- Dear Retailers #19 - Marketing and Multiple Concepts - 29 July 2026
Dear Retailers it has been a while, and i hope you have enjoyed the summer months. It's time to let you know what has happened since the last update. Table of content State of production New features Run massive marketing campaigns You can manage multiple conmcepts Custom product discounting And several other improvements. --- State of production --- As some of you might know, King of Retail 2 is made by my wife and me, with her sister as a freelancer. A little team, trying to make a big game. It is something we do full time, but unfortunately has it not been something we have been able to actually live off at any point. While development will continue, there is one important change: it will now happen at a slower pace. That is why I waited with this post, so i could share and show some progress along with it. The goal was to improve the game to a point where it was stable enough for us…
- Version 0.4.2 - Optimizations, Balancing and talking customers. - 17 April 2026
Dear Retailers, Since the last update, players have reported a number of bugs as well as severe lag in certain areas. So before starting a longer sprint for the next major update, we wanted to address those issues first. While doing that, we also managed to add a few smaller features along the way. This update has been focused on two main areas: balancing and optimization. --- New features New features are always more exciting to read about than technical improvements, so let us start with that. Even though our main focus was elsewhere, we still managed to add some new things to the game. 1. Voices Many of you said you missed the customer voices from the first game, so we have added them back. Both customers and employees now have voices again. 2. End-of-day milestones The end-of-day screen now shows different milestones. You can track your best days as well as your all-time stats. It a…
- Update 0.4.1 - Following up on 0.4.0 - 3 April 2026
Dear Retailers! It is Friday, and as promised, here is a follow-up update to our 0.4.0 release. It seems like the faster game day speed, starter stores, and multiple complexity levels have been very well received. We have also received a lot of good feedback during the week, and we have used it to make a number of further improvements. - Difficulty settings Instead of only adjusting complexity, you can now also adjust the actual difficulty of the game. You can make customers and employees easier or harder to manage, depending on how you want to play. - Reorganized tutorials Many players go through all tutorials, but with starter stores, you really only need the basic ones to get going. Because of that, we moved some tutorials into an advanced category, so new players can focus on the most important things first. - Balancing Some areas needed balancing adjustments. Electronics in particu…
- Update 0.4.0 is finally out. Our biggest update yet! - 31 March 2026
Dear Retailers, After 3 months of hard work, update 0.4.0 is finally available for you to enjoy. In this update, we have focused on some of the biggest issues you have raised, and tried to address those before continuing further along the roadmap. The main topics we have focused on are: - Starter Stores - Better game feedback - Improved employee management tools - Adjustable game settings This update also includes many other additions and improvements, which I will go through further down in the post. --- Starter Stores --- Many of you have said that the beginning of the game can feel tedious or overwhelming, with setting up the store, filling it with inventory, finding the right products, and placing your first orders. Some of you simply want to get started and begin making sales sooner. To support that, we have created a set of preset stores that you can jump straight into. There is n…
- Dear Retailers #17 - The final touches on the upcoming update. - 17 March 2026
Dear retailers! Time for another update on what we have been working on over the last month, and what you can expect in the upcoming patch. We are still aiming for a March update and are now adding the final touches to the remaining implementations. In the last newsletter, I showed the work done on scheduling, contract renegotiation, and employee management, all of which received major upgrades. This was followed by more content for storage and delivery units, helping those of you running larger stores manage your operations more effectively. We have also continued working on ways to make the game simpler and faster for those of you who feel overwhelmed by the many stats and parameters, and just want to get on with selling products. But that is far from all. We have also continued improving several core parts of the game. --- End of Day --- The End of Day screen used to show your sales,…
- Dear Retailers #16 - An update on the next update. - 20 February 2026
Dear Retailers! In this post i will go through following topics: - Update progress - Geforce Now - Starter stores - Gameplay settings - Updated employee management - New storage and delivery units - More products - Workshop items - User created stores February is already well underway, and it’s been a while since the last update, but we definitely haven’t been idle. Unfortunately, we had a man down during January and February, which has a big impact when we are such a small team. When that happens, the additional workload falls on me, which naturally slows things down. That is just how it goes sometimes and, unfortunately it is out of our control, but it means that the intended February update will be pushed a bit. The goal of this update has been to address many of the things you, the community, have been mentioning over the past period. So instead of constantly running forward and add…
- Let me hear your thoughts on making the game more approachable - 4 February 2026
Dear Retailers! King of Retail 2 often experiences comments that the game is too complicated and far off of the first game. The new mechanics makes the game deeper then the first game on almost all levels. Some enjoy these, but many seem to think that it is now too much, and too complicated. Our assumption is that the game asks the player to understand too much from the beginning, which can be overwhelming for some you that wants a more casual gameplay, and simply want to run a store. So to accomodate those of you who think like this, i thought of introducing various difficulty levels to the game. But before doign that, i would like to know which knobs i need to dial on. Our current plan is to have 4 areas of focus: (A quick mockup, not the final result) -- Customer behavior -- This influences the complexity of products and customers, and reduces the need of what you need to go into whe…
- Dear Retailers #18 - End of Year Update – Looking Back at 2025 - 31 December 2025
Dear Retailers,The year is coming to a close, but the days will only get longer from here. After 7 months of monthly updates, I’ll be taking a well-needed rest for the holidays. As the year comes to a close, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the state of King of Retail 2, where we stand with overall development, and our plans for 2026 on the horizon.The year isn’t over yet! But I wanted to acknowledge both the game’s successes and challenges, as well as the people who helped us along the way.What We Accomplished This YearRevamped Build Mode Launch tools for Building and the Display Designer were functional, but uninspired and overly confusing. We completely rebuilt Build mode from the ground up while introducing new features: Multiple floors, with escalators, elevators and stairs to connect them. And all the AI pathing nonsense that allowed it to be possible.A much more intuitive…
- Hotfix - 29 December 2025
- Fixed a bug that prevented progress on second tutorial - Removed text saying tutorials are mandatory
- Hotfix for the latest update 0.3.4.0, Tutorialization Fixes - 22 December 2025
Dear Retailers, Based on player feedback, we’ve adjusted how tutorials are handled. While the intention was to help new players get started and ensure core systems weren’t missed, feedback on the requirement to access the tutorial was quite insistent. As such, we’ve removed the requirement for Tutorials and baked some “Day 1” tutorialization into first playthroughs.Tutorial ChangesTutorials are now fully optional againAdded a Day 1 Guide featuring step-by-step tutorial videos for the City, Store, and HQThe Day 1 Guide can be collapsed at any time if you prefer to explore freely.We wanted to make sure that essential tutorials aren’t missed by new players, and recognize that returning players shouldn’t/wouldn’t necessarily need that. I tried to strike a balance between both, while leaving all engagement with the Tutorial fundamentally optional.Other FixesAddressed several minor issues to…
- The Winter Update and Winter Sale has Arrived! - 18 December 2025
Dear Retailers,The holidays are officially upon us with the start of the Steam Winter Sale, and we ARE participating with our lowest discount yet, with up to 25%. In all likelihood, if you’re reading this, you’re probably already a player. But if you have any friends looking for a deep Retail simulation, now would be the best time to put that in their gift stocking!Enough shilling, as we have a host of new updates, fixes, and content ready for the Sale. We’re doing a lot of under-the-hood work this update, but with changes that should improve the experience for everyone and better realize the fundamental gameplay behind King of Retail 2.Actually, there’s just one more plug I’d like to make before we move on: The Winter Retail Challenge is Ongoing Just a top-of-mind reminder that the Winter Retail Challenge is in full swing on our Community Discord. If you haven’t joined yet, and are int…
- Dear Retailers #17: A Winter Sneak peek and Player Design Contest! - 8 December 2025
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 l…
- The B2B Networking Update is here with patch 0.3.3.0! - 24 November 2025
Dear Retailers,Whether you’re meeting people at a work mixer or flushing your DNS for the twentieth time that night: Networking is hard work. But the best business never evolved in a vacuum. It takes collaboration, teamwork, and stick-to-itiveness. That’s why I’m proud to announce that November’s update, focusing on expanding King of Retail’s online functionality, is now live for all players! The B2B Networking Update brings many online integrations into King of Retail 2 to make it faster, easier, and more intuitive to incorporate community creations into your stores, connect with the community, and share your designs online.Let’s get right into it.Hustle Across the World - Steam Cloud and Workshop Integration In what will be a small but very welcome addition to the update, we’re introducing Steam Cloud Save support, which syncs your saves automatically across devices. No more transferr…
- Dear Retailers #16 - Building a Global Retail World - 7 November 2025
Dear Retailers,Two weeks ago, we discussed the implementation of online features for King of Retail 2, and we’ve made huge strides since then that we’re ready to start discussing now that we know they’re feasible and achievable for our upcoming update.Now that I’ve done my due diligence with Steam integrations, and Steam Workshop functionality is nigh, it’s time to look at how this upcoming functionality will open up the community experience for King of Retail 2.Create Your World – Model & Texture EditingMod functionality will be incorporated into King of Retail 2 in the next update.The Discord and the Community Page are abuzz with fan creations, including custom art, logos, and some really cool and novel designs. But a common question we’re getting is “when can we start creating custom assets for the game?”I’m always touched by the creativity players bring to their stores. Now, let’s t…
- Dear Retailers #15 - Integrating Steam Cloud Saves and Workshop - 24 October 2025
Dear Retailers,This week, I’m excited to announce that we’ve integrated some long-sought-after Steam integrations into King of Retail 2 as part of the next update. This means that players can enjoy Cloud Save support alongside Steam Workshop functionality in the coming update.These were long-requested changes, and one we’re approaching progressively as we add in-game features to better support them. I’ll go into each below in parts so people know what to expect and what will be available with this update.Retail Anywhere – Cloud Save SupportIn last update, we fixed issues with save file preference files, to make save importing smoother. With Steam Cloud Save integration, we’re introducing Save File management into the game.Finally! No more manually moving save files, no more lost progress. Whether you’re on multiple devices, reinstalling after a system wipe, or just want better options t…
- Dear Retailers #14 - Improving Worker Behavior - Patch 0.3.1.2 is here! - 14 October 2025
Dear Retailers,We’re now in Autumn season, and we’re keeping the focus on stability, polish, and quality of life improvements to King of Retail 2 as we prepare features for our next major update.With update 0.3.1.2, we’re putting a lot of attention toward making your stores more responsive and your employees more manageable, while continuing to streamline backend systems for smoother play overall.Just a note that King of Retail 2 will be on sale starting today until October 21st for 20% off! I’d be deeply appreciative for people to get the word out, as we do still have a demo available to play as well!Smarter Teams, Smoother StoresA new Team Order menu has been added to the Staff Management portion of the Store Hud. With this, you can now assign which number of cash registers you’d like open at any given part of the day.You can now send employees home for the day, giving you greater con…
- Dear Retailer #13: Building Wide before Tall - 10 October 2025
Dear Retailers,A huge thank you to everyone who jumped into the Macromanagement update with last month’s update. We’ve gotten enormous feedback from players on both Macromanagement’s Employee update and Rise to the Top’s building improvements.As we move into the next phase of development for King of Retail 2, I wanted to take a moment to talk about what’s coming up on the horizon and our focus for development through the end of 2025.My priorities over the next few weeks will be to strengthen our foundation: building better moment-to-moment interactions within our existing systems frameworks to improve how stores operate, add functionality to teams, and better define the role of the player at the enterprise level, managing multiple Concepts and Stores.Building Better: Expanding the CoreThe next several patches will revolve around improving existing features—especially those that govern h…
- The “Macromanagement” Update is now Live! - 25 September 2025
Dear Retailers, First, the “Rise to the Top” update added verticality through elevators and multiple-floor stores. In the meantime, we’ve been introducing quality of life changes to fix up build mode and help players realize their multi-level store complexes.But throughout King of Retail 2’s life, there’s been a recurring trend: the player has to do nearly everything relating to running a business. Employees can pick up some of the slack during the day, but you always have to be there to keep them acting.No more. Today, we announce the launch of the “Macromanagement” Update. Now, employees come to the forefront and become the building blocks of your retail empire. It’s time extract the Human Resource and put your employees to work. As well, with the update, we will be joining the Steam Autumn Sale for 20% off this Monday, September 29th until the 6th of October. So if you’ve just discov…
- Dear Retailer #12 - Macromanagement - Your Team Roles, and How to Build a Team - 19 September 2025
Dear Retailers,Last week, we posted an update teasing some features coming to our next update, the new “Macromanagement” Update, which we can now say will be ready before the end of the month. It’s time to look in more detail at what new employee functions will be introduced in this update, which is all about bringing Employees to the forefront to introduce store automation.A Foreward on Store AutomationIndependently-running retail stores have been a hotly requested feature ever since our initial demo launch back in February. This has been a design challenge, as a lot of features need to be functional in order for “authentic” automation.No,w what do I mean by “authentic” automation? When we represent actions that are occurring off-screen, we can do it by two broad approaches:“Summarize” events as they occur from an input-output perspective (“Money generated is a function of X, Y, Z vari…
- Dear Retailer #11 - The Path to Automation, part 1 - Teams - 12 September 2025
Dear Retailers, We’re rapidly approaching the end of Summer and it’s time to start looking ahead to our next update. With “Rise to the Top” last month, we looked at Building and Designing and saw some incredible designs. But the next update is on the way.That being said, we have an enormous amount of work ahead of us, so while we are looking forward to a definitive “Red Letter Day” to get everything live, a lot of these releases will be coming out progressively over the next few weeks. So as such, I’d like to start revealing some of the new systems coming into play with the next update, and how those pieces will eventually come together. The Challenge: Simulating RealityThroughout the pre-release and release of King of Retail 2, everything players do happens and responds in real time. In-game sales occur when an in-game customer picks up an in-game article from an in-game display, and s…
