The time has finally come! I'm going to start this dev blog update with the news you really want: the Identity Town Square module will be published to Steam before the end of this month (October)! This means that you'll be able to create your characters, meet other players and set up your homes very soon. Here's how it'll work: before the end of the month, the Identity Town Square store page will be published. At this point, we need to wait for Steam's approval of our application which takes a couple of weeks. Once approved and released, you'll be in the square! The great news here is that when the Town Square does show up on Steam, the date shown (which will be quite near) is the absolute date that you'll be playing. We're so very close to getting the foundation of Identity out there for you to get your hands on! Next to come, the SWAT module's development will take but a fraction of the time to create as the Town Square has the foundation in place for the entire MMORPG. The back-end we need to push forward is here and from the point of the Town Square release our development focus is switched over to gameplay features. As a developer, this feels great! Get your Identity Steam key! We're getting close! You can now connect your Steam account to your Identity game account and obtain your Identity game Steam key. This key will add Identity to your library so that when Identity is released, you can download it and start playing immediately without having to do anything else. To get your key, login on the main site at www.IdentityRPG.com. You can then go to the Account tab of your profile where you'll see an option to link your Steam account. You must have BETA ACCESS on your account to claim a key! ATTENTION! You can only attach one steam account to one game account, and it's permanent. Be sure you're logged into your game account which has the items you've purchased before attaching a Steam account! While you won't get Identity in your game library just yet, you will as soon as we're published and approved. Handing out the keys like this allows us to reduce load on our servers. We currently have 20,000 keys in the system and we'll be adding more. Once you've obtained your key from the Identity website you can enter it into your Steam client, but be sure that you're logged into the Steam account where you'd like to own Identity. Click the Games menu in Steam, and then Activate a Product on Steam. Identity Insider: Prison Life Another Identity Insider is here, giving you a detailed look into the prison mechanics of Identity. You can see more Insider updates on the about page of the Identity website. Identity prison concept art Eventually, your luck is going to run out. Crime does pay, and it pays well, but the long arm of the law will catch up with you. For minor crimes you might see a ticket or time in jail, but serious offences will land you in prison. In Identity, prison has a culture and lifestyle of its own. You might be there as punishment, but there’s a lot going on while you’re serving your sentence. Put in your time in your cellblock’s relative safety, or choose to step out and join a prison gang. Prison Gangs Prison gangs are the core of your activity behind bars. With three gangs vying for control around you, you’ll need to choose a side to stay safe on the inside. Those without gangs are even more vulnerable when they step outside the safety of their own cellblock. Each prison gang has access to a private contraband market, providing its members with unique looks, makeshift weapons and more. Don’t get caught with illegal goods, though, as some police officer players could be serving as prison guards in their down-time. Infamy You’ll need to pull your weight if you want the protection that a gang can offer. Your gang is going to ask a lot of you; prison life is incredibly dangerous. Each gang member will be offered tasks to carry out for cigarettes, the prison currency of choice, allowing access to equipment and items from the contraband markets within the walls. You may be asked to shank a rival inmate or to destroy a treasured artifact deep in hostile turf, for example. Special achievements available within prison, often related to nefarious activity, will unlock customizations such as tattoos or haircuts so that you can send a message to those around you on the outside. Sentencing You could be serving up to 45 minutes behind bars. That is, unless you take matters into your own hands! As a good and obedient inmate, you have the options of working for the prison with small jobs such as pressing plates or cleaning up trash in the yard. This work will reduce your sentence time. Time is money, though. Sometimes you just can’t wait. If you’re willing to take the risk, you can force your way out. When conditions are right and the inmates are ready, you might be able to get into a guard room and get your hands on a weapon. This can kickoff an entire player-versus-player scenario between a group of inmates and the guard forces. Fight your way out through an increasingly difficult situation and you’re home free; you’re going to have an even bigger bounty on your head, though. Prison breaks can also happen from the outside. If the prison isn’t on lockdown, outside gangs can gear up and bring the fight to the police. These conflicts are much more intense, though, and there is a lot of risk involved as the police are well equipped and the attackers can lose everything if killed or arrested. Trial by Jury If you hate the idea of getting your hands dirty with work but you’re not up for risking a longer sentence trying to escape, you might want to try your luck in front of a jury of your peers. Those with a heavy term can request a trial. Several random citizens around the land will be summoned to jury duty, being paid if they answer the call. Your fate will be in their hands, and also on the shoulders of your attorney. You might represent yourself or hire a smooth-talking legal corporation to help get you off the hook. You or your lawyer will have a short opportunity to explain how the law must have wronged you (you’re innocent, right?) and then it’s all up to the jury. If most of the jury declares you not-guilty, you’re free to go; however, if only a few don’t buy your story it’s back to your small cell. Serving Your Time When you’re not in the mood for the gritty and competitive life in gang warfare, find your way to the common areas in the prison. Common areas are safe zones with all sorts of ways to pass the time with other inmates around you. The common area gives you safe access to weightlifting, TVs which play from a variety of streaming services, billiards and more. You might be locked up, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have fun! DasMEHDI plays Town Square live! Earlier this month, DasMEHDI, a popular Twitch streamer, had the chance to hop into our development build and explore the Town Square with his friends. Check out the hilarious footage below! Note that this is an early development build, which was already outdated at the time of play, and is not representive of the Town Square's current state. Still, it's a lot of fun! DasMEHDI Early TS Development Build Play New website is here The Identity website has had an overhaul to prepare for the Town Square release and Steam integrations. The new website brings all kinds of cool new features, mostly for the game account systems and the Identity shop! We're also going to be filling up the About page with all sorts of new information from the Insider releases. Now that the website has a true and proper shop, you can now get your hands on cool new items without having to buy entire packages. The shop now has all kinds of exclusive items, including apartment pets! You'll be able to get your hands on friendly critters for your home in-game as well, although those featured on the shop are only available there. Some of these items are only available for a limited time. Some of the new items include: Custom T-Shirt Graphic - Upload an image which can be placed on T-Shirts you create in-game! Each image can be used on 10 shirts. Vanity License Plate - Show your style with a custom license plate, visible on your in-game vehicle. Vanity Phone Number - Want a number that's easy to remember? Get a vanity phone number for yourself or your business. More Apartment Floorplans - Floor plans which haven't been available since Kickstarter, including the enormous Penthouse. Huge Clothing Packages - Clothing packages including clothes with dozens of original brands. Pets! Cats, dogs and more - Pets currently available include sphynx and tabby cats as well as pugs, maltese and the shiba inu (doge?). Another important note: when the new payment options (aside from PayPal) go live, we'll shortly after be removing all of the old packages. We will at this time never again be selling cash, so there's not much time remaining to get starter cash before Identity goes live. This is not something we plan to sell again in the future, but all who have it in their account will be able to claim that cash once on each server. Visit the New Identity Site Now! The Twitch Clips If you've been following Identity's development closely, you probably already know that developers stream their work live on the Identity Twitch channel every Tuesday and Thursday. We also use that time to answer almost every question that gets asked about Identity's development and gameplay. Now that we've been doing this a while, we've answered a lot of questions. Our awesome community manager, BeachBall, has taken the time to compile a massive list of questions linked to clips where they're answered by a developer. Get comfy and head over to the Twitch Clips Directory forum thread. If you haven't found this already, be prepared to spend a good bit of time listening to all sorts of awesome information. This is the best place to learn of Identity's fine details! -- John VanderZwet

*whispers* for those who didn't get it....(I actually got a couple of PM's asking what it was in reference to)

I just wanted to say how pleased I am with the dev blog this month. I have been quite critical of Asylum in their whole development process, but it does come from a place of love for this project, not hate. I think the dev blog was very good, I think the gameplay video looks okay. Not the best, but enough to make me impressed. I am not going back on myself though, I still think there have been plenty of problems with the development and every criticism I have made is accurate and factual, however I can give credit where credit is due. I am also so glad you are sticking to not giving out a release date, think it avoids many problems. One thing I will also say is I like how you announced that it will be out before the end of October. I would be annoyed if you came out and said it will be out by Christmas, but you didn't. I do have one criticism, but I will keep my mouth shut for now. Let's just appreciate the good news.

Where did you get that devblog from? I don’t get any emails anymore (even though its on in the settings) and they don’t post the devblogs anymore on the official website (last one is blog 19 for me)

I've almost finished the new Tomb Raider, which is actually a lot more fun than I expected (I kinda thought it was gonna be a repeat of the last two installations, but with lots of fighting and a lackluster plot, and I was pleasantly surprised that I really enjoyed the new location and fights)! I think I'm going to try out the new Spiderman game after. Other than waiting for this module, I've been dying to get my hands on the remake of the Spyro trilogy!

Look at our tracker. Don't use "Chess" as an in game mechanic. Literally all of these mechanics are comparable to simple gmod plugins. What have they accomplished since they showed gameplay of town square? What have they done over these YEARS on Unreal Engine?

They have taken so many months to fix 'one minor bug' which turned into a 'major bug'. Months. One bug does not take months. That is not full winging it. I am not nitpicking, I am saying you are a hypocrite. I also didn't say I was a help to this community, that was Beach Ball who said that about me. He agrees with me. I also never said I think ninetofive is better. In fact, I said it looked cheap. You are making all these random assumptions because you are just built to ignore everyone and assume you are always right. You are wrong. They have absolutely accomplished as much as Asylum has, you are just being stubborn if you refuse to admit that.

Based on the few videos we have seen on Identity, it's going to be crap as well. The animations were terrible, and we forgave them because they said they are placeholders. Who's to say the same thing isn't happening here? Not necessarily. It means they are efficient, it just further shows that we have been waiting longer than is standard practise. Same thing here, Identities videos look like crap but you are okay with those and anyone who brings this up gets bombarded with Identity fanboys. Please elaborate on this, because I have seen 0 evidence that Identity has been 'full winging' it either.

You are such a hypocrite. You shame anyone who criticises Identity and here you are making completely speculative statements and presenting them as facts. How do you know the same is garbage, it isn't out yet? How do you know they are rushing? How do you know their mechanics will be minimal? How exactly is Identity more in depth? You would ask these questions if anyone posted your comment in reference to Identity, so take your own advice. This just shows the delusion that goes on in some peoples heads. The sad part is you wont even be man enough to admit it, you will come back with some half-assed response or simply just resort to ad hominem.

Ah, but you have heard of him....

this game took 3 years to publish a module. Don't you dare say that the tracker is transparent. its NOT ! the Devs wanted to do the new website, Get the paying company to the website , finish a small task that took 1 month. And not publishing the Module?. we have got 2 Delays in the past. the artists are non-stop making 300+ clothes and not making the second module Lol show us the guns , the cars, the real stuff, not clothes. "if you Don't believe me check their twitter most of their tweets is about clothes and hats and furniture". even the CEO said the artists are actually working on the second module. Ok show us the work you did on the second module not clothes * SMH *. we begged the devs after we saw the horrible Police&Criminal video to change the animations, and then they showed us the Twitch stream WITH THE SAME WALKING ANIMATION ?!?!?! SMH what is this ? they never listen to us. most of this game is ART not coding and mechanics. and im sorry to say this but the devs really love to talk a lot , even Psysin which i dont like him , i kinda agreed with his complains. even the devs in the gaming stream were like WOW , thats cool, i like this and that.???? lol devs its like you dont see the work and probably acting and fake cheering for the ceo when he speaks on the stream. sorry to all but i kinda think that people shouldn't invest a single dollar to this project until FINAL release.

We're comparing products here, and it definitely should not take 4 years to make some assets and make a game on Unreal Engine, it's not built from scratch. If a bought asset game is going to come out before the game actually in development and be a better product then why blow money on the game in development which shows no promise of being done in the next 10 years.

Hello there! My name is Cayn and I'm a big fan of Identity since their Kickstarter. Following all their progress since then. I've worked on several (gaming-) projects before and now I'm super excited to join the moderation part of this amazing project! As many others here, I just love gaming and the community of it since I was a child. From SNES to Current Gen, it's just pure fun since then. It's amazing to see all the joy that comes with it and I'm glad I can share it with you! So let's take this road together and share the fun! PS: If you need any help - let me know! So I can help you guys out as soon as possible. Cayn out!