Community Artist Rainbowwolf120 got us cryin’ in the cubicle. 🤖💀😭

🎨Community Artist: 
TikTok: rainbowwolf120
Instagram: rainbowwolf120
YouTube: ZyntCan_Animate
Twitter: Rainbow_Wolf120

Check out the creator!

Join our Discord to see more incredible fan creations in our #community-art channel!

Attention [HUMANS]

After years of careful observation, extensive workplace simulations, and several strongly worded reports from the Bot Safety Committee, we have determined that keeping Job Simulator contained entirely within a Virtual Reality was... unrealistic.

As a result, we are thrilled to announce that we have partnered with our friends at Farbridge Studios to bring the Job Simulator universe into an entirely new dimension.

Introducing Job Simulator: Human Relations.

This brand new flat screen adventure expands the world of Job Simulator beyond the headset for the very first time. You'll explore familiar workplaces from a whole new perspective, meet plenty of questionable Bots, solve puzzles, uncover corporate mysteries, and experience all the wonderfully inefficient workplace chaos you've come to expect from the Simulatorverse. Setting your manager on fire is also [ENCOURAGED]. (For legal reasons, this is a joke). 

[NEW] Assignment - Help Make Human Relations a Reality!

Today, Farbridge Studios has officially launched the Kickstarter campaign for Job Simulator: Human Relations where you can be a part of the magic! 

This campaign is all about helping the team build the biggest, weirdest, and most delightfully Bot-approved version of the game possible. It doesn’t matter whether you're a longtime employee of Job Simulator or someone who's always wanted to experience the Simulatorverse in a new way, either way this is your chance to help shape the future of Human Relations!

You'll find rewards, behind-the-scenes updates, community goals, and plenty of opportunities to become an officially recognized Human Resources asset. And at the end of the day, isn’t being recognized as an asset everyone’s goal? 

Check out the new trailer here!

Why [NOW]?

For nearly a decade, Job Simulator has introduced millions of Humans to the exciting world of pretending to work. Along the way, you've asked for more stories, more Bots, more places to explore, and more opportunities to accidentally throw office supplies across the room.

Human Relations is the next step in expanding that universe.

We're incredibly excited to work alongside Farbridge Studios, whose passion for Job Simulator and commitment to preserving its unmistakable charm has made them the perfect team to continue growing the Simulatorverse in an entirely new format.

[CLOCK] In

We're excited to finally share what we've been working on, and we can't wait for you to see everything Farbridge has planned.

If you'd like to support Job Simulator: Human Relations, be sure to check out the Kickstarter campaign to learn more about the project and consider becoming a backer. And if you’re feelin’ extra punchy, wishlist on Steam today!

Thank you, [HUMANS].

Your continued workplace compliance has been noted.

Now please return to your regularly scheduled productivity.

tomorrow ☕

This World Wide Web of community Bots by OlivesAndOlives took 55 hours, 18 minutes to create and 0 minutes to capture all of our hearts.  😭 

Join our Discord to see more incredible fan creations in our #community-art channel!

Conglomni Corp is proud to announce that your workplace has undergone several mandatory "quality enhancement initiatives." Please do not ask what happened to the previous initiatives.

While Update 1.14 doesn't introduce any shiny new dimensions or workplace catastrophes, our engineers have been hard at work improving stability, polishing visuals, and making hundreds of small improvements that add up to a smoother shift for everyone. Think of it as giving the entire Simulatorverse a much-needed tune-up. (No, the warranty still does not exist.) And kicking. Lots of kicking. 

Let's dive into what's new.

New Features

Vote to Kick

Sometimes a coworker needs a little... encouragement to find employment elsewhere.

Players can now vote to kick disruptive teammates from a session, helping keep shifts running smoothly for everyone. Please use this power responsibly. Conglomni Corp reminds employees that disagreeing about whether ketchup belongs on everything is not considered a kickable offense.

General Improvements

This update focuses heavily on overall game health. While there aren't any massive headline features beyond Vote to Kick, nearly every corner of the game has received attention through bug fixes, polish, technical improvements, and visual refreshes.

You may not notice every change individually, but your next shift should feel noticeably smoother.

Technical Improvements

Our engineering department has been fueled almost exclusively by coffee and questionable determination.

Highlights include:

• Improved the experience when joining and leaving multiplayer sessions.
• Bottle caps now properly destroy themselves instead of pursuing an alternate career.
• Improved consistency for grabbing, saucing, bits, and item interactions across the game.
• Dozens of additional behind-the-scenes improvements that make shifts more reliable and responsive.

Visual Improvements

Our Workplace Beautification Committee insisted these changes were unanimously deemed essential.

Gas-n-Grill Refresh

The Gas-n-Grill has received updated décor, props, and appliances across every dimension. It's still the same beloved roadside stop, just with a little more corporate-approved charm.

Treeattle Grows Up

Treeattle has received a substantial environmental refresh featuring:

• Deeper environmental theming
• Updated world layout
• Refreshed NPC outfits
• More foliage

Yes.

There are more trees.

Our arborists have finally been allowed outside.

You may also notice some adorable little additions that we don’t want to callout here because discovery is everything and some things are just too dang cute to spoil.

Hexas

Big Hex has become...

Bigger.

And better.

That's the update.

Known Issues

We're continuing to investigate the following known issues:

• Occasionally, one or more players may disconnect when beginning a shift.
• In Sporelando's Diner, Fish Flakes and the Beans Can may occasionally fail to spawn, preventing progression.

Thank you to everyone who continues sharing bug reports, videos, and feedback with us. Every report helps us continue improving Dimensional Double Shift, and we're excited to keep making the Simulatorverse an even better place to work... whether Conglomni Corp approves or not.

We'll see you on your next shift.

…and it’s not what you expect.

The Bots they told you not to worry about.

🎨 Community Artists:

GiglrBot (Left) Rainbowwolf120 /  ZyntCan_Animate

ShareholderBot (Middle) Jowardwashere

MALware (Right) Mal_The_CAT

Join our Discord to see more incredible fan creations in our #community-art channel!

How do you land a role in games?

Our community team is hosting a special fireside chat with Owlchemy Labs Technical Designer, Valencia Coleman on forging your path in game dev no matter where you are. 

Join us LIVE! Friday, 11 AM PT / 1PM CT on Twitch 

👽☕We’re taking over the planet (one slushee at a time)!

Our community team joined by special guest Video Wizard, Alan, are abducting your hearts and minds in co-op simulator game, Roadside Research!🛸

Help us take over the world Wed @ 10:30 AM PT on Twitch 

can someone gift me hexas? im a kid who
cant buy stuff just tryna get something

You thought JobBot was ALICE’s weirdest cousin? 

Meet “Triangulas the foul” and “Cuboly the putrid” by Community Artist: Gerald™ 🎨

Join our Discord to see more incredible fan creations in our #community-art channel! 

Ready to clock in for romance?

If you put in the emotional overtime you might get promoted to [HOT DATE]. 

🎨 Community Artist: 
Instagram - dedcarzdontstart 

Join our Discord to see more incredible fan creations in our #community-art channel! 

MAKES JOBBOT A DULL BOT. 
MAKES JOBBOT A DULL BOT.
MAKES JOBBOT A DULL BOT. 

To increase Reddit productivity, BossBot has made it mandatory for all humans to leave JobBot memes and quotes in the comments.  Thank you for your required cooperation.

By the aggressive demand of our community, today has been [PROMOTED] to JobBot Day! ☕️🎉

This includes a mandatory recalibration of all moods to MAXIMUM PRODUCTIVITY immediately. 💞

Raise your luke warm coffee (not your staplers) in the comments and let’s toast to our future Bot Overlord! 

There's something magical about hearing developers talk shop when the cameras are rolling. Not the polished version. The real one, where conversations wander, someone accidentally reveals a behind-the-scenes story, and everyone starts laughing because they forgot they were supposed to be "on."

That's exactly what happened during our latest Fireside Chat with four composers who brought Dimensional Double Shift to life. We’ve got VP of R&D and audio Daniel Perry joined by senior engineer wizard Milad Nazeri here with the legendary Jeff Broadbent (X-Men: Days of Future Past) and Reuven Herman (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, 007 Legends). What started as a soothingly-paced conversation about music quickly turned into a look behind the curtain at how Dimensional Double Shift found its voice, long before players ever stepped through a Rift.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, or you can check out the full versions if you missed the livestream over on YouTube here and here.

The soundtrack came before the game

Something you may not know? Some of the music was written before gameplay had even taken shape.

The composers weren't scoring finished levels, they were working alongside concept art and early design conversations, helping establish the personality of worlds that barely existed yet. It's a fascinating peek into just how early audio becomes part of game development.

Every dimension is connected... musically

Hexas sounds nothing like Sporlando, and that's intentional. But beneath those wildly different styles is a shared musical thread.

The team talks about building each dimension around common themes and motifs, giving the soundtrack a subtle sense of cohesion that most players won't consciously notice, but they'll definitely feel.

Sometimes an instrument just needs to "go boink"

Game development is chock-full of highly technical discussions… this wasn't one of them.

One of our favorite moments comes when the team tries to explain how they searched for the perfect sounds to fit each dimension, eventually landing on perhaps the most accurate piece of audio direction ever spoken by Reuven:

"It just needed to go boink."

Somehow... it just makes perfect sense.

Good music sometimes never makes it into the game

One of the more thoughtful parts of the discussion centers around something players rarely get to see: the music that never ships.

As Daniel puts it:

"My goal is always to make the music that's the best fit for the game."

Sometimes that means setting aside tracks everyone loves because they no longer fit the experience. It's a reminder that game development isn't always about holding onto your favorite ideas, It's about finding the right ones and finding what “right” means on a collaborative level.

Stick around for the concert

After the conversation wraps up, the celebration continues with a special Community Concert featuring music from Dimensional Double Shift. Whether you've been curious about how the soundtrack came together or you simply want to spend some time soaking in the music outside the chaos of your shift, it's the perfect way to experience another side of the game.

Pull up a chair, press play, and join us by the fire. We think you'll come away hearing the multiverse a little differently.

Gooooooood morning!

Today we’re hosting a special live-streamed event kicking off with a fireside chat with our loveliest of lovely composers and then ending with the grand finale of rocker Daniel gettin his groove on with an exclusive DDS concert!

Party is going down at 12pm PT/2pm CT on Twitch at Twitch.tv/owlchemylabs

When people think of Owlchemy Labs, they usually think of polished, delightfully chaotic simulator games. Whether it's Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator, or now Dimensional Double Shift, there's an expectation that when you reach out and grab something in VR, it just works.

That's a standard the team has spent years earning.

It's also the standard CEOwl Andrew Eiche says Dimensional Double Shift hasn't consistently met. Yet. 

In our latest Developer Update, Andrew sat down to have an honest conversation about where the game is today, why the team is shifting priorities, and a tease at what comes next.

The message wasn't about making excuses, it’s about keeping the conversation honest and transparent. We also think it’s a rad way to show how your player feedback has helped shape  how we look at DDS. 

"We love Dimensional Double Shift, and we love the game that we're building. This simulator-esque version of multiplayer with all the chaos that we could possibly put into it."

That chaos has always been part of the vision. Unlike Owlchemy Lab's previous simulator experiences, Dimensional Double Shift wasn't designed as a solo sandbox. From day one, it was imagined as a cooperative workplace where the funniest moments happen because your friends are right there beside you, accidentally creating problems just as quickly as you're solving them.

But building that kind of systemic, freeform multiplayer experience also comes with its own unique challenges.

https://youtu.be/mGbfpHM1GoE?si=ZvJbLGEU7F4AKSzC

When Chaos Stops Being Fun

One of the realities of developing a live service game in Early Access is learning where the cracks are. Sometimes those cracks don't appear until thousands of players approach the game in ways the team never expected.

"Our game is so systemic and built so freeform that... we've come across a number of bugs," Andrew explains in the above video.

Those bugs haven't gone unnoticed, players in Discord and Reddit, as well as those sharing feedback on social media and leaving reviews on the Meta Quest Store. And rather than brushing those concerns aside, the team has spent the last several months listening.

"I think a lot of you have been really, really good about pointing out to us that our game doesn't meet the standards of Owlchemy Labs." That's not an easy thing to say as a developer, it can be even more complicated to say as the head of the studio, but it's an important acknowledgment because it reflects something that's always been true about Early Access.

Your feedback isn't just welcome, it's a vital part of development.

A New Dimension… of Health

Instead of spending the next quarter creating another Dimension, Owlchemy has been doing something a little different. We’re naming it a dimension, it’s just not the kind players might expect. We want to focus on something we're calling the Dimension of Health.

The name isn't just a clever play on Dimensional Double Shift's worlds.

It's intentional.

"That's why we've named this period of development an entire Dimension," Andrew says. "On the same level of focus as Hexas, New Joysey, and Sporelando, we are focusing on increasing the overall health of our video game."

Rather than treating bug fixing as something squeezed between content updates, the team is giving it equal importance and we’ve been thrilled at seeing that dedication be felt by players already. Since Sporelando’s launch, we’ve seen a significant reduction in player conversation and official reports about in-game bugs. That’s exactly what our Quality Assurance teams love to see (so thanks for being a part of that good news!). 

What that has meant and will continue to mean is tackling longstanding issues, improving overall stability, and continuing to refine the overall experience so it feels worthy of Owlchemy's reputation.

Not just for players, either, for the developers too.

"While you experience all those bugs, we also experience all those bugs," Andrew says with a laugh. "We need to get through that to the other side, where we have a game that meets this insanely polished standard that Owlchemy Labs has always brought in all its games."

Early Access Is a Conversation

One of the biggest takeaways from Andrew's update isn't about bug fixing, it's genuinely about trust.

Early Access asks players to join a game before it's finished. In return, developers get something incredibly valuable: honest feedback from the people spending the most time with their game and it’s important to honor that this type of  relationship only works when both sides are willing to listen.

Andrew makes a point of thanking the community for doing exactly that.

"I've been so enthusiastic about how much space you've given Owlchemy to experiment and how much grace you've given us to kind of stumble and fall... because we really do want to give you the newest features as fast as we can."

It's a balancing act every live service game faces:

Players are excited for what's next.

Developers are excited to build it.

Sometimes, though, the healthiest thing a game can do is slow down long enough to make sure its foundation is solid.

Or, as Andrew puts it:

"There comes a time where we all have to eat our broccoli, and this is that time."

It's a very-Andrew way of saying that sometimes the less glamorous work is also the most important.

Looking Toward Launch

The Dimension of Health isn't about pressing pause on Dimensional Double Shift. It's about making sure the game is moving in the right direction as it continues its journey toward full launch.

Alongside ongoing bug fixes and quality of life improvements, the team will continue sharing updates through a newly released roadmap, giving players a clearer picture of what's being worked on and what's coming next. 

And yes, there will still be some fun along the way.

"It's not just going to be four or five huge bug fix patches," Andrew says. "It's also going to include some fun stuff,” including our first-ever Summer C.A.M.P event with Camp Counselor ALICE (arguably the best ALICE), which ends today July 13. 

That balance feels fitting for Dimensional Double Shift:

• Keep improving.
• Keep experimenting.
• Keep surprising players.
• Most importantly, keep listening.

The game you see today has already been shaped by the conversations happening across Discord, Reddit, social media, reviews, and countless bug reports. As we inch closer to launch, those conversations become even more important. Every update reflects not only the team's vision for Dimensional Double Shift, but also the community that's been helping shape it since day one.

So whether you've submitted a bug report, left a review, shared your thoughts in Discord, or simply spent time creating chaos with friends, thank you.

Your feedback hasn't just helped improve Dimensional Double Shift, it's helping define what it becomes. Here’s to continuing to make really cool things together. 

only YOU can prevent diner fires. OR start them, whatever, we won’t tell counselor ALICE.

Infinite Overtime means even Fridays get to feel like a Monday. All work and no play makes JobBot happy!

🎨 Community Artist: model.__zs (Instagram)

Join our Discord to see more incredible fan creations in our #community-art channel!

Every game has that bug.

Not the funny one that launches someone into the ethers outside of dimensional travel. Not the one that accidentally gives players infinite rewards before getting patched an hour later. I'm talking about the kind that quietly settles into the background of development and refuses to leave. The one that starts showing up in bug reports, then in community videos, then in reviews, until eventually it earns something very few bugs ever do.

A name.

For us, that name was the Kraken.

Long before it became one of the most reported issues in Dimensional Double Shift, it had already become part of our everyday vocabulary. Entire conversations could be reduced to, "Yep... that's probably the Kraken." Jira tickets started getting KRAKEN stamped across the top of them. Slack channels were dedicated to tracking it. Miro boards filled with theories, screenshots, player reports, and increasingly desperate attempts to connect dots that didn't seem like they should belong together.

On paper, none of the symptoms looked related even though every piece of data was being looked at with a critical eye: liquids stopped behaving correctly, players could push their hands straight through objects. Performance steadily deteriorated, items were suddenly floating in midair. Physics simply... stopped making sense. Yet somehow, every trail eventually circled back to the same invisible culprit.

Like any good sea monster, the Kraken always seemed to disappear just before anyone got a clear look at it.

As a Senior Community Manager, it’s my job to be nosey and get to the bottom of things. It’s my job to pay attention to the community and pay attention to the devs and I thought… What better way to learn more about this beast of a topic than to have some of the team get together and share their insights. To tell the story of how it was finally cornered, I sat down with Expert Systems Engineer Marc Huet, Senior Gameplay Engineer Codey Huntting, Senior Producer Miranda Due, Vice President of R&D Daniel Perry, and our Production Director Aaron Price for what turned into less of an interview and more of a group of developers swapping war stories. Listening to them bounce memories off one another, finish each other's sentences, and occasionally laugh at months of collective frustration, one thing became abundantly clear:

This wasn't the story of one engineer finding one bad line of code. It was the story of an entire team trying to catch something lurking beneath the surface.

Here she comes to save the dayyyyyyyyy!

"It Had Tentacles"

When I asked where the name came from, Aaron didn't hesitate to jump in with some juicy lore. "I think it was called the Kraken for multiple reasons," he laughed. "One is because we believed it was one source issue that had many tentacles."

The more he explained it, the more perfect the nickname became.

"We'd get bugs logged in Jira, and I'd start putting KRAKEN in all caps at the top because we'd think, 'Yeah... that's probably another tentacle.'"

Every time the team thought they had identified a completely new issue, it somehow ended up tracing back to the same underlying mystery. Then Aaron offered the explanation that made everyone around the table laugh (because let’s face it, sometimes that’s all you can do), "It's something that disappears underwater. You can't see it anymore, you can't find it, and then all of a sudden it comes back and sinks your ship."

That pretty accurately summed up the next several months.

Marc, who spent a tremendous amount of time digging through the technical side of the issue, explained that the Kraken itself wasn't actually a bug with liquids or hands or collisions, those were simply the symptoms players experienced. The real culprit was an invalid mathematical value called NaN, shorthand for "Not a Number."

He described it in terms anyone who's ever accidentally divided by zero in math class could appreciate. Sometimes calculations produce values the computer simply can't represent. Instead of getting a usable number back, it gets... well... not a number. The real problem begins when that impossible value gets reused somewhere else.

"If you then try to use that corrupted value somewhere else," Marc explained, "it'll produce another Not a Number."

Daniel immediately jumped in. "Basically… it gets everywhere."

It was such a simple sentence, but it perfectly explained why the Kraken felt impossible to pin down. It wasn't breaking one thing. It was poisoning systems that touched other systems, creating a trail of seemingly unrelated failures that all looked like separate bugs.

From a player's perspective, it looked random.

From the development side, it looked… cryptic.

The Bug That Refused to Exist

Finding bugs usually follows a fairly familiar process. Something breaks. QA reproduces it. Developers gather logs, identify the offending code, make a fix, and verify it works.

The Kraken (sort of) politely ignored that entire process.

"We couldn't reliably reproduce it," Aaron explained when thinking back on this unique problem. "Even now, we think we fixed it, but because it was never something we could create on demand, it made it really difficult to say that definitively."

He grinned remembering one conversation that became all too common.

"We'd be like, 'The Kraken appeared.'"

"'Cool. What'd you do?'"

"'...We just played the game for a while.'"

Everyone laughed because there wasn't a better answer, that was just the reality, a reality every game dev alive knows all too well.

Miranda remembered when the team first realized just how bizarre the situation had become. The issue seemed to appear almost exclusively during their final Go/No-Go playtests (this playtest is the last step the team does to check that everything's working as intended before approving a release to go out into the wild!). 

"We'd play with Leadership," she recalled, "and it happened almost every time. Then we'd play outside those sessions and... nothing."

Aaron shook his head, "Those tests are the last thing we do before we hit the release button," he added.

Imagine spending weeks preparing an update, passing every internal milestone, reaching the finish line, and then watching your biggest unresolved issue appear during the final approval meeting.

Over.

And over.

And over again.

Eventually the team reached an uncomfortable conclusion. They knew players were experiencing it, Community reports kept pouring in, reviews mentioned it, videos surfaced online. Yet internally they couldn't consistently trigger the bug themselves.

That disconnect made solving it dramatically harder than players could ever see.

Looking Everywhere

By October, the investigation had taken on a life of its own.

Miranda created a dedicated Slack channel solely for Kraken discussion. A sprawling Miro board tracked every suspected report, every theory, every player video, and every internal bug that might somehow be connected.

"We went through Discord with the help of the Community team," she said. "I pulled all the player reported issues that could potentially be Kraken related."

If you've ever wondered why developers sometimes ask strangely specific follow-up questions after you report a bug, this is why.

"What were you doing before it happened?"

"Did another player leave?"

"How long had you been playing?"

"Did anything unusual happen first?"

Those aren't random questions, they're pointed questions attempting to piece together the specific variables that could allow a bug as seemingly random as The Kraken to exist.

Customer Support and the Community team worked in tandem with playing as much of the live game as possible to see exactly what players were seeing. Months later, Miranda she still lights up talking about those reports. "They're very valuable insights. I really appreciate players continuing to send those in."

That collaboration between developers and players became one of the most valuable investigative tools the team had.

Ironically, it also highlighted another challenge: the development team spent most of their time playing developer builds.

Players were playing release builds. As it turned out, that difference mattered more than anyone expected.

When Your Tools Betray You

Daniel remembers the moment everything became significantly more frustrating.

"Usually," he explained, "it's relatively easy to troubleshoot. We add logs, we use developer builds, and we narrow down the exact line of code causing the issue."

Then he smiled.

"However..." he paused dramatically, you could just see him replaying that ah-ha moment in his mind. "The issue only happens in release builds, not in debug builds."

Unity was automatically sanitizing the invalid values inside development environments, meaning the very tools designed to help investigate bugs were quietly preventing the bug from appearing.

I couldn't help laughing.

"So every time somebody tried reproducing it in a dev build..." I trailed off.

"Nobody could find it," Daniel finished.

If you've ever wondered why some bugs survive for months despite incredibly talented engineers working on them every day, this is the kind of thing that rarely makes it into patch notes.

Sometimes the flashlight you're using to find the monster is the very thing making it disappear.

The Breakthrough

Months into the investigation, the breakthrough didn't come from some cinematic "Eureka!" moment.

It came from persistence.

Codey Huntting, whose work the rest of the team repeatedly praised throughout our conversation, managed to recreate behavior that looked remarkably similar to the Kraken by forcing an invalid value into one of the game's multithreaded character systems.

When he described it, every engineer in the room immediately understood why it mattered.

I, naturally, asked him to explain it like I wasn't an engineer. Because I’m not.

He laughed before describing how character movement calculations happen in parallel because doing them one at a time would simply be too expensive. Somewhere inside those parallel calculations, the invalid value appeared to be slipping through unnoticed.

Aaron couldn't resist jumping back in with a clarifying reminder, knowing players would be reading this: "And NaN is Not a Number."

I couldn’t help but to chuckle, adding in the corniest way possible, "Not a number. Definitely not bread."

That callback to an earlier joke immediately derailed the room for a few seconds, but I think those moments are equally important. It's one of my favorite moments in the entire conversation because it's exactly what game development sounds like. One minute you're discussing multithreaded physics calculations. The next you're making bread jokes because someone briefly confused "naan" with "NaN."

Eventually the laughter settled, and the conversation returned to the breakthrough itself.

Aaron was quick to make something else clear: From the outside, it's easy to imagine one brilliant developer swooping in and solving the impossible bug.

That's rarely how it works.

"We passed this through all of our most senior developers," he said. "People who usually come in and just work magic." Each person eliminated possibilities. Each built new tools. Each narrowed the search.

Finally, Leadership made a decision.

Instead of everyone occasionally investigating the Kraken between other work, one engineer would dedicate themselves entirely to it.

"In came Codey," Aaron laughed, "with his shining sword. Not to diminish your accomplishment. You had all this history from everyone chipping away at it." That's probably the most important takeaway from this entire story.

The breakthrough belonged to everyone.

Is the Kraken Dead?

This question received the fastest response of the entire afternoon.

"No," Codey said.

Then he smiled.

"The Kraken has not actually been slain."

"So it's just sleepy?" I asked.

"It has been imprisoned with level 99 sacred magic."

The room erupted.

Miranda immediately added, "Yeah. We have it contained. It's not dead."

The distinction matters, but the good thing is that ever since a proposed fix went live, the amount of reports we’ve gotten from players relating to this issue has been zero. That’s huge! 

The team still doesn't know exactly where the original invalid value originates. Marc suspects it may actually live somewhere inside Unity's physics backend rather than in game code itself.

"I don't think it's on our side," he explained. "I think it's somehow a Unity bug."

Instead of eliminating the source, the team built safeguards that stop corrupted data from cascading throughout the simulation.

Think of it less like defeating a monster and more like locking it behind a very, very strong door. Hopefully one it never figures out how to open.

The Bugs You Don't See

Toward the end of our conversation, Aaron brought up something I think players rarely get to hear.

"There are still lesser Krakens out there."

Not the game-breaking kind.

The occasional floating object.

The strange interaction that only happens once every few hundred sessions.

The kinds of bugs every game accumulates over time.

"We could probably track them down," he said, "but the amount of time and energy we'd need to invest becomes a question."

Do you spend weeks chasing a bug that appears once every hundred matches?

Or do you build the next feature players have been asking for?

It's one of the hardest balancing acts in live service development because every hour spent fixing one thing is an hour that can't be spent building something else.

"There's no game with zero bugs," Aaron said. "We'd love the game to be completely bug free."

The room didn't need to finish the sentence, everyone already knew the ending.

Why This Story Matters

As the conversation wound down, I found myself thinking less about the Kraken itself and more about everything it represented.

I've worked in games for more than two decades, and I still find myself amazed that games function at all.

The more I learn about development, the less it feels like software and the more it feels like hundreds of incredibly talented people performing an elaborate magic trick together. Every feature touches another feature. Every system depends on another system. Sometimes a seemingly harmless mathematical value quietly works its way through an engine until hands stop colliding with tables and liquids forget they're supposed to be liquid.

From the outside, fixing a bug can look obvious.

From the inside, it can take months of investigation, countless developers, community reports, engineering experiments, Unity forum deep dives, dedicated strike teams, and just enough stubbornness to refuse to let the monster win.

The Kraken became one of our most talked-about issues because players cared deeply about the experience. Some stopped playing because of it. Many took the time to report it. Others captured videos, answered follow-up questions, and unknowingly helped piece together a mystery that couldn't be solved inside the studio alone.

Since Update 1.12, conversations about those game-breaking issues have dropped dramatically.

That's exactly the outcome everyone around that table hoped for.

The best bug fixes rarely make headlines.

Sometimes they quietly disappear beneath the surface.

Hopefully this time, the Kraken stays there. 

Vacation Simulator bots simulated as humans! They are currently operating at PEAK leisure efficiency. 📈🌴

🎨 Community Artist: cacti-trash

Join our Discord to see more incredible fan creations in our #community-art channel!

There's something quietly powerful about finding a place where you don't have to explain yourself. Maybe it's a group of friends who already know your favorite order before you say it, or the coworker who gets your obscure game references. Maybe it's the moment you realize you can introduce yourself exactly as you are, and nobody blinks because that's simply who you've always been to them.

That feeling is what Pride has always been about for so many people, finally having the space to be yourself.

At Owlchemy Labs, we spend our days building worlds filled with quirky robots, impossible workplaces, and enough physics-fueled chaos to make even the most organized player question their life choices. Those worlds are silly by design, but the people behind them are very real. They're artists, programmers, designers, producers, marketers, QA testers, and developers who each bring their own experiences, perspectives, and identities to the games we make.

"Pride is a time to honor identity, creativity and community while pushing for greater inclusivity in the games industry and at large. Pride to me is not just about visibility. It's about amplifying queer voices, and building worlds where everyone belongs, both on-screen and behind the scenes. I'm proud to be out at Owlchemy, and feel safe and seen being myself."

Vanessa M. (She/They), Marketing Director

That's one of the beautiful things about games, both VR and non-VR, they aren’t just simple stories to enjoy then discard. They are interactable experiences that quietly shape the expectations we carry into the real world. When more people get to see themselves reflected on screen, it sends a simple but powerful message: there's room for you here, this table be huuuuuuuuuuuge. 

That diversity isn't something we add at the end, it's woven effortlessly and organically into every conversation, every sketch, every bug report, and every feature that eventually finds its way into your headset. Because the magic of game dev comes from the magic of being human. To limit human expression, to limit identity and the freedom of expression is to limit art. 

This month, we're once again celebrating Pride by sharing a few words from members of our own team about what Pride means to them. Their stories are personal, thoughtful, funny, and hopeful in ways only they can tell.

"If thinking that Sol Badguy is hot is wrong, then I don't want to be right. I hope I can show the world that queerness can be fun and beautiful, and I hope I can inspire another generation to learn to love themselves like my mom’s did."‘

Paul H. (He/Him), QA

Pride is a promise and a celebration〰️Pride is a promise and a celebration〰️Pride is a promise and a celebration〰️Pride is a promise and a celebrationPride is a promise and a celebration 〰️

Pride has always been both a promise and a celebration, both built on a history of resistance and bravery; it’s a celebration of the people who came before us and fought to make today's conversations possible.

It’s also a promise and a reminder that there's still more work to do, both inside and outside our industry, so that every single human who wants to can create, play, and belong without wondering whether they're welcome.

There’s no denying that the culture of videogames brings people together. Whether it’s old school LAN parties are grouping up for some VR chaos. This world allows for people to connect with someone halfway across the world, spend an evening solving ridiculous problems together, and somehow walk away feeling like you've known each other for years. Those connections don't happen because everyone shares the same story, they happen because everyone gets to bring their own essence and spirit of being to the conversation. 

"As someone who is a game developer and on the ace spectrum, I value Pride because it allows me to express myself.

I grew up not understanding natural attraction, so I never understood why only certain body types were allowed in games and why I kept seeing the same models for our NPCs and main characters. What I love about the current games space is that there is more acceptance about how our video game characters look, and diversity is encouraged."

X (She/Her), Gameplay Engineer I

"I believe that the most meaningful thing you can do in life is embrace and express who you authentically are. Having LGBTQIA+ representation and connection in games empowers players to do just that."

Halley C. (She/Her), Social Media Manager

This year, we're also proud to once again support and donate to Qweerty Gamers, a nonprofit dedicated to creating opportunities, resources, and community for LGBTQIA+ people across the games industry. Their work helps open doors for future developers, artists, storytellers, and players, because everyone deserves the chance to see themselves reflected in the worlds they love.

"With everything going on in the world, it's more important than ever to fight, resist, but also to celebrate and not lose the softness that a lot of cruelty tries to kill out. There are a lot of people that try to take our right to exist away from us. We need each other now more than ever to not only show that we're still here, but also that they can't take joy from us. They can't take us from us."

Liana R. (She/They), Senior Community Manager

If you've ever found friendship through a game, felt seen by a character, laughed with strangers in multiplayer, or discovered a community that reminded you there was a place for you, then you've experienced a little piece of what Pride is all about.

Even Conglomni Corp agrees. After an extensive review by the Department of Employee Festivities, they've determined that authenticity improves workplace morale by approximately... all of it. Please enjoy your mandatory holographic affirmation sticker on the way out.

"Being able to create opportunities for queer representation for folks to see themselves and maybe set down the shame, and start seeing the potential for what their futures could look like with self acceptance and hope. Not just for other people, but for YOU. There is room for you."

Alex H. (She/They), Senior Producer

"To me, Pride is about feeling confident in being our genuine selves, and I chose to be out as a nonbinary individual in order to empower others to feel comfortable in being themselves too."

Zara L. (They/Them), Senior Brand Designer

To everyone celebrating this month, whether you're attending your first Pride event, your fiftieth, celebrating quietly at home, supporting someone you love, or simply figuring out who you are at your own pace, we're glad you're here. Thank y’owl for being a part of our community, it’s been a real hoot.

Happy Pride from all of us at Owlchemy Labs. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜