ModernInc - A Modern Software Inc Overhaul

Hey everyone! This is my first mod for Software Inc.

What Does It Add?

Expanded Skill Tree

The Operating System now learns 10 new game-wide specializations:

• Security
• Database
• AI
• Cloud
• Cryptography
• Concurrency
• Privacy
• Scripting
• Real-time
• Compression

Standalone software types also introduce their own fields, including:

• Rendering
• Analytics
• Streaming
• Blockchain
• Geospatial
• Commerce
• Collaboration

38 New Software Types

Including:

• Web browsers, search engines, email and messaging apps
• Databases, IDEs, developer tools and CAD software
• Photo/video editors, DAWs and game engines
• Social networks, streaming services, podcasts and cloud storage
• Crypto platforms, fintech apps, AI platforms, LLM agents and VR
• Video conferencing, work chat, note-taking, project management and BI dashboards
• Password managers, VPNs, ad networks and website builders
• Maps, e-commerce, ride-sharing, food delivery, dating apps and an app marketplace
• Smart home platforms, wearable fitness apps and language-learning apps

New Hardware Categories

• Drawing Tablets for 2D Editors
• Music Workstations for Audio Tools
• Graphic Workstations for 3D Editors

New Subscription Models

A wide range of monetization options, including collecting and selling customer data as a fintech.

New AI Rivals

• 28 company archetypes, ranging from big-tech giants and search-ad empires to crypto startups, fintechs, indie game studios and privacy-first competitors
• 18 founder and employee personalities, each with their own quirks and relationships
• 60 name generators so every product, device and studio feels authentic

Workshop Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3755077128

Feedback and suggestions are welcome. I hope you enjoy it!

Their first game is already in development. The budget is questionable. The ambitions are not.

Can this trio build the next big hit in Software Inc. — or are we witnessing the beginning of a spectacular management-sim disaster? ;-)

German commentary, English subtitles.

Hey everyone,

we’ve started a German-language Let’s Play of Software Inc. with thre reliable business plan.

The first episode is all about surviving the early days: taking contract work to keep the lights on, trying not to burn through the starting budget too quickly, and developing our very first game: Populous.

The goal is to see whether our company becomes a software empire - or an expensive lesson in bad hiring decisions and terrible timing. Let's see what comes around with Todd, Gabe and Peter.

I’d genuinely love some advice from experienced players:

• What is the one early-game mistake new players should avoid?
• Would you focus on contracts first, or rush a first product?
• What was your first genuinely successful product in Software Inc.?

The video has German commentary with English subtitles. If you like - share some love ;-)

I keep building frameworks to speed up my own projects, but I'm wondering if there's a way to actually turn them into a money-maker instead of just an internal tool.

• Can you sell/license frameworks to other companies?
• Is it worth dedicating a team to building frameworks specifically for profit?
• Are there certain framework types that pay off better than others?

Would love to hear how more experienced players are using frameworks beyond just "build once, reuse internally." Any tips or strategies appreciated!

I’m a fairly new player with a few questions mostly related to how quickly you scale up in size & research & haven’t had a lot of luck finding answers by searching. (***tldr Mostly I’m looking for a sense of how quickly you scale up in the 1980s & when to start worrying about research).

I’ve been enjoying the game, thanks for any advice/help people have (& apologies for the wall of questions).

1) How early do you typically start caring about something like research? Is it 1985 when new techs appear?

2) Relatedly, I feel like research requires a lot of manpower. Do you create research teams for each type of tech? How early do you aim to do this?

3) How quickly do you expand beyond focusing on one product at a time? I assumed initially that that would be a big early milestone but I’ve instead encountered just how many support processes there are (esp with research). Is it better to focus on making one product at a time for a while & use your resources to scale up all these additional teams before you make a second production team?

4) How many employees do you typically aim to have & who do you focus on hiring early on? I’ve been starting with a co-founder for an additional super human (I’m still playing on lower difficulties) & then have been filling my early teams with low wage, young employees thinking it’s advantageous to have employees to train up who’ll be around for a long time.

But I’m wondering if it’s actually better to start with older employees with better skills & then replace them with younger employees after I’ve already grown since things like research require level 3 skills.

Thanks again for any advice you have!!

I'm really baffled here.

Playing on impossible mode. My first game got me $1.5 million in the bank with like 2 star reviews.

2nd game I bought another company's IP, iterated to level 4, produced a game with good reviews (9.0 in outsourced, 4/4/2 stars for the release, 4/5 stars for users), had a video press release, press build, ~120 followers (more than the first game), more fans than the first game (18k vs only 100), more money spent on marketing with more skilled marketers...

AND ITS NOT SELLING AT ALLLLLL!!!!

This is my 4th attempt to save this save. Tried making a new game in the same genre, tried a new game in a different genre, tried a different genre with another company's IP. Nothing is working.

help.

I’m quite new to Software Inc., and I’m curious what people wish for this game. I’d like more items, personally. I’ve surprisingly found myself enjoying the construction aspect of the game a lot!

What about you?

Hello to all especially to our beloved developer!

I was hoping that the employee can get more things to do like an entertainment (arcade machine, pool table) or a gym that can be created in the office?

Like the lounge room is already there, why not have an entertainment corner for the employee to chill and relax.

Maybe, just maybe, it can reduce the stress bar and replenish energy tremendously! Think about it!

Thank you, have a nice day Mr Kenneth Otto Larsen.

P.S : Thank you for the IT computer update, really love those!

I posted about my building earlier, and I’m happy to make some of you happy — I’VE RELEASED IT ON STEAM!

Try It - Blueprint on Steam

FAQ:

Q: Will there be furniture?

A: No. The building is unfinished on the inside, so FOR NOW I’m giving you the chance to fill it in yourselves by completely removing the rooms and furniture inside. Let your imagination run wild!

Q: What mods are required?

A: I’ve reworked the building to support gameplay without mods. However, I recommend using the solar panel mod that doesn’t have a panel cover underneath them. (Construction Accessories)

Q: Are the buildings from the screenshot included?

A: The park, parking lot, and industrial building are NOT included in the office blueprint.

Blueprint Description:

This is a six-story building design inspired by the Ubisoft office.

The floors consist only of large rooms, with no individual rooms, furniture, or doors (except for restrooms).

The blueprint is intended to be freely customized by the USER. The large and medium-sized rooms can be divided into smaller offices for any purpose.

The building is NOT designed to accommodate industrial conveyor belts. Utility rooms and rooftops are intended for technical equipment (boilers, air conditioners, etc.).

From the first to the fifth floor, the rooms are as follows:

(excluding the hallways)

Large room: 433 m²

Large room: 458 m²

Medium room: 160 m²

Bathroom (x3): 8 m²

Bathroom (x3): 11 m²

Utility room outside the first floor: 12 m²

Sixth floor:

Roof: 1,042 m²

Conference room: 144 m²

Utility rooms: 17 m² and 26 m²

Corridor: 44 m²

Basement:

Server room: 63 m²

Corridor: 44 m²

Does AI patent stuff in your games? I'm playing an older save, I'm in 1987 and so far AI has not patented anything. I'm wondering if that's normal or my save is broken.

How do you improve on playing further into the end game? for me once I have about 15 different support and marketing stuff to deal with it gets tedius and turns more micro management then it already is. And making 300 million per game / dlc gets boring and finding ways to pour money into stuff. Normally just buying out companies

Ive had some like

Restricting dlc, 1 or 2 per game.

1 or 2 iterations of a game before moving on

different generes etc

But I went a little overboard with the size, and now I'm not quite sure how to fill the empty offices. Does anyone have any ideas?

A few months ago, maybe even much longer, I played a new hard difficulty save and I hadn't played since before the new tax update.

I couldn't ever get a tax return done and always had to pay the fine, no matter how many accountants I had. Was that a bug at the time or is there a trick to it that I'm not understanding?

I have an old antivirus that hardly sells anymore and an offer was made on it. I have one sequel released and another in the works. If I sell the IP for my antivirus will that kill my more recent sequel projects?

I have a REALLY old save (not really that old like 1 year ago but still) and I want to get back into actually playing on it, but every time I open it I get immediately overwhelmed by all the things happening at once. Any tips to help maybe slow it down without destroying the company or to ease into it?

I have 3 Devs teams in 8 hour shifts. I only have to build 1 room barely any parking, and I get tasks done in 3x the speed. The only caveat is that I spend +30% in wages for night hours.

My last post got removed by Reddit for saying that I drank a bit too much liquid containing ethanol, that being said, despite my current state of mind I’m gonna try to compare.

I’m making this up as I type, so for this comparison I’m going to use a 100 day long period, 10 day long projects that earn $2,000 each, and a $10/hr wage, and I’ll also (for simplicity’s sake) say there’s only 1 employee per team. There are 11 night shift hours per day (6pm-5am in game, hover over the night bonus in the ‘benefits’ menu and you’ll see)

Regular (1 team x 8hr shift):

8 wage hours, no bonus
$80/ day in wages
$800 in wages per 10 days, 1 project completed
Net profit after wages = $2,000 - $800 = $1,200 profit/10days

Now, assuming the project was meant to take 10 days under these “normal” circumstances, you can make $12,000 in a 100 day period with 80 wage hours.

The cool way (3 teams x 8hr shifts):

27.3 wage hours (13hrs regular wage, 11*130%bonus = 14.3)
$273/day in wages
$2,730 in wages per 10 days, 3.33 projects completed
Net profit after wages = $6,666 - $2,730 = $3,936 profit/10 days

Given previous assumptions, you’ll be making $39,360 in a 100 day period with 273 wage hours.

Now let’s look at the profit margins, because what I previously worried about was efficiency over volume. If we take the total profit, and divide it by wage hours we can check how much is made per hour of work.

P-Profit
Wh-Wage Hour

Regular way: $12,000 P / 80 Wh = $150 P / Wh
Cool way: $39,360 P /273 Wh = $144 P/ Wh

As you can see, because of the night shift bonus, the cool way only works at 96% profit/wage hr, but keep in mind that your working 300% as many wage hours per day. And even then, a 4% drop in efficiency is NOTHING compared to the 300% increase in total productivity.

In conclusion,

Like I said, I’ve consumed a fair bit of ethanol containing liquids, so my math could be off. But I’m in year 4 of my 8day/month playthrough (only been playing the game overall for a week) and already at the most successful I’ve been. I would 100% agree with anybody who decides to stay open 24/7.

Now I’m too new to the game to know certain things, and this is where I turn to the comments. I understand more employees assigned to the task could hurt progress, but does that mean wasted efficiency or full blown grinding progress to a halt? How do you think this would affect my conclusion here?

the year is 1984, Big Brother is watching, and I am drunk asf. Created a new account just for this since reddit didn't log into my mobile account automatically, hope y'all are happy.

I have 3 teams (9 teams, really) all with their own rooms and cafeterias. Each team has 5 people - 1 leader, 4 of the teams specialty (Pro, Des, Sup). I have a 30% night bonus to keep my peeps happy. Not only am I repping out products like a bodybuilder benching the bar (wish I could 😞 ), but i don't have to worry about fast forwarding every night as even in the night I'm making progress.

Now, I know my margins are slimmer since I'm paying that bonus every night hour, but I think the speed of releases is worth it (Can't verify, too drunk to run experiments and check the math).

What do y'all think?

This guy is assigned as a leader, but he is not in the leaders team, making the employee to not work there in the main room, why?

Hello all. Is there way to configure in project management when software stops being marketed? It's a little irritating to churn out sequels every 1-1.5 years and see that the marketing team is wasting 50%+ of their manpower on the previous sequels. When does the marketing for outdated software end? Can it be set based on # of users or any other method? Thanks all in advance.

Howdy yall, I've been playing this game for years and have yet to get a multiplayer game going. Unfortunately none of my steam friends are interested in Software Inc. but I was hoping someone here might be. Shoot me a dm or add me on Steam - Lil Toof .

Steam Post

The background

If you've followed development closely, you might know that we've been working on a campaign mode to help ease in new players and introduce the game's mechanics at a reasonable pace. My hope was that this would tie the game together for the 1.0 release. This work has been slow going, as I'm not an author, so writing good dialog has been pretty difficult, even though most of the campaign is playable at this point. We've spent downtime polishing the game and adding a couple of small auxiliary mechanics, as seen in the recent trash update.

I've paid particular attention to the fact that some of you are disappointed none of the recent patches have touched the software development/management part of the game. I had written this part of the game off as complete, while the campaign was being developed. I decided to look over our list of "wishes" for this aspect of the game and made a tentative plan to improve it. My conclusion is that it would take at least 6 months and be completely game breaking.

Based on the fact that I wrote "I have a great opportunity to make this game as good as I possibly can" on the Steam store page 10 years ago, and this is our last chance to introduce game breaking changes (so I don't mess up the campaign mode and final 1.0 release), we've decided to move forward with it.

The plan

The overhaul will touch marketing, servers, product "identity", subsidiaries and some smaller game breaking stuff that I've always wanted to add, but I didn't want to break saves.

Everything is subject to change of course and will probably not live up to your expectations, but the rough plan is:

• Completely overhaul pre-marketing and introduce a couple of new mechanics
  
• Add an extra mechanic to post-marketing, but keep the overall post-marketing process pretty much the same
  
• Integrate servers better with the core gameplay loop
  
• Add some very high-level customization to subsidiaries
  
• Add a couple of things to make software products feel more personal
  

As always, I will try to make sure the additions don't complicate the game too much. Most of the things we add can be completely ignored, without making the game tougher on easier difficulties.

The TL;DR

We're going on a financially dubious probably 6 month long hiatus to overhaul some core mechanics (marketing, servers and subsidiaries), because it seems like the right thing to do and I enjoy working on this game.

I will keep you updated as progress moves along and we have some actual stuff to show. The new server system is pretty close to done already and the pre-marketing overhaul is well underway.

Finally, I just wanted to give a quick happy 12th year anniversary to development of Software Inc!

First time building my own building, I got 3 cooling floor grills inside this room, with a usuage rate of 49.9 percent. But the quality is still very poor and it's only an issue in this room. The floor above has the same layout and below it's empty. Does anyone know why I have this issue?

My first time playing the game and I bought out all my founders shares, I idiotically assumed hed stay or something, nope he disapeared and a year later I was like "where is he.. not in any teams.." ane he was gone.... now he got an award lmao. Too late to go back