Update log
Full King of Retail 2 update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Extracted changes
- Workshop
- Store
- Gameplay
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 Year
Revamped 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 building block approach to setting down walls, windows and doors.
The result? Some really impressive and incredible store designs from across the community. The general reception of the improved build mode was quite good and opened a lot of new creative avenues for store designs.
Customers have Intelligence Now!
Customer and general NPC AI has been added to continuously over development as they link to new supported features, so this continues to be an ongoing development goal all the way to 1.0 in the distant future. But as we stand at the end of year, AI has come a long way from its state at launch.
AI understand access control now! And they won’t randomly walk into your stock room (unless you’re employing them)
Customers are more proactive with their shopping behaviors, adjusting where they go based on their needs, preferences, and if the store is available to cash them out.
My work on improving AI is never finished, as we’ll be adding new updates and features which will invariably add to the complexity of the AI.
Multiple Stores & Team Management
The features I’m personally most proud of this year, just because of how much its opened up for future development. Multiple Stores & Team Management are two features which will get some adjustments in the near future, as the complexity of how these features are simulated will likely grow.
The idea of “managing a retail empire” has been a primary feature of King of Retail 2, and something that comes about more through a series of features rather than a single mechanic that allows it. Our Macromanagement update, released in September, is the first step to make that reality, but there will be more to come to complete that feature.
Community Features
The Community has always been an important part of the game, but also to me personally as a developer. You have been the sober second thought and my words of encouragement. Integrating community features was an easy decision to make because I knew so many of you would take to it easily. And you have!
Community Workshop Integration
In-Game Leaderboards / Global Rankings
Integrated upload/download of community assets into the game.
I want to focus on making features as accessible as possible, and I’m surprised and touched by the creations that have been made already.
New Products!
When we launched in May, the main offerings for stock and articles were men’s clothing and groceries. Since then, we’ve added expanded inventory in both categories while introducing Beauty Categories and Electronics dropping more recently.
Source