Hello Agents!
When Sweet Bandits created Deceive Inc., they built a game that brought together an incredible community. From fan art (more Octo abs, thank you!) to weekly custom matches, you all have continued to show that there is still a community enjoying this game.
We'd like to share what we've been working on to keep Deceive Inc. playable long into the future.
Although Sweet Bandits had to close their doors, we don't believe Deceive Inc. should quietly disappear because the services behind it aren’t sustainable forever.
We're actively rebuilding Deceive Inc.’s backend to be sustainable indefinitely and support community-hosted dedicated servers.
When this work is complete, you'll be able to host your own servers using a dedicated server application, browse community servers directly from within the game, and join community-hosted matches just as you do today.
What does this actually mean?
Replacing the backend for a live multiplayer game means rebuilding much of the technology that players never normally see. This touches nearly every part of how players find matches, join servers, manage progression, unlock content, and more.
Our goal is that when everything is finished, all of your account progress, unlocks, and stats are maintained—even though much of what's happening behind the scenes has changed.
Before this update goes live, we'll be opening a public Steam beta so the community can help us test everything and make sure we've gotten it right.
As we get closer to beta, we’ll begin sharing progress along the way, including early looks at the new server browser and dedicated server tools as they become ready.
These changes are planned for every platform.
Console players won't be able to host servers directly, but they'll still be able to join community-hosted servers through crossplay.
We'll also continue operating a small number of official servers—including console-only servers where required—to ensure everyone always has somewhere to play.
Setting expectations
We’re sure this announcement is going to come with plenty of ideas and feature requests. Right now, our priority is completing this migration successfully.
Because of that, we have very little room to incorporate extra feedback or requests while this work is underway.
We absolutely still want to hear your feedback on this work when the beta is available as well as thoughts about the future of Deceive Inc.
What's next?
We've already reached the point where the basic infrastructure is functioning internally, and we're actively testing early builds of both the game and the dedicated server.
We expect it'll be at least another month before we're ready to begin public Steam beta testing.
Since this touches so many parts of the game, we want to be transparent that timelines may shift as we work through the remaining challenges.
What about modding?
One question we expect to come out of this announcement is what all of this means for modding.
Over the years, we've seen plenty of discussion around how players would tweak Deceive Inc.—whether that's balance changes, new rulesets, experimental mechanics, or entirely different ways to play.
While we aren't able to provide a dedicated modding toolkit as part of this work, one of our goals is to remove as many technical barriers to modding as we reasonably can as a part of this work.
Where the community takes it from there is something we're genuinely excited to see.
This work is ultimately about one thing: making sure the future of Deceive Inc. is in the hands of the community that continues to play it.
We'll have more to share as we get closer to beta, but we want to again thank you for continuing to show your support and love for Deceive Inc.!