TL;DR:
A full wipe of the old PBEM server will happen on January 1st, 2026.
All data will be erased. You have until then to finish your ongoing games.
I strongly recommend moving over to 8.1.0 — your experience will be much, much better!
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Hello everyone!
Today’s update is a bit special — version 8.1.0 is now live on the beta branch!
(Right-click the game → Properties → Betas → choose ‘8.1.0’)
Why beta? Because this update is huge, and I need your help to test it before full release.
I’ve tested everything I could — now I need YOU to push it further. :)
Where am I going with this? What could possibly require this much effort? Hehe...
A BRAND NEW PLAY-BY-EMAIL SERVER!
Yes, you read that right — I’ve taken two weeks off to learn a new programming language, a new OS, and I’ve rewritten the entire PBEM system from scratch.
Why the rewrite?
The old PBEM server was the only part of the game I didn’t fully control — it was commissioned years ago and had reached its limits in both flexibility and performance.
Now it’s fully mine, fully modernized, and ready for the future!
I also took the opportunity to completely overhaul the multiplayer menu UI — it’s cleaner, faster, and offers more possibilities.
Highlights:
- New public user profiles (custom avatar, bio, stats, and more)
- PBEM games now support 2 to any number of players
- Massively improved security (roughly 300% more secure)
- Enhanced performance
- HTTPS protocol— no more data corruption issues
- Password protection for both realtime and PBEM games (optional)
- Moved away from AWS — servers are now directly reachable from Russia without proxies
- Full developer control over everything (that’s me!)
ADDED
- Brand new PBEM server.
- Several new sections in the Manual.
- 7.5 cm le.IG 18 and 7.5 cm Gebirgsgeschutz 36 light artillery to Germany.
CHANGED
- All base game units end use year has been changed from 1946 to 1949.
- Updated all of the realtime multiplayer libraries (we were quite a few versions behind).
- Many sections of the manual have been cleaned up and reorganized.
- Red color on damage breakdown is now brighter for increased readability on dark backgrounds.
- End of turn menu will no longer appear when playing a singleplayer game (when going from one human player to another).
- Foreign equipment is now available in the upgrade menu.
- When upgrading/downgrading a unit to a modified version of itself, it will no longer be sent to the reserve.
- Saving during multiplayer games is now allowed (all).
- Rebalanced Low Countries campaign scenario (Axis side).
- Finnish F2 Buffalo has been renamed into B-239.
FIXED
- Achievement 'Losing a hero' could not be unlocked.
- Naval units were affected by land units' ZoC.
- Game was loading Custom Heroes data from one folder and saving it into another, leading to data mismatch. Proper location is: GAME/MODS/YOUR_MOD/Custom Heroes/Custom heroes.txt
- When opening the 'Statistics' menu before the game's end, if you changed the sorting mode, that could re order the whole list of players.
- Move or attack not properly greyed out on units that have the 'move or attack' property.
- Typo in the Farragut and Allan M Sumner destroyer classes (USA).
- Buildings (units) were showing a non zero upkeep value, even though they had no upkeep value.
- 'Better Scientists' policy was not excluded from the menu when playing without the 'Research' setting.
- 'Flexible Strategy' policy was not giving any refunds on policies you cancelled after loading a save.
- Music player resuming automatically when tabbing out/back in even though you manually paused it.
- Europe '45 had a missing airfield VP in Poland and 2 wrong road tiles in Iraq.
- AA units could attack enemy planes during bad weather if the tile had an enemy land unit in range.
- In some specific cases, air units could become invisible when an enemy land/naval mine was on the same tile.
- Upgrading a ship to a carrier was not allowing that ship to launch airplanes.
- Fighter planes had their attack SFX overwritten in some cases.
- Landing bonus on damage breakdown was showed as red instead of green for Marines.
- Some units could remain invisible in some specific cases due to the recent 'cleared FOW saving' feature.
- Several upgrade/downgrade cost issues.
- Minor localization issues.
- Drawings were not refreshed for your allies in real time multiplayer.
- Using supply ships/planes in real time multiplayer was not synced.
- Germany in the scenario North Africa 1942 had negative manpower on turn 1.
- Joining a faction through the diplomacy menu was opening the 'faction creation' popup window.
- Sometimes, in very specific cases, some unit in the Order of Battle could display a hero name even though they had none.
- FOW on the map was not refreshed in real time multiplayer after a player accepted an alliance proposition.
- Weather was not synced properly in real time multiplayer.
- Upgrades, downgrades, or update actions were not synced properly in real time multiplayer.
- Efficient Modernization policy was applied even when downgrading (money getting in) meaning you'd lose some money (25%).
- Code freeze due to units no longer existing in the game being used by events (they will now be skipped/removed).
- Localization issue with policy picking confirmation window.
REMOVED
- Access to previous multiplayer server. (You can still use the old version until January 1st, 2026)
FOR HARMONY MODDERS:
Player.Nickname (string) has been removed and replaced by Player.UserId (Guid).
If your mods use this variable, please update them accordingly.
Reminder:
The current PBEM server will be wiped on January 1st, 2026.
Make sure to finish your ongoing games before that date!
That’s it for now — I can’t wait to see what you think of the new PBEM system! As always, your feedback is invaluable.
Thank you for helping make Hex of Steel better every update :)