Hey everyone!

City Game Studio left Early Access back in 2021, and here we are today with yet another major update. This is nothing short of the 26th major update, and it's packed with new stuff as always.

More and more of you are playing City Game Studio every day, and honestly that keeps me going, so keep it up, you're the best!

Alright, enough small talk, let's dig into what v1.26.0 actually brings to the table!

Optimizations

Yeah, there are quite a few. Let's start with the big studios, because they're going to feel this one. Previously, managing over 1,000 employees would take around 2,300 milliseconds every time a week went by in-game. With these changes, we're down to 66 milliseconds. So yeah, you're going to notice the difference.

And that's not even counting other improvements, like only updating the text that's actually visible on screen rather than everything at once. Or the fact that some function calls are now 250% faster.

But hands down, the optimization that took the most work was the game's startup time. Before, launching City Game Studio could take over 30 seconds just to reach the main menu. Turns out the game was preloading a massive amount of textures and data on startup to avoid in-game stuttering. I kept the idea, because nobody likes stutters, but I spread that loading across multiple frames. The result: City Game Studio now opens in under 10 seconds (around 7 seconds on faster machines, 13 on slower ones).

And while I was at it, I trimmed over a hundred unused textures and reworked how the game handles I/O (opening and closing files).

Game Consoles

There's been some work here too. The GabeBox makes its debut, and with it, the Steam Machine (from 2013, if memory serves) finally gets its end-of-life date added to the game.

I also took the opportunity to rebalance the Grantendo Swap, the Gamestation 5, and the XBox Series V. The numbers in City Game Studio were getting a bit outdated, so they now line up better with the real world as of 2026.

And since I was already under the hood, I figured it was time to add something cool: consoles now render at 1,024 pixels (up from 512). The visual difference is real when you're playing on a large screen.

While we're on the subject of consoles, I've also added the option for your own consoles to help prevent the 1983 crash. It'll cost you a few production points, but hey, no catastrophic market collapse is worth skipping.

The Interface

Things have changed again, but don't worry, you won't feel lost. It's more of a polish pass to make everything feel consistent. For example, the panels for updating a game or publishing DLC now properly match City Game Studio's overall art direction.

There are other welcome changes too, particularly when it comes to furnishing your studios. A placement grid now appears on the floor to help you position furniture. It's incredibly handy, and honestly I should have added this years ago.

The in-game inbox has been overhauled, and it was long overdue, since it hadn't been touched in at least four years. It's now more colorful, which makes filtering your emails much easier. On top of that, your inbox can now navigate you directly to other panels in the game without having to open and close three or four windows just to get there.

One small but satisfying detail: the quit panel has been redesigned to feel more natural and intuitive. And now you can rename your save file right from there…

Speaking of Saves

This is the centerpiece of the update: save files. The whole system has been rebuilt from the ground up. I hope you'll enjoy the new save browser, it's cleaner, more concise, and easier on the eyes.

You can now rename a save and overwrite an existing one. These were long-requested features. But what'll probably make you happiest is being able to load a save while you're already in the middle of a game.

To speed up save browsing, I've also implemented a caching system. It's not fully complete yet, but it's solid enough that you'll definitely notice the improvement.

I think we can close the book on save management for now. City Game Studio holds its own with the best of them.

Steam Deck

This update brings a bunch of Steam Deck improvements. For starters, the Twitch panel wasn't being handled correctly, and a number of in-game panels weren't automatically opening the virtual keyboard when you tapped a text field.

This affected microtransactions, DLCs, renaming a building, filtering games, and renaming a game that was in the process of being published.

Small changes, but they make the experience noticeably smoother. The input handling has also been reworked, so adjusting game prices should feel much better with this update.

Other Changes

There are so many changes I genuinely can't list them all here. This is the biggest changelog I've ever put together. There are new modding parameters, and filters are now saved in City Game Studio's preferences so you don't have to set them up from scratch every single time.

Some of the more meaningful changes involve the Studio Director, who will now keep an eye on employee happiness to make sure your staff stays motivated and doesn't walk out the door.

An exploit has been fixed that let you generate infinite money through buildings. Basically, the banker would force you to sell a building even if it was empty, topping up your funds in the process. Going forward, the banker will only list occupied buildings with actual employees and office furniture.

Another exploit has been rebalanced, this one involving DLCs. They were generous enough that you could print money by spamming DLCs for a single game. I've reworked the attach-rate so it scales down with each additional DLC, which puts an end to that particular money printer.

I also fixed a memory leak caused by scene loading. Config files now only get saved when something has actually changed, rather than on every pass.

The in-game coffee machine breaking event has been removed. It wasn't funny, and it was eating up resources for no reason.

English translations have been reviewed and corrected. The $ sign now correctly appears before the value in English only.

There are plenty of other changes that didn't make it into this write-up.

Bug Fixes

There are a lot. Like, a lot a lot. First up: windowed fullscreen on Windows wasn't working properly, that's now fixed.

Closing an in-game message could crash City Game Studio.

Publishing a game on a competitor's console was incorrectly unlocking an achievement it shouldn't have.

A bug was preventing the Game of the Year trophy from being placed (GOTY awards now have their own filter category, by the way).

Scrolling the mouse wheel to adjust a game's price was also scrolling the page, fixed.

Hiring a studio to make a game for you and then trying to update that game would crash City Game Studio.

Loading or starting a game with hints enabled could crash City Game Studio.

Occasionally, a panel would open and simply refuse to close (it was rare, but still annoying).

And that's not even the full list, there are another dozen or so minor fixes in there too.

Did I mention this was a big update? I genuinely recommend starting a fresh game and taking in all the visual changes and the improved stability. This one was a real joy to work on, and I already know v1.27 is going to be just as big.

I've already started collecting suggestions for what it'll include, early ideas point to an improved banker, a revamped marketing panel, and a better building construction flow.

Alright, that's it from me! I hope this update puts a smile on your face.
Don't forget to leave a review if you feel like it, it always helps!
See you next week for the next devlog!

Take care of yourselves,
Xavier aka Binogure