Big Update v2.0: The "Everything Is Fine" Update

Hello Store Owners!

The last update, v1.7, came out on May 21. It has been quiet here ever since, so first of all: sorry for the long silence, and thank you for sticking around.

Here is what happened. After v1.6 and v1.7 it was clear that fixing one bug at a time wasn't enough anymore. The broken saves, the end-of-day freezes and the clunky checkout all came from the same place: the foundation of the game. So instead of a small patch every few days, I went back and rebuilt Market Is Fine system by system.

The result is the biggest update the game has ever had. The news, the checkout, the interface, the customers, the lighting, the products on the shelves, the settings, the saves… almost everything you see, hear and click is new. And on top of that there are brand-new mechanics: cleaning, the credit book, fake news, weekly bills (with bankruptcy) and staff contracts.

Your saves carry over. Saves from earlier versions load in v2.0 and every product keeps its ID, so your shelves stay stocked.

And one more thing: Market Is Fine is entering the final stretch of Early Access. 1.0 is coming soon! More on that at the end of this post.

MIF NEWS: a brand-new live broadcast

The old news videos are gone. In their place is a live MIF NEWS broadcast built right into the game:

• A BREAKING NEWS sting, an anchor whose mouth moves with the voice (a different reporter for each story), a market wall with the affected products, subtitles and a news crawl.
• Every evening ends with an editorial: the Note of the Day.
• All 15 stories now hit the products that actually match the story, with demand set per product. A meat scandal sinks meat while chicken climbs.
• After each broadcast the Market Impact panel shows which products moved (shelf price, wholesale price and demand), how long the effect lasts and what you should do about it.
• Watching an old story again from the news archive no longer applies its effect a second time.
• The TV in your store now shows a live channel: headlines, a market board, the weather and ads for the products you actually sell.
• In a hurry? Press Space to skip the broadcast.

Unconfirmed news and debunks

Not every story is true anymore. From day 4, some hype stories air with a yellow UNCONFIRMED badge. Some of them turn out to be real. Others get a DEBUNKED bulletin the next morning: demand for the hyped products crashes and wholesalers dump their stock. If you blindly hoarded the headline product, you're stuck with it.

Prices, shelves and the rush

• Real shelf tags: every shelf now has a price tag on its rail with the product name, the stock (orange below half, red at 20%) and the price on a yellow block. Empty shelves show a grey "Empty shelf" tag.
• The price tag screen shows the market price, a green "fair range" bar and how customers will react: Cheap, Fair, Pricey or Nobody buys.
• When the news hypes a product, customers really do come running, and they talk about it in the aisles.

A fully 3D checkout

The old pop-up register is gone. The till is now a real object on your counter:

• A POS screen, a flatbed scanner, a sliding cash drawer full of bills and coins, a change tray, a card terminal with real keys and a receipt printer.
• Work the till with normal mouse look: aim at a product and click to scan it.
• Cash: the camera drops to the drawer. Count the change bill by bill and coin by coin, then confirm on the change display.
• Card: lean in to the terminal and key in the amount with the mouse or your keyboard. Esc steps back.
• Brand-new MIF Dollar bills and coins, and your hired cashier works the very same till.

The Credit Book

Neighbours can now ask to put it on the tab at the till. Most of them pay it back over the next few days, sometimes with a tip. Some of them… don't. Keep an eye on who owes you what in the Credit app on your MIF Pad.

Rent, electricity, tax… and bankruptcy

Running a store isn't free anymore. Every 7 days, three bills land on your desk:

• Rent grows with every expansion.
• Electricity depends on how many shelves and how many fridges and freezers are humming in your store.
• Tax is a share of the week's revenue.

You have 3 days to pay them in the new Bills app on your MIF Pad. Miss the last day and the bailiff takes the money from your till with a late fee. And if the till can't cover it? The shutters come down: your store goes bankrupt, the game is over and that save is gone for good. Everything is fine. Until it isn't.

Staff by the day or by the week

• Hire your cashier and your cleaner for a day or for a week (7 days for the price of 6). Under contract they come in by themselves every morning.
• Want to work the till yourself for a while? Take the cashier off the till on your MIF Pad and put them back later the same day, free of charge.
• Wages now follow your store: much cheaper for a small corner shop, a bit more with every expansion.

Cleaning

The store now gets dirty on its own. Customers drop and break products, walk in with muddy shoes and leave litter behind, and the storefront, door and fridge glass get greyer every day.

• Buy the cleaning gear once from MarketOS → Staff. Then hold B for the tool wheel: empty hands, stick, mop, window cloth and trash bag.
• Mop the spills, wipe the glass with the window cloth (it shows how clean the pane is in %) and bag the litter in a trash bag, then empty it at a trash can.
• Cleanliness matters: below 70, fewer customers come in, they complain and they buy less.
• If it gets really bad, customers walk around in a green stink cloud and many of them turn right back at the door.
• Or hire a cleaner. They are a real person in your store who mops, wipes the glass and picks up litter and empty boxes.

74 MIF parody brands

The generic packaging is gone. 74 products now come in our very own packaging, with new models and labels. Say hello to Fine Cola, Keep Calm Gummies, Doomscroll, Inflation Pop, Bubble Burst, Shrinkies, Bunker Cake, Later Lager, Crisis Crisps, Hot Takes, Sweet Denial, Spin Doctor, Clean Money, Panic Buy, Cash Cow, Fat Cat and many more. Their names are translated into all 10 languages.

Day and night

• The sun now follows a real path across the sky with the game clock. Mornings, noon and golden evenings all look different, and at night the moon comes out.
• At night the city lights up: lit windows, street lamps and your glowing shop sign.
• The store's interior lighting has been reworked: no more shelves turning black at night.

Customers, thieves and the stick

• Customers now arrive from the side streets and disappear around the corner, and passers-by walk down your street.
• New animations for everyone. Men and women walk differently, and nobody has bodybuilder arms anymore.
• Thieves sneak, steal, run, and get knocked down.
• The stick now hits anyone. Bonk a customer and they'll swear at you (censored), drop their basket and storm out. The neighbourhood remembers: you'll get bad reviews and fewer customers for a while. Your cashier and cleaner will complain too, but they'll keep working.

A brand-new interface

Every screen in the game has been redesigned with one look and feel:

• MarketOS: your computer now boots into a desktop with widgets and windows. Supplier (with a news tab), cart, licenses, expansion, staff, bank and the news archive.
• MIF Pad: your tablet has live widgets (today's revenue, headlines, low stock), app badges, pricing, staff, a task list, neighbourhood reviews, the news and the credit book.
• HUD: a mission card, a headlines card with the affected products, an animated wallet and notifications. Press N to shrink the mission and headlines cards to a single line.
• End-of-day receipt: the day prints out line by line (customers, revenue, expenses, news impact, theft, credit), then the PROFIT or LOSS stamp lands.
• A new main menu with animated key art, a Continue card that shows your save, store naming for a new game and loading tips.
• A pause menu with How to Play pages, and a new 15-step mission chain.

An opening-day tutorial

New players now start with a local news cold open and a guided first day in 11 steps, with a mission card and a marker in the world. Press F1 twice to skip it at any time. Short one-time tips also pop up the first time you meet a thief, an unconfirmed story, a debunk, a loan or the credit book.

Settings, performance and saves

• A new settings screen, shared by the main menu and the pause menu: display mode, V-Sync, frame-rate limit, field of view, graphics presets (Low, Medium, High, Ultra, Custom) with shadows, texture quality, anti-aliasing (FXAA/SMAA) and post-processing, master volume, mute in background and invert Y. Every option explains itself in one line, and there's a reset button.
• Fixed: the graphics quality levels were reversed ("High" had the worst shadows), the game forced V-Sync off and a 60 FPS cap, and anti-aliasing did nothing.
• Performance: a big, fully stocked store now renders about 5× faster in our tests, and placing furniture or expanding the store no longer freezes the game.
• Saves: saving is now crash-safe and keeps an automatic backup. A damaged save file is set aside instead of breaking the game. Your progress is saved when you return to the main menu, and there's a daily autosave.

Bug fixes

Along the way, more than 60 bugs were fixed. Among them:

• The end-of-day screen locking up from day 2 on
• Money being duplicated by scanning a product twice
• Prices getting stuck at 0 or below
• A deadlock when hiring a cashier, and the cashier getting stuck
• Loan installments not being processed when a day ended normally
• Losing progress when returning to the main menu
• Music staying silent after returning from the menu
• Key presses leaking through the pause menu and other screens
• A day being skipped after saving past midnight
• Invisible elements blocking mouse clicks
• Clicks on the till being swallowed by the interface
• Night visuals being wrong after loading a save
• Mission exploits and thief behaviour bugs

The road to 1.0

v2.0 is the foundation that 1.0 will be built on. In the coming weeks I'll keep fixing everything you report, balance the economy and polish the rough edges. The 1.0 release date, and everything that comes with it, will be announced right here on Steam very soon. Follow the game so you don't miss it!

A note from the developer

Market Is Fine is still a one-person project, and this update took a long time. Thank you for your patience and for every review, bug report and idea you've sent. They decided a lot of what you'll find in v2.0.

If you run into a bug, please report it in the Steam Discussions or on our Discord. With an update this big, something may have slipped through, and I'll be fixing things quickly.

Have fun, and remember: everything is fine.