This is a posted announcement made tonight in the Identity Discord. Hello Identity Community! It's been a long time, far too long, since I gave you a direct update on Identity and its progress. I wanted to take a moment to fill you all in and answer the more common questions I receive. As usual, you can feel free to reach out to me if you have questions as I always do my best to respond to everyone I can. I know that the main question on your mind is, "when are we going to see a new update?" That's a difficult one to answer, but I do hope fairly soon. Funding for Identity started a bit slow but really picked up steam after we released our apartment customization video, showing the depth of detail we're aiming for in the Identity game systems. We were quickly then able to expand from a single developer to half a dozen a few years back. We built some awesome systems for the back end of things, replaced them (obsolete from new UE developments or middleware just going out of business), and built up again. With the release of the Town Square module, we were able to show you the surface level of what we'd been working on. Unfortunately it wasn't long after that funding slowed very quickly and thus development slowed as the team shrank. We hit a bit of a vicious circle here, where in order to improve funding and development time we'd need to give you some awesome updates to build trust. At the same time, we had to feed our families and we couldn't do that without the funding. We decided that we could start some smaller projects in-house to raise money for Identity, and that actually has gone quite well. We'd mentioned we had other projects, but we never really discussed what they were. It was a combination of doing some work for other game studios to pay bills and also a couple internal projects which were funded externally. I can't describe what these projects were because of legal stuff and the timing, but I can say they went well and after some delays we do have a signed commitment for their acquisition which means, finally, Identity funding is on the horizon. I wouldn't feel comfortable asking for any funding from the community. You guys have paid enough. In fact I will say right now that you shouldn't make purchases until we post more updates; not because it'll be unrealized but because after all these delays it makes sense to me that we need to prove ourselves again. On that note, it is our plan that we will freeze sales of Identity on Steam in the near future until we make a release with enough substance to warrant its sale there. The delays in development, the failures in funding and, while I'm always open with those who ask, a failure in communication. That's on me -- I've been so nose down in constant effort to sustain my family and Asylum (we've retained employees from Identity even through this difficult financial time) that my mind has been mostly elsewhere most days. We've always several things on the go, with Identity being the priority and goal for the company. That brings us to today. Like I said, some funding is on the horizon. We'll do what we can to fund this next push ourselves. While working in our off-work hours and with some volunteer hours, Identity has already been rebuilt entirely in Unreal Engine 5. I'm not talking a port, I mean a remake of most key systems with more recent technology. Some things, like the inventory system, needed a rebuild. It's crazy how much tech has changed in a few years, and we wanted to be on top of that. In our internal build right now, we have most of the base functionality rebuilt. There are only a couple things left before it's ready to release. It's now a full blown UE5 MMO with an improved network structure where we've tested over 400 simulated players on a server. My goal is that, preferably even before securing funding, we can soon push out a new update for the first time in ages. There will be changes, though. For one, we're going to shift to using our own launcher and moving away from Steam as a dedicated store. You will still find Identity there, but we'd like it elsewhere as well. I never liked how Steam forced us to list the Town Square branded as the full game. That confused a lot of people who weren't already followers within the community. If you've been following my writings, you'll of heard that we're going to drop modules and jump right into the full game. I'd like our next release to bring you vehicles, weapons and the open world. They won't be in a final state, but we're going to release updates as quickly as we can. Remember, we're all still working right now as volunteers but that should change soon enough. I think after all the wait, it's better that we provide you with progress as it comes and not have you wait for huge update releases. I'm going to do my best, as busy as I am right now, to keep an eye on the community. Again, I'm always open to questions and even conversations with anyone. My private messages are open. I get a lot though so it can sometimes take a bit to respond, but I'll get there.

Greetings everyone, Today I'd like to update you guys on some progress for Identity. Below, you will find new pictures that haven't been shown to the public eye yet. We know you are waiting so eagerly to play, but please remember everything takes time. Thanks to everyone who has shown the developers support thus far!

Greetings citizens of Ash Hill, we just wrapped up today's stream where John showcased some more game play of the the upcoming Town Square module, interacting with numerous items in the game world, showcasing interiors, emotes and more! Take a look here!

We have released a new patch that reworked character movement which is essential for Identity's future content updates along with many bug fixes. The newsletter detailing our changed release plans and the future ahead can be located here! https://identityrpg.com/mailer/newsletter.html

Patch 1.0.3.4996 As we continue our work on the SWAT module we also continue to work on bugs and quality of life changes. - Fixed a VoIP related crash that could occur when traveling in the elevators or into the cinema. - Changed anti-aliasing to a new custom FXAA based method. This will remove the ghosting effect around your character. - Added image sharpening, defaulted to 80%. You can control this (or disable it) in your video settings. - Added more litter and polish to the world. - Lighting has been overhauled, especially during the day. - Significant performance improvement when outside. -The player turning animations are now much smoother. -Tweaked the turning speeds of players a bit. - Fixed some map bugs. - Camera shake when sprinting. - Players will no longer hover a few centimeters off the ground. - The police station NPC now describes the mechanics of playing as a police officer. - Fixed bugs with placing an art canvas on an easel. - Fixed a bug which sometimes prevented the placement of a canvas on your apartment walls. - Fixed some poorly placed canvases in the art gallery. - A new tool for the community managers means approval of submitted art to the gallery. There's a lot of new community work in there now!

- Fixed a bug where grow table dirt plots could move after the table was repositioned. - Radial menu for interaction with objects will now appear properly. - Fixed a bug which would sometimes prevent interaction with objects after a radial menu was closed. - Fixed a bug causing desync'd movement when holding items like popcorn. - Exterior lighting, especially during the day, has been adjusted to be more realistic. - Changes behind the scenes to make game testing more efficient for the internal testing team. This should reduce unexpected bugs in future updates.

1.0.3.4891 - Soccer balls have been refactored to produce more realistic physics. We can now also add player controls to the interaction. To start, you can now kick the ball harder if you're holding down your left mouse button when you hit it. - Characters can now turn more sharply, especially at high speeds (sprinting). - Added a little polish to jumping and landing animation. - Fixed a bug allowing you to turn your character while standing from chairs. - Marijuana joints have been removed from the drug dealer. He now sells cannabis seeds instead. - Hydroponics table is now available at the furniture vendor. Use this to grow plants from seeds in your homes. - Drying rack is now available at the furniture vendor. Use this to dry grown herbs in your home. - Dried cannabis can now become small/medium bags of marijuna, or even large bricks of marijuana, depending on the size of the plant(s). - Bags or bricks of marijuana can be converted into joints of varying quality levels. - Apartments have maximum crafting stations (in this release, the hydroponics and drying rack). The number varies based on size/value of floorplan. - Added functionality to parking meters and bike racks, although they're not useful until vehicles arrive. - Fixed two crashes. - Performance improvements.

The Town Square was released November 30th, 2018.

Hey there! Our CEO, John will be updating the website relatively soon!

We have a new decent sized patch on our internal build and in testing, we will be releasing it soon

Right now, we're working on getting new features in the TS relatively soon!

Step into the Town Square! The Town Square module has been released and available on Steam for just over a month. With a rocky start (the initial demand was a very large load on our servers), we devoted most of our development time immediately following to bug fixing and stability improvements. If you haven't had the chance to try the Town Square and experience a small piece of the Identity world, grab your Steam key and check it out. If you played only in the first week of release, I'd recommend logging in again now as stability has vastly improved. Identity Town Square module trailer With the Town Square now running smoothly, we've shifted much of our focus to feature development for the SWAT module. We'll continue to fix bugs and add other features to the Town Square, too. On the Horizon While bug fixing and quality-of-life improvements continue to be a focus for our developers, we've also shifted much of our effort to bringing new features and content to SWAT and the Town Square. Most of this effort is geared toward our next module, SWAT, with the added bonus of being able to utilize it in the Town Square as well. The Town Square Roadmap Guns, guns, guns! The shooting range in the basement of the police station will be opening up, giving you access to a few guns to try out (like the one pictured here). This will give you a taste of how guns will work and feel. We'll show you how awesome the gun systems are with a video when we come closer to this release. TVs in apartments. You'll soon be able to watch YouTube and Twitch with your friends in your apartment by using TVs. Radios in apartments. Select from a dozen radio channels to stream into your apartments. In the full game, the available radio channels are chosen by the server operators. Improvements to the control and animation of players. We'll be polishing up the way players move to make everything feel smoother. Added security and ownership systems for apartments, allowing you to assign roommates and more. Lots of added clothing and character customization options. In addition to the features above coming to the Town Square, we're also pondering work/job elements that can be brought into the Town Square as we'd like to introduce currency. Get your Identity Steam key! 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! Handing out the keys like this allows us to reduce load on our servers. We currently have another batch of 10,000 keys in the system and we'll be adding more as necessary. 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 Steam Community Now that Identity is on Steam, Valve has been so kind as to set up our official game Steam community. Drop by to join in on discussions, get updates when we release patches and more. This will also be a great spot to see screenshots and broadcasts from others playing the Town Square. Come visit the Identity Steam Community. -- John VanderZwet Let's Make Identity Great! Identity's development is going great thanks to the support of people like you, but systems like these take a lot of manpower and resources to create. Identity has an awesome community behind it, but when more people know about what we're creating and our budget grows from pledges, we can not only work faster but we can do more, too. If you're as excited to play Identity as we are making it, help spread the word. The gaming industry has needed a game like Identity for too long; let's make it great together!

We communicate as best as we can. There's also a Patch Notes section here on the forums under "Announcements"

You will eventually be able to interact with cabinets for storage.

Hope you all had a merry Christmas! Our devs are now back to work and the bugs are being smashed again. So to wave goodbye to 2018 and say hello to a 2019 full of new awesome features, here's a new build for you all! Patch 1.0.1.4710 - Fixed bug with chair path finding where you wouldn't be able to go to the requested spot if you were too close to it when you started. - Removed collision vs pawn for placement/edit actors in housing. - Should no longer be possible to walk around outside cinema or housing while not being in the main instance. This was being used to grief players by getting them stuck. So if that happened to you, try again now! - Made it possible to sit on chairs in apartments. - Fixed bug where sitting on tall chairs would make the player sink into the chair.

Patch 1.0.1.4703 - Potential fix to red items staying when cancelling placement. - Changed furniture placement method to be more lenient on where you can place things. - Added Claim Items to the escape menu. This will finally let you claim your apartments in game! (Known limitation here: Can only claim one apartment type per account, it should be one apartment type per char) - Art deposit box should now correctly remove the deposited canvas from inventory much quicker. - Fixed missing collision in some corridors. - Numerous updates to furniture items to make them easier to place. - Players should no longer get stuck on police station counter.

Patch 1.0.1.4685 - Enabled consumable effects. Details below. This will be expanded a good deal in the future, including addictions and more effect detail. - You can now drink all alcohol sold by the bartender. Watch your step! - The drug dealer got his hands on heroin. - Marijuana effect is now active, affecting your pupils and giving bloodshot eyes. - Fixed initial rotation of preview items in shops and inventory. - Added more karaoke songs - Karaoke song volume reduced to be better suited for the environment. - Fixed a bug allowing you to get stuck in a static crouch while moving

Hotfix 6 - You can now rebind the key used to enter decoration mode. An indicator will show how to enter decoration mode when it's available. - Added a new key binding for toggling the display of the HUD (UI on screen). - Holiday wreaths are now available at the furniture store, but only for a limited time. - Merry Christmas! - Collision update on shelves and other furniture. - Fixed that apartments didn't load furniture and items when entered - The inventory character preview will now update properly when clothing is changed.

Patch 1.0.1.4643 -Fixed a major physics engine crash. -You can now eat food in the restaurant, although it needs more polish. -Players now spawn outside of the hotel when joining a server. -Fixed bug where placing non-furniture items in apartments would be lost. -Corrected issues with wall decorations. -The elevator doors in shaft 2 will no longer block when open. -More furniture placement and rotation fixes. -Fixed many seats and chairs around the world where positioning was off. -Added button sound when calling an elevator. -Added sounds to newspaper dispensers. -Held items should be cleaned up properly when a player disconnects. -The white chess queen is now on the proper tile by default. -Overhauled the cinema schedule to include less commercial time. -Stage microphones will no longer prevent speech.

Hotfix 5 - Adjusted intensity of atmospheric light. - Fixed missing paperdoll previews. - Improved the way the camera field of view adapts with movement speed. - Fixed bug preventing a painting canvas interactivity. Show us your talents!

Hotfix 3 - Game process will no longer stay "running" when shutting down - Fixed bug where you'd be colliding on floors 4 and 5, in elevator and corridor - Fixed dark item preview in inventory during night time - Fixed a number of items that should've been able to hang on walls. They should now be correctly placeable. - Fixed missing lights in housing corridor 6 - Player character no longer hovering in login level

We are actively working on the issues in the Town Square. So far (besides yesterday) we've released an update everyday. We also tweet a lot on our twitter account: https://twitter.com/Identityrpg and are active/put lots of updates on our discord: discord.gg/identityrpg and I put the patch notes on the announcements tab here on the forums Once the game is in a more stable state we will work on content updates.

Hotfix 3 - Logging in off steam friend should now be more stable (ghosting should be gone) - A crash on client shutdown has been fixed (FYI internally, should also fix the crash when failing to connect to server) - Ghost zones created and placed around busy doorways and elevators (basically you stop colliding with players in these zones) - Improved VoIP quality - Higher quality item preview rendering in inventory - Improved load time of inventory UI - Karaoke no longer hearable from apartments

Client update - No more invisible colliding elevator door - Additional fixes to login procedure - potential fix to inventory preview items showing up in the world.

Hotfix 2 -Big improvements to lighting in the Town Square at night time. -Fixed broken lighting in the penthouse hallway. Remember you can check out all floor plans in the elevator. -Voices are both louder and longer travelling. -Graphical fixes inside the elevators. -Lighting on the cinema screen will now look more appropriate. -Removed the glue from cinema seats. -Again, more server/database stability improvements. -Messages with server connections will show up as intended, telling you what's happening when you click Play. -Fixed a bug which would send you back to character selection when trying to join a server if that server got full after you clicked Play (this happened a lot).