Major Update: Cause & Effect - July

Now you know WHY

You used to raise the price, close the week, lose 22 subscribers — and never learn whether it was the price, the content or plain luck. Not anymore. Every weekly result breaks down by cause and reconciles to the exact total:

Subscribers at week close: 1,414 ▲ 140 ↳ Berlinale — Major award ▲ 118 ↳ Market swing ▲ 23 ↳ Price $13 (above the $9 ref) ▼ 1

The breakdown is kept in FINANCE → History, so you can revisit any past week and see what moved it. Every decision becomes an experiment with a readable result.

Seasons actually end now

• New close-out screen: every objective, passed or failed

• Full season balance: cash, subscribers, market share, reputation

• Next season's objectives, before you start it

• Objectives warn you when the calendar has already made them impossible

Rivals hit back

They stopped being a table of percentages. Each week they can:

• Outbid you for a market title — their name shows on the locked card

• Undercut your price — a price war that appears by name in your weekly breakdown

• Go after your best person with a direct offer

Integrity finally pays

Turning down dirty money is no longer just a number going up.

• Above 70: a scaling chance that a breaking scandal dies before it lands

• Elite talent (★) only signs with clean platforms

• New PR read-out: exactly what your integrity is doing right now, good and bad

Originals that land in time

• Default runtime 12 → 6 weeks, minimum lowered to 4

• A season is 12 weeks: an original could never release inside the season that commissioned it

• Festivals leave a permanent mark — what you sent to Berlinale performs differently forever, and wears its laurel 🏆

Readable sponsors

• Success odds shown before you spend the attempt, with the weight of your reputation and audience

• Expected offer range, also before you click

• Guaranteed after two failed attempts: no more four silent rejections in a row

• Inbound offers now announce themselves, so they don't expire unseen

Reachable tech

• Unlocks counted in weeks played, not fixed dates (this broke any run not starting in 2015)

• First gates moved up: 10/20/30 → 4/10/16

• Click any node and it tells you exactly what's missing

Less friction

• "Simulate week" no longer swallows clicks: one prompt with every unmet requirement and shortcuts to fix them

• Missing department chips in STAFF now filter candidates when clicked

• The price slider previews revenue and growth-odds impact before you commit

• The hiring dialog shows real salary, total cost and resulting values instead of bare modifiers

• All three difficulties show their real numbers: starting subs, revenue, costs, sponsor odds, rival pressure

• Events every 2-4 weeks instead of 4-6: fewer empty weeks

Rewritten tutorials

No more "the macro filter changes the decision universe". All help text in English and Spanish rewritten in plain language — which button to press and why. Plus a new one-click way to turn them all off.

28 languages

• Every new string translated into all 28 languages

• Português (Portugal) added as a full language

• Fixed mistranslations of "Reputation" in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Vietnamese

Fixes

• The weekly expense total excluded production costs, reporting a different figure than Finance for the same week

• The subscriber change contradicted the running total shown next to it

• An unfilled {name} placeholder appeared on event cards

• The same event could repeat week after week with identical numbers

• Popups stacked on top of the festival sequence, leaving two live decisions at once

• Empty black box in the sponsor confirmation screen

• Locked tech nodes and department chips ignored clicks

• "Sponsor satisfaction 0/100" when you had no sponsors

• Platform-name field label that repeated its own placeholder