Dear Retailers,
We’re closing out the year with a series of updates, and I wanted to leave 2025 with something for everyone: newcoming players and veterans of Retail alike.
As part of the upcoming Steam Winter Sale, we’ll be tackling a number of items, namely improvements to the game’s tutorialization, some additional sales behavior, and product updates.
Let’s get started with an early look!
Community Event: Winter Retail Challenge
To celebrate the holidays. we’re kicking off the Winter Retail Challenge, a store-design contest!
Using assets from any source you to create your own winter-themed retail masterpiece. Supermarkets, boutiques, tech stores, malls—anything goes, as long as it embraces the season.
Players can submit a screenshot or short video of their store. Also write a quick note about your concept and what inspired it.
Entries will be judged on creativity, theme execution, store layout and flow, use of seasonal decorations, and overall festive charm. We’ll choose the Top 3 creations, and we’ll be providing a Steam Gift Card for the top ideas.
The contest will run until January 5, and will take place primarily on our Community Discord, meaning submissions and announcements will be happening HERE, The time frame is to give participants plenty of time to build, decorate, and share. So show us what you can do, and help fill the community with holiday cheer!
Learn 2 Retail Better - Tutorialization Improvements
The world of Retail is overwhelming. In the real world, most businesses don’t turn a profit for years, and are always at risk of financial hardship and struggle. Running a retail business is hard work. The critical decisions that owners have to make, even on a day-to-day basis, can make or break the business.
We wanted to reflect that level of complexity on all levels of the game, from physical arrangements of stores all the way up to a sort of retail “grand strategy”. From employee behaviors to shopper preferences: the goal is to model the retail experience in the most compelling way possible.
But we’ve heard a lot of feedback from both long-term players and newcomers, and we understand that knowing how to play King of Retail 2 is just as important.
We’ll be completely revamping the Tutorial experience within the game. Originally, we wanted to teach players the basics of setting up their store, designing it, ordering products, so we can get people into the gameplay as quickly as possible. While we are covering the essentials, it’s not getting players comfortable with the interface, the controls, and ebb and flow of gameplay.
Scenario-Based Learning!
So we’ve gone back to basics on a number of areas, introducing new Tutorial Scenarios that place you in pre-built stores and scenarios. The intent here is to get you acclimated, know how to find information, and get you doing something closer to what an employee would do on their first day.
We’ll be following a logical step-by-step in totally optional experience that will cover each set of mechanics in a series that goes:
City and Property Development - More or less where we originally began: picking your location, building a store, and kicking off the business.
Setting up a Store - stocking, ordering, and shelving items.
A business day - handling cash registers, managing sales, opening, and closing the store.
HQ and employee management - A rundown of HQ setup and navigation, and employee hiring and scheduling.
There are many, many different methodologies for what makes a good learning experience, and in a game as complex on systems as King of Retail 2, we wanted to reapproach from a player perspective. You’ll be running the show when you play the main game, so I wanted to make sure that players have what they need to know what to do.
This is also an ongoing process, and as new features develop through Early Access, we’ll likely need to approach the Tutorial many times before we can say it’s finished. But I want to hear feedback, especially from newcomers to the game. So let me know what you think when this feature launches later this month.
The Big One: Electronics Are Coming
One of the most requested product expansions is finally on deck. “Electronics” are an enormous category, and we wanted to make sure it was able to deliver with a huge variety.
The next major product rollout begins with Electronics, beginning with PC Hardware and games. This is a potentially large variety of products in the long-term, and we’ll be sharing more preview images as we get close to update. Expect display planning to get a whole lot more interesting, and margins to get massive.
Market Trends – Supply, Demand, and Seasonality
Seasonality has come to King of Retail. Seasonal trends, that is.
Relatively minor, but exciting in it’s potential down the road, the upcoming Market Trends system introduces shifting product popularity depending on time of year and product category.
Some items will surge in demand, others will cool off, and savvy retailers will keep an eye on the numbers. Particular models of graphics cards might be in season, but only for a limited time. Under these circumstances, consumer interest will be higher, and those items will fly off the shelves.
If you’re competitively-minded, or just need more money in your pocket, you can research Market Trends at HQ and find what’s in season in your area. We plan to include additional dynamic market features in the coming months.
Who’s on Top? November Leaderboards
With Global Leaderboards now live, competition is really heating up. To be completely honest, this was a feature that got a lot more excitement around it than I had initially expected.
You capitalists-at-heart bring me joy, and I wanted to think of a nice way to honor those taking the initiative to take on Leaderboard ranking as goal within King of Retail 2.
Let’s get a quick check-in: who led the Leaderboards last month in the game in revenue?
Congratulations to all three of you! You are the veritable Kings of Retail for the month of November. Big shout out to ds.winchest1979 for taking the top spot!
Another feature that players have latched onto over the last few weeks is our updated Workshop functionality. Though the workshop has been live for less than a month, we’ve already seen 71 designs uploaded already (and yes, a few were mine :) ).
To credit the enormous enthusiasm the community has shown, I’d like to take some time to highlight some featured mods as part of our updates. And if you like what you see, check out the Steam Workshop link and add it to your store décor!
Our Featured Mod today is kallagova93’s Antique Sculpture. Add a touch of antiquity to your central displays, your entrances, and draw in customers with the power of gravitas. Check it out in the workshop and be sure to drop a comment in support of workshop contributions that you enjoy! It means a lot to modders and creators.
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We’re excited to bring more Retailers on board during the Steam Winter Sale, but we still have plenty of content coming out before the year is out. We’ll be increasing the pace of updates this month just because there’s so much to cover. As always, make sure you’re involved in the Discord Community for early updates, previews, and Q&As with me, the developer.
Until next time, happy sales,
– Daniel