Hi everyone,

Following yesterday's major Beta Branch update, we've released a smaller follow-up patch focused on issues and edge cases that became apparent after the new economic systems were put through wider testing.

The main focus of this patch is economic and market stability. We've addressed an issue that could cause widespread declines across companies and major indices, along with several underlying problems involving facility profitability, company earnings, insolvency and financial statements that could compound over longer simulations.

We've also made further improvements to bankruptcy behaviour, facility economics, accounting, Altman Z Scores, hedge funds and save compatibility. A particular focus has been making sure older saves affected by these issues can recover automatically without altering player cash, debt, ownership or equity balances.

Thank you again to everyone testing the Beta Branch and reporting issues. The longer-running saves and detailed reports have been especially useful for identifying problems that aren't always visible during shorter testing sessions.

Here's what's changed:

• Fixed a global market decline that could cause most companies and major indices to collapse over time

• Fixed synchronized company price crashes caused by unstable production and earnings calculations

• Improved long term market stability without artificially preventing legitimate recessions, losses, or bankruptcies

• Corrected positive economic conditions so they provide an appropriate positive influence on equity markets

• Reduced extreme company price movements caused by temporary changes in daily facility performance

• Improved earnings smoothing so quarterly results represent sustained business performance

• Prevented incomplete facility data from replacing otherwise valid company financial results

• Improved index continuity when companies are delisted or their constituent universes change

• Fixed historical chart data from a previous game appearing in a newly loaded or freshly started game

• Fixed opening market charts incorrectly showing large crashes caused by abandoned timeline data

• Fixed the underlying profitability problems that caused widespread company distress and bankruptcy waves

• Removed the artificial global bankruptcy limit so genuinely insolvent companies can still fail independently

• Improved insolvency checks so temporary losses do not automatically destroy otherwise viable companies

• Fixed insolvency checks stopping after loading an earlier save

• Improved liquidity support for companies experiencing temporary but recoverable losses

• Fixed dormant companies repeatedly renewing assets despite having no operating activity

• Added gradual asset run off for genuinely dormant businesses

• Improved bankruptcy handling for company shareholders, bonds, facilities, and financial records

• Improved company formation and replacement so the listed market does not permanently shrink after failures

• Fixed aggregate company facilities with billions in book value generating only thousands in daily revenue

• Removed an incorrect production limit that treated large regional business estates as only four ordinary facilities

• Recalibrated facility capacity so production, revenue, and asset values operate at compatible financial scales

• Fixed facility operating expenses so upkeep scales with the actual cost of the assets employed

• Improved revenue and cost accounting for factories, mines, oil wells, power plants, stores, property, and financial facilities

• Fixed extreme facility margins reaching hundreds or thousands of percent because revenue and costs used different scales

• Facility margins now display clearly when revenue is too small to produce a meaningful percentage

• Extremely large valid margin values now use compact formatting instead of overlapping nearby columns

• Improved commodity cost pass through while retaining bounded and financially plausible results

• Fixed gross losses being lost or incorrectly converted into profitable results during financial statement generation

• Improved facility mothballing so persistently unprofitable AI facilities remain inactive when appropriate

• Fixed established AI companies and newly listed companies missing their required operating facilities

• Improved facility level migration so malformed legacy facilities are repaired without changing player owned facilities

• Improved company income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements so their values reconcile correctly

• Fixed facility revenue, cost of goods sold, operating expenses, operating profit, interest, and tax flowing into the wrong statement lines

• Fixed operating losses receiving unsupported tax benefits

• Fixed tiny residual revenue producing meaningless billion percent profit margins

• Improved the distinction between statistical revenue and realized facility sales

• Added clearer revenue basis descriptions to company financial statements

• Improved accounting continuity across quarterly reports and save loading

• Fixed company investment spending being expensed more than once

• Added tighter limits to AI investment budgets to prevent runaway spending

• Improved debt, equity, retained earnings, and liability calculations used by company analysis screens

• Rebuilt the Altman Z Score using working capital, retained earnings, operating income, total liabilities, sales, and market equity

• Fixed companies displaying impossibly large Altman Z Scores

• Financial companies now display the Altman Z Score as unavailable because the standard manufacturing formula is not appropriate for banks

• Companies with immaterial liabilities no longer use an artificial one dollar denominator

• Corrected safe, grey zone, and distress classifications

• Added compact Altman Z formatting to prevent text overlap in financial, credit, comparison, and screener tables

• Improved quality scores so unavailable Altman values do not incorrectly create distress penalties

• Fixed hedge fund returns being distorted by investor deposits and withdrawals

• Improved hedge fund risk adjusted return calculations

• Added long term limits to external hedge fund asset growth

• Fixed failed hedge funds not being replaced correctly

• Improved fund and ETF chart history across saving and loading

• Fixed fund charts combining prices from different game timelines

• Added automatic recovery for saves created by affected game versions

• Broken legacy facilities are recalibrated immediately when the save loads

• Save recovery can repair facility capacity even when the saved company revenue was already damaged

• Player built and directly controlled facilities are preserved during legacy save repair

• Fixed missing AI operating footprints in older saves

• Fixed old chart history contaminating a loaded world

• Improved restoration of insolvency schedules, market history, financial data, and company operations

• Save recovery does not rewrite player cash, debt, ownership, or equity balances

• Fixed overlapping values in company comparison and screener tables

• Added bounded formatting for unusually large financial ratios

• Improved facility margin formatting for extreme or unavailable values

• Removed an unnecessary console warning from the assets interface

• Improved the readability of company credit and financial analysis panels

• Improved high speed simulation safeguards to prevent excessive tick backlogs from freezing the game

Hi everyone,

Thank you for all of the feedback, bug reports and suggestions you've been sending our way.

This Beta Branch update is a fairly substantial one, with a major focus on making MarginCall's underlying economy more consistent, reactive and understandable. We've spent a lot of time improving how production, facilities, companies, ownership, debt and markets interact, while also addressing a number of issues highlighted by players during testing.

Production and facility economics have received a particularly large overhaul, with profitability now responding much more closely to actual supply, demand, utilization, operating costs and local economic conditions. We've also made significant improvements to corporate control and acquisitions, bond maturity and refinancing, commodity settlement, insolvency, save reliability and Life assets.

A lot of these changes are interconnected, so rather than simply fixing individual symptoms, we've tried to address the underlying systems wherever possible. The result should be an economy where actions have clearer consequences, financial activity is easier to trace, and the different parts of the simulation behave more consistently with one another.

As always, please keep the feedback coming. Reports from Beta Branch players have been particularly useful in finding edge cases and identifying areas that need more work.

Here's what's changed:

• Production facility construction costs, valuations and expected returns have been rebalanced.

• Facility revenue now responds to the realized market price and quantity sold.

• Raw material oversupply now reduces utilization, sales, prices and profitability more meaningfully.

• New production supply no longer creates an identical amount of demand or guarantees full sales.

• Facility operating costs now respond to wages, energy prices, inflation, unemployment, productivity and local economic conditions.

• Demand now grows with population, income and wider economic activity.

• Extreme unexplained changes in mine, oil, quarry and logging profitability have been reduced.

• Hotels, shops, restaurants, pharmacies, financial operations and property businesses now use more distinct economic models instead of sharing fixed margins.

• Facility margins now reflect visible revenue, costs, utilization and realized sales.

• Facility margin tooltips now show output, quantity sold, utilization, revenue, costs, profit and margin.

• Location profitability now changes as wages, energy, land values, demand, productivity and competition evolve.

• Land value is now included in facility and holding acquisition prices.

• AI companies now use more restrained facility construction and expansion rules.

• Large AI facilities now display levels based on their actual scale and replacement cost.

• Facility capacity is no longer multiplied incorrectly by the displayed aggregate level.

• Company revenue, facility sales, COGS, profit and cash movements now reconcile correctly.

• The Segments screen now distinguishes realized monthly sales from estimated monthly output value.

• Unsold production is no longer recognized automatically as revenue.

• Goods routed to warehouses are recorded as inventory at cost and generate profit only when sold.

• Direct supply links are limited by real production capacity and remove the supplied quantity from the public market.

• Internal supply transfers use the same cost on both sides of the transaction.

• Production subsidiaries can now build facilities, acquire inputs, manufacture goods and sell their output.

• Production subsidiaries reject products that cannot actually be manufactured.

• Controlled company facilities now appear in Operations and Holdings.

• Controlled company facilities can be listed, unlisted, configured, closed and sold using the controlled company’s finances.

• Management access is removed when the player no longer controls the company.

• Finite natural resources now deplete over time.

• Resource quality and extraction costs now respond to depletion, discoveries and recycling.

• Resource scarcity now affects effective supply, commodity prices and extraction margins.

• Product markets now distinguish between local, regional and global demand.

• Regional productivity and industry specialization now affect suitable business locations.

• Build location information now includes demand, competition, capacity, utilization, productivity, saturation and recent openings and closures.

• Residential construction now increases local housing supply and affects vacancy, occupancy, rents and development returns.

• Closing a residential facility removes its capacity from the local housing market.

• Real estate demand now responds to population, household income, employment and economic growth.

• Weekly and monthly market history is retained for longer.

• Older chart history is downsampled instead of being discarded entirely.

• Charts remain usable after extreme historical price collapses.

• Player controlled dividend settings now remain in force while the player retains control.

• Company management settings no longer change without player input.

• Controlled companies now respect restrictions on bond and convertible bond issuance.

• Player instructions survive simulation updates and save loading.

• Old instructions are cleared appropriately when control is lost.

• Investment subsidiaries now trade more actively when suitable opportunities exist.

• Investment subsidiaries correctly update their cash, positions and market liquidity after autonomous trades.

• AI borrowing now requires a recognizable financing purpose.

• AI companies consider existing cash, leverage, interest costs, planned investment and refinancing needs before borrowing.

• AI companies can use surplus cash to repay debt.

• Money raised through debt issuance is now traceable through company cash and financial statements.

• Company pages now show recent borrowing, repayments, expansion, acquisitions, dividends, buybacks and share offerings.

• Company pages now include a cash bridge showing opening cash, operations, investment, borrowing, dividends and closing cash.

• Corporate action descriptions and cash bridge figures no longer become unnecessarily truncated.

• Holding company and empire values now represent the player’s actual economic interest.

• Outside public shareholders are no longer treated as company debt.

• Public float, minority ownership, treasury shares, company cash, debt and facility values are handled consistently.

• Assets are no longer counted through company value, counted again directly and then incorrectly offset through public float.

• Buyouts can now reach full ownership.

• Shares already held in the active wallet are handled correctly during a buyout.

• Shareholders become increasingly willing to sell as an offer becomes more attractive.

• Very attractive tender offers can overcome shareholder reservation prices.

• Block trades are limited to shares that can actually be sourced.

• Acquisition prices are protected against the reported ten times price manipulation strategy.

• Shell facilities and zero capacity assets cannot inherit the expected earnings of a fully operational facility.

• Share buybacks now acquire real available shares before retiring them.

• Buybacks cannot retire shares held by the player without a valid transaction.

• Buybacks now update cash, ownership, public float and shares outstanding correctly.

• Re IPO transactions now rebuild a complete and immediately visible ownership structure.

• Public float percentages no longer become negative or exceed valid ownership limits.

• Capital injections now issue equity to the investor providing the capital.

• Shareholders who do not participate in a capital injection are diluted appropriately.

• Corporate bonds now repay principal and disappear when they mature.

• Solvent companies can refinance maturing debt instead of defaulting automatically.

• Corporate bond issuance and redemption now appear correctly in company financing cash flow.

• Government debt now uses recurring issuance linked to fiscal deficits and refinancing needs.

• Treasury Bills have been added alongside longer term government bonds.

• Individual government securities now mature and redeem even though the wider government bond market continues operating.

• Government debt information now shows deficit funding, refinancing requirements, auction supply and clearing yields.

• Properties such as houses, apartments and condos now contribute to personal loan collateral.

• Property collateral survives save loading and is reflected in borrowing capacity.

• Existing company loans can be refinanced into a new term and rate.

• Refinancing charges an arrangement fee without creating additional principal cash.

• Refinancing preserves previously paid interest and survives save loading.

• Personal borrowing can no longer be used to bypass company financing restrictions.

• Dividend and bond income can be set to Distribute or Accumulate.

• Accumulated equity dividends can automatically purchase whole shares while retaining unused cash.

• Accumulated government bond coupons can be reinvested through the bond market.

• Commodity positions now settle realized profit or loss into cash when closed.

• Reserved margin is released correctly after a commodity position closes.

• Manual closes, stop losses, take profits, break even stops, liquidations and partial closes use the same settlement process.

• Long and short commodity positions now apply profit and loss in the correct direction.

• Commodity settlement cannot be applied twice after saving or loading.

• Stop and target previews now use the same net settlement calculation as execution.

• Close notifications now show realized profit or loss, fees, cash settlement and released margin.

• Auto break even controls now clearly display whether the feature is on or off.

• Autosaves now restore the player and world as one consistent state.

• A failed player restoration can no longer silently produce a blank new player inside an existing world.

• Invalid partial saves are rejected instead of being loaded with default player data.

• Long running worlds retain player identity, cash, companies, positions, facilities, financing activity and world date.

• Insolvent companies now progress through distress, default, bankruptcy, delisting and removal.

• Bankruptcy settles shares, bonds and facilities before removing the failed company.

• Failed companies no longer reappear after saving and loading.

• Invalid share counts can no longer produce catastrophic EPS values.

• Valuation models return unavailable when their assumptions are invalid.

• Convertible bond calculations safely handle near zero equity values.

• Invalid securities no longer corrupt market scanner averages.

• Credit ratings now deteriorate appropriately during severe financial distress.

• Invalid prices, quantities and financial values are rejected before they can corrupt cash, ownership or markets.

• Life assets can now be purchased in configurable quantities.

• Quantity controls include minus ten, minus one, plus one, plus ten and maximum affordable.

• Identical properties, vehicles and collectibles are grouped into cleaner portfolio rows.

• Players can sell one unit, sell all units of a type or select multiple groups for a bulk sale.

• Bulk purchases and sales show their total cost or proceeds before execution.

• Bulk transactions correctly update cash, net worth, income, upkeep and ownership counts.

• Property return estimates now include rental income as well as appreciation and upkeep.

• Property details now show cost basis, current value, unrealized return, rent and upkeep more clearly.

• News notifications can be dismissed with the right mouse button, including while the game is paused.

• Position details no longer overlap the Close button.

• Newly added Life asset controls no longer clip or overlap in supported languages and interface scales.

• Frequently refreshed buttons no longer flash or lose their hover and pressed state during simulation updates.

• The Guide now provides clearer explanations of production economics, company finance, government borrowing and macroeconomic relationships.

• New Guide content is available across all supported languages.