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Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Exciting things are afoot!

Big, dramatic, and dare I say exciting things are afoot! I’m sure you’ve heard rumors or other juicy tidbits on the state of APB, so we figured it would be wise to jump in to give a good, solid update. My name is Josh, aka “Capnjosh”. Tiggs and I will be taking on the production-related tasks for APB over the coming few weeks. Tiggs will be spearheading most operational aspects and I’ll be aiming to make sure she has all the resources she could ever want or need. I will also help support the Dev team while they close in on some big milestones, though honestly they’ve got pretty much all of it in fine shape ;) We’ve got some really cool events and plans, and I’ve seen a fresh sense of excitement for all the cool opportunities we can deliver on. The Dev and operations teams will be more closely integrated going forward, and I think you’ll rather enjoy the results. With that, I’ll turn it over to Tiggs to give a run-down of what she sees now and where she sees things going.

Hey, everyone! 

Let’s start off with the APB Team.

Last week we had some pretty big changes in the UK Dev team. In short we had to let a number of people go. We’re sad to see them go, we’re very grateful for all they have done, we wish them all the best of luck, and honestly they’ll be missed.

What does this mean for APB? This means that the APB Team will begin to move over to the US office. This will allow for better team communication, the ability to have meetings in one time zone, allow for more efficient control over updates for the game, and better lines of communication with you, our players. As a note, there will be a transition time while things like people and offices move. We will update on that as things develop. The Dev team now has a lot of programming talent, so I’m confident we will be able to create great things.

I know that there have been many promises made that have not been followed through. My main goal is to keep you in the loop on what’s going on, what we’re thinking about and what we’d like to do as much as possible. This is the game that you choose to login to play and we know there are many options out there for games, we’d like to see APB Reloaded continue on with you a part of it. If there is something we can’t do or complete, I’ll let you know, even if it means upsetting you.

The Future of APB is a bright one - we don’t have any plans of closing down and quite honestly there is a palpable excitement in the air. We do want to move forward with the PS4 release and Engine Upgrade. PS4 update is the main priority right now, since we need to get all platforms up to the same code base before we can complete a number of engine-level changes we all know are of such great interest. Yes, I know you’ve heard all this before; it actually is what needs to happen. We’re hoping to have this (PS4 release) completed in September. I’m not sure of a time line on the Engine Upgrade at this time, and I don’t want to say an estimated time until I can delve into things deeper to see where we are at.

The Find the Dev event will begin to wrap up soon, since it would be in poor taste to continue with Devs that are no longer with the company. Down the road we can start it again if you enjoyed it. I’m waiting on word back to see if we can get a title put into the game for those that qualify, along with an additional prize. If we can’t do the title, we’ll figure out something else.

Speaking of events, we have work being done on a dynamic event system. This will allow us to turn events off and on much easier; the goal is to be able to start and stop the larger in-game events without the need for a client patch.

To our Brazilian family, we’re working out the logistics to transition you over to our servers. Once we have a solid plan in place on how this will work out, we’ll post and let you know.

In closing, I want to say that in the past I wasn’t privy to information about patches, new item releases, or progress on consoles/ engine upgrade until a few days prior to release. I’m beyond thrilled to say that with the team changes all of this will now change, and it will allow me to communicate much more effectively with you.

I know that trust is earned and that you’ve been burned in the past and I’ll need to earn that trust. I hope over the next few months that not only do I prove to you, but the team as a whole will prove to you that we appreciate you playing APB and we will have earned your trust. Looking forward to the new beginning.

Tiggs