallocated training points transfer.
* Pan-Temporal Skipgets now have 2s cooldown instead of no cooldown at all.
* Low fuel warning now states, on hardcore mode, that it's not certain anyone (Kent) will come help you.

Bugfixes:

* Fixed ranged weapon stats being offset due to ttx-coating text formatting.
* Fixed a bug when dragging on a crew member's gear while in hire comparison view resulting in items getting stuck on screen.
* Fixed stamina giving half of the hp it should.
* Fixed Entropy fight causing lag spikes for client in multiplayer games.
* Fixed events rewarding unusable lvl 100+ items on level 100.
* Fixed markets not having lvl 100 items.
* Fixed security bots attacking your own crew members in ship view mode.
* Fixed cleaning bots triggering your own mines in ship view mode.
* Fixed an issue that interfered with players using JoyToKey, and caused the cursor to keep centering itself.
* When resurrecting a dead crew member in the cloning lab, unallocated stat points no longer reduced from allocated stats.
* When cloning a crew member, codex points (even if used) no longer reduced from allocated stats.
* Refunded stat points (via techs) when cloning can no longer exceed the stat points actually refunded from the stats (on low level characters).
* Matter and fuel no longer capped to 100k when the resources were consumed.
* Events will now grant rewards which are of the same level as the crew even on distant planets (from the start location of the game).
* Training targets no longer spawn on ship invasion events to prevent invasion events getting stuck when training module is installed to a ship.
* Resistance bonuses from tool items (such as Assault Frame) now also work correctly.
* Start Game button on landing party selection screen is now Start Mission button as intended.
* Combat recovery field and Novel conceptual frameworks tech typos fixed.
* Markets containing black markets now say so in their tooltips.
* T1 market tooltips now also say that hiring crew is available.
* Heal texts generated by Happy Pills are now also hidden when Show heal texts option is turned off.
* Fixed transport ranges being calculated incorrectly sometimes resulting in the inability to build ship modules using the ship builder (missing cogwheels).
* Fixed overload shot descriptions having different damage bonus values and reference to splash damage even if Plasmic Paroxysm wasn't researched.
* Fixed neutrino radar detector tech generating planets with lower than expected levels when revealing the layout of the planet on galaxy map screen.
* Fixed death dissolve effect bug which caused permanent issues in multiplayer when the system tried to start the effect continuously.
* Fixed a bug with mouse hover code resulting in inability to target dead crew members with bio-hacking tech.

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Patch v1.0.2 is now live!

Mar 17, 2017

Greetings, Privateers!

Today we are moving the balance patch through to the main game, so that those waiting on the fixes it contains are able to continue their adventures. We have corrected a bug in the test version where players were seeing their crit damage values become nerfed beyond what was intended. We have fine tuned a number of other factors as well, to get the game feeling much better in terms of balance We will be continuing to listen and make changes to balance as we hear more feedback from the community over time.

With this patch moved forward, we are working on more quality of life changes behind the scenes. Work is underway on the solutions to better inventory management, improvements to combat, UI scaling, and more. Memory issues and the latency and desynch issues in multiplayer are also on the list, and we will be working on optimizations which will hopefully ease these problems. Additionally, we are hard at work on the first content patch, which will bring some fun new features to the game. What’s coming, you ask? We won’t spoil it just yet, but stay tuned for news on it soon!

Here are the notes for today’s patch, which include the changes from the public test as well as the adjustments to the test build:

Changes:

* Enforced the intended level cap of 100. Extra stat points gained by overleveling removed (stats gained from training codexes stay). Items will be scaled down to level 100 (modifier setup stays the same, values are scaled down).
* Saves are now backed up locally in case the main save file is corrupted.

Balance:

* Dodge chance and damage mitigation both now have a hard cap of 85% (down from 95%).
* Increased the overall damage output of enemies for higher difficulty settings slightly.
* Damage mitigation from armor reduced considerably.
* Damage enemies deal at the start of the game (lvl 1-4) reduced to reduce the impact of the reduced damage mitigation.
* Item modifiers for specific damage sources and block chance scaled down.
* Dodge modifiers and dodge bonuses from light armors scaled down.
* Reduced hp of high stamina enemies (mostly elites) on higher levels (and difficulty settings).
* Item drop chance modifier values scaled down.
* Rocket launcher fire rate decreased from 1.5 to 0.33 and decreased min & max damage. Range reduced to 3.8 from 4.8.
* Fire rate and reload time modifiers scaled down.
* Increased explosion damage (to crew members) on low difficulty settings, decreased for higher difficulty settings.
* Rescaled crit damage multiplier modifiers.
* Characters now gain more HP from stamina on low stamina values. This effect increases the overall health pools of crew members - an attempt at making one shot deaths less likely.
* Knockback effects from explosions weakened on high difficulty settings.
* Haste field fire rate bonus decreased.
* Intelligence modifiers now give you less intelligence to balance crit rating modifiers against int modifiers.
* Crit rating gains from intelligence reduced.
* Fire rate and reload time bonuses capped (they are now based on the base reload time / fire rate of the weapon).

Bugfixes:

* TTX-coating is now only shown for melee weapons on the item tooltip.
* Hireable characters can no longer have level over 100.
* Hireable characters can no longer have base stats over 100.
* Status effects can no longer be applied to crew members who are in the middle of a teleport, thus transferring them to ship screen (possibly fixes character panel showing high stat values).
* Status effects which modify stats are now activated correctly fixing stats being increased/decreased semipermanently (resets when reloading a game).
* Fixed sorting overburdened tabs resulting in lost items.
* Fixed being able to right-click items in QDT with a full inventory to place items into overburdened tabs.
* Fixed being able to MMB while disintegrating to destroy the item you were trying to favorite.
* Fixed tool target cursors and other hover effects not working correctly.
* Light armor bonuses are now applied to correct stats.
* Fix attempt for cases where there's never any sounds in the game.
* Fixed planets being empty when crew level + difficulty setting level are over 100.
* Potential fix for a bug where fps drops to 1 and isn't fixed by restarting the game.

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Public Test Branch is Now Live!

Mar 8, 2017

Greetings, Privateers!

We have been hard at work since launch, investigating and fixing bugs the community has found. This patch brings more of those fixes out, including our fix for the issue where the cursor would remain in a hover state and not allow the player to attack. We have also corrected the bug that was allowing players to exceed the intended level cap of 100, which was causing odd behaviors beyond that point. Characters that have exceeded the level cap will be scaled back within the level 100 limit. The first fixes for FPS issues also appear in this patch, and we hope those experiencing that issue will opt in and let us know if the changes were effective!

Before rolling out this patch to the main game, however, we are opening our public test branch to allow everyone to opt in and check out the balance changes, and to weigh in with feedback. We want to hear what the community thinks, and to be able to adjust and tune the balance as needed. We have opened a brand new subforum on Steam where you can share your thoughts with us on the test branch build. Once we feel the game is where we want it to be, we’ll roll it onto the main branch.

Please note, any save that you load while opted into the public test branch, will be affected by the changes present on the newer build. If you have saves you wish to remain unaltered for the main branch when you opt out, avoid loading those saves while in the test branch.

To opt in:
-Right click on the game in your library
-Select Properties
-Select Betas
-Select the public test branch from the drop down menu
-The game will then update to the public test build.

Here are the notes for today’s patch, which is now live on the opt-in branch:

Changes:
* Enforced the intended level cap of 100. Extra stat points gained by overleveling removed (stats gained from training codexes stay). Items will be scaled down to level 100 (modifier setup stays the same, values are scaled down).
* Saves are now backed up locally in case the main save file is corrupted.

Balance:

* Dodge chance and damage mitigation both now have a hard cap of 85% (down from 95%).
* Increased the overall damage output of enemies for higher difficulty settings slightly.
* Damage mitigation from armor reduced considerably.
* Damage enemies deal at the start of the game (lvl 1-4) reduced to reduce the impact of the reduced damage mitigation.
* Item modifiers for specific damage sources and block chance scaled down.
* Dodge modifiers and dodge bonuses from light armors scaled down.
* Reduced hp of high stamina enemies (mostly elites) on higher levels (and difficulty settings).
* Item drop chance modifier values scaled down.
* Rocket launcher fire rate decreased from 1.5 to 0.5 and reload time decreased from 2.5 to 1.5.
* Fire rate and reload time modifiers scaled down.
* Increased explosion damage on low difficulty settings, decreased for higher difficulty settings.
* Rescaled crit damage multiplier modifiers.
* Characters now gain more HP from stamina on low stamina values. This effect increases the overall health pools of crew members - an attempt at making one shot deaths less likely.

Bugfixes:

* TTX-coating is now only shown for melee weapons on the item tooltip.
* Hireable characters can no longer have level over 100.
* Hireable characters can no longer have base stats over 100.
* Status effects can no longer be applied to crew members who are in the middle of a teleport, thus transferring them to ship screen (possibly fixes character panel showing high stat values).
* Status effects which modify stats are now activated correctly fixing stats being increased/decreased semipermanently (resets when reloading a game).
* Fixed sorting overburdened tabs resulting in lost items.
* Fixed being able to right-click items in QDT with a full inventory to place items into overburdened tabs.
* Fixed being able to MMB while disintegrating to destroy the item you were trying to favorite.
* Fixed tool target cursors and other hover effects not working correctly.
* Light armor bonuses are now applied to correct stats.
* Fix attempt for cases where there's never any sounds in the game.
* Fixed planets being empty when crew level + difficulty setting level are over 100.
* Potential fix for a bug where fps drops to 1 and isn't fixed by restarting the game.

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More Updates Coming Next Week!

Mar 3, 2017

Greetings, Privateers!

We have a couple of things to share with you today, which we think will be welcome news! First, we want to let you guys know that the next patch will be rolling next week, bringing out more of the bug fixes for issues the community has experienced. The fix for the cursor hover issue will be there, as will the first round of fixes for the FPS drop. Additionally, we’re introducing our first round of high level balance changes for the game overall, addressing feedback that many players are finding the game to be overly easy.

Secondly, next week we will debut an opt-in beta branch to allow you to test and preview upcoming changes to the game. Balance is an on-going process, and because even a minor change can have a large impact, we want to allow the community to participate in testing how they feel. In this way, you are able to experience changes before the main game is updated, and can offer feedback and insight as to your experience. This will allow us to fine-tune any changes prior to a full public rollout.

For those looking forward to new content, don’t worry, we’re already working on that as well! We look forward to getting this next update out to you guys, and to hearing plenty of feedback and suggestions.

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Pixel Privateers v1.0.1 is Live!

Feb 24, 2017

Greetings, Privateers!

First, we would like to say thank you to everyone who has picked up the game since launch, the response has been truly humbling! We’re incredibly happy to see how much everyone is enjoying Privateers so far! We have been listening to all the feedback and pouring over your bug reports, and today we bring you our first round of hotfixes that should help address some of the most commonly-reported issues.

We’ve tackled the NaN matter issue in NG+, as well as the infinite matter exploit. We’re working on fixes for the the issue people encountered where the cursor would get stuck on friendly hover, leaving you unable to attack. That fix will be available in the next patch. Additionally, we’re beginning the process of scaling back loot, to make it less overwhelming, and in this patch the first change will be small in order to properly gauge impact on overall balance.

Other fixes in the works will include improvements to help you spend less time in menus and inventory, and tackling the low FPS issue a number of users have encountered.

We’d also like to let everyone know that we are hearing your feedback on issues such as auto-attack, and there are a lot of internal discussion going on as to potential ways to improve combat. This is a more involved topic with lots of implications, so we want to take our time to get any changes “just right”.

Please keep your feedback coming, and remember, the game is still 15% off this weekend! If you have friends or family who are looking into the game, it’s a great time to pick it up!

Here are the notes for today’s hotfixes:

Changes:
* Player list button is now visible in single player when multiplayer visibility is set to invite only.
* You can now disable 3D UI from the options menu.
* Added option to disable UI mouse panning.
* Rebalanced Commander Sheen event to happen later and to give less overpowered rewards.
* Reduced item drops from enemies by 10%.
* Matter container replication cost now scales with matter gained by consuming it and replication success rate lowered considerably.

Bug fixes:
* The two techs which allow reallocation of training points after cloning now works correctly and no longer awards extra points.
* Fixed teleporting to a planet not being possible if host was in ready state and changed to another screen in the UI.
* Prevented matter changing into an invalid value (NaN).
* Fixed an event generation bug which sometimes made planetary missions consisting of multiple rooms (environment scan, rescue prisoners) impossible to complete.
* Item chest for the commander Sheen event can now be opened when returning to the planet while the mission is active.
* Fixed item duplication exploit when dragging items from qdt to trade window.
* Fixed tutorial becoming stuck if accidentally disintegrating the scout tool in tutorial before having to assign it to a character.
* Fixed a bug where you weren't able to move your crew members after all your crew members have died in multiplayer game and you resurrect them all and a separate case where this happened only when you reorganized crew marching order in the crew frames when they were all dead.

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Pixel Privateers is HERE!!!

Feb 21, 2017

Greetings, Privateers!

The wait is finally over! Today, we officially launch Pixel Privateers, and you can obtain a copy on Steam at $14.99!!!

This landmark occasion marks the fulfillment of more than 2 years of development work by our small team at Quadro Delta, and we are incredibly excited and proud to bring the game to you in a full 1.0 release. Over the coming days and weeks, we will be eagerly listening to your feedback and suggestions in order to best prepare the game’s first patches/updates. Of course, fixing bugs will be our highest priority for the immediate future.

While the launch is certainly a milestone, it is far from the end of development. Future patches will expand content and features, as well as the usual bug fixes - while incorporating user feedback and suggestions. We look forward to supporting Pixel Privateers for a long time to come!

How can you give that feedback and/or report bugs? Glad you asked!
Since the game is launching straight to 1.0, we want to encourage everyone to report any issues or bugs to us via our support ticket system, JIRA.
Alternatively, you can report to us via the Steam forums or our official forums.
If you prefer to try to catch us in real time, our community team is ready and willing to help on our Discord server. Please note that our volunteers cannot man the server 24 hours a day, but we will assist everyone as quickly as possible. Leaving a message on Discord and setting your notifications to alert you when a response arrives will allow our team to respond to your questions or concerns as quickly and completely as possible.

We strongly recommend these methods over posting to us on Twitter or Facebook, as our social channels are not considered outlets for technical support - plus it is easy and far more efficient to be able to look in only a few places to find all of the bugs/feedback!

We would like to thank everyone that supported us throughout the development process, and we look forward to joining community members in game! You can find us on our Discord server if you’d like to play with members of our staff.

Happy launch day, Privateers, and we’ll see you in space!

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Pixel Privateers Launch Date Set!!

Feb 7, 2017

Greetings, Privateers!

The time has finally come to make the announcement you’ve all been waiting for: We have a launch date! Quadro Delta and our publishing partners at Re-Logic are pleased to announce that the wait for Pixel Privateers is almost over, and that the game will go live on February 21, 2017. Privateers will be available via Steam at a price of $14.99.

We would like to express our profound gratitude to Re-Logic for their support and assistance in making Pixel Privateers the game it is today. We would also like to thank our community for standing by us over the last two years while we worked hard developing the game in order to make sure it is an experience that our players will enjoy for a long time to come. This has been a humbling experience for us as a team, and we feel very fortunate to have such an awesome community behind us!

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, be on the lookout for a wealth of information about the game - including our first video and stream coverage. We will be sure to bring you all of the details on those events as they happen, and to keep everyone up-to-date on the lead-up to launch. If you’re not following our social, you can find us on Twitter, Imzy and Facebook as well as our forums and Discord server. It’s time to cross the finish line, and we can’t wait to see everyone in game!

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The Community is Growing!

Jan 3, 2017

Happy New Year! Our community is expanding again! You can now join us on Imzy to share posts, get news and updates, check out new images, and more! We will be regularly updating the page, and look forward to seeing everyone there. You can find our brand new Imzy community here:

Pixel Privateers on Imzy![www.imzy.com]

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December Dev Update!

Dec 2, 2016

Greetings Privateers!

Hope everyone’s holiday season is off to a safe and wonderful start! Over here at QD, the elves are busy indeed, stuffing the game with even more awesome content for your privateering enjoyment. Quality of life improvements and polish are still coming in, and the bugs are becoming fewer and further between. This has allowed us to turn our attention in the direction of adding content.

One of the areas we have felt very strongly about in developing Privateers has been making sure that the game offers our players a solid experience, offering plenty of replay value. To that end, we’ve recently been working on expanding with new quest types, which add variety to the experience on planet. We are very happy with the feel of the game in terms of cutting back on repetition, and giving players new and interesting things to run into while running amok through the universe.

To further round out the experience, we’re also touching up the random events. Some of these improvements are designed to flesh out the lore, and provide the player with more insight into the goings-on within the world of Privateers. Others offer fun and interesting diversions to encounter while taking on the bad guys. You never know what or who you may run into along the way, and it has made the universe feel quite a bit more active.

Overall, we are very pleased with the game’s progress, and continue to work on the finishing touches that will take us across the finish line to 1.0. Privateers has come a very long way over the last year of development, and we look forward to shipping a game that we and our players will love for a long time to come!

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