Announcement - 9 August 2016

COMMUNITY,

Today I am making an announcement explaining that what we're working on and why we've been quiet in recent months.

Why has Donut Team been quiet?
Since the Summer Road Trip event, Donut Team has been working to complete Donut Mod: The Conspiracy Update and our brand new mod store. Both have been a huge undertaking and our team has struggled to keep up with the demand. Because of this, we're now scaling down our projects. Our original game is now on hiatus while we finish Donut Mod and the new website. We would also like to say it was irresponsible of us to announce a project soon (The Light Late at Night and Heist Horizon, both are projects that are very important to us). We will continue to be writing the story to our first feature length game, but we're going to be staying relatively secretive about it for awhile.

What has Donut Team been working on?
I know the community is very interested what we've been working on. We're working on many things right now.

Multiplayer for The Simpsons: Hit & Run.
Lucas Cardellini has been working on a new hack for The Simpsons: Hit & Run that introduces online multiplayer for The Simpsons: Hit & Run. We're currently running a small private beta that allows people to stress test the technology Lucas is building and we'll have more news about it as it becomes more finalised.

Donut Mod: The Conspiracy Update
As you're most likely aware by now, The Conspiracy Update is taking a great amount of time. We released Donut Mod: The Seaside Update in July 2015 and it quickly became our best release at the time. In the last year, our team has expanded upon the possibilities with The Simpsons: Hit & Run modding; custom maps and custom characters are just two of the amazing things we've been able to add to our mod. Because of this, we are taking a long time as we create a brand new map (from scratch!) for level 4. This wouldn't be a problem, however it has proven difficult as our mission team is unable to complete their job until the map is completed. And with one person working on a large map (one larger than the base game maps), it is taking a lot of time. However, we are assuring you that it will be done as soon as we're able to complete it. We thank you for your cooperation and will have more to say and show off in the coming weeks.

Donut Team's website
It's a huge undertaking, but the Donut Team website is going strong. Featuring a brand new mod store which users will be able to submit their own creations to. We'd like to announce one thing today: at the new website's launch, we will not be allowing users to share their own mods. We will open up the flood gates shortly after.
The private beta for the website was delayed due to something that has been going on with me personally. However, we'll have more news soon.

Bakery by Donut Team
We're now experimenting with a Steam-like desktop client for Windows, macOS and Linux. I MUST warn our community this is only a proof of concept and does not promise that this will ever be completed or released. However, we want to see what can be accomplished with it.

How will I get my news from Donut Team in the future?
We're still going to be posting all the time on our forum, its our main place where we can talk to our users freely. So make sure to check-in every now and again. You can also follow us on Twitter and on YouTube. We're going to be working to make it easier to reach us and communicate with us. One of the ways is a brand new bug tracker we'll be adding relatively soon, which will allow feedback and bugs to be submitted in a clean and intuitive way.
Finally, the bi-weekly Donut Team Status Updates are coming back relatively soon. We may be switching it up a bit and moving to a monthly schedule however. This is subject to change, we'll let you know more when the Status Updates return.

Discord Drama
I want to quickly address drama that has been happening between some community members on the Donut Team discord server.
1. Any issues with a specific user should be sent to a Donut Team staff member privately. If we do not take any action, then either ignore it or leave the server; do not try to contact Discord, they will not do anything unless the user has violated Discord terms of service (which they most likely did not).
2. Do not impersonate another user.
3. Just have fun. Political discussions are not allowed as we all have conflicting feelings and the past shows that those conversations are not constructive.
4. Treat everyone with respect, and dont make up excuses not to or you will be kicked.


That's all I have to say today. I really can't wait to hear your response, please let us know!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT,
Jake Andreøli
Co-Founder of Donut Team

tl;dr
- we suck at keeping things secret, so we're focusing on our mod and website and then we'll make a game.
- we have tons of projects going on, some might take a really long time or just fail entirely. who knows?
- we suck at communicating stuff, we'll try harder, just don't leave us.
- stop having stupid drama on our discord server, we just like games and game accessories.

Thanks for the update, good to know