News and Announcements

Agents, I come today with heartbreaking news that we must share with the entirety of the Deceive Inc. community. There is no easy way to say this: The Sweet Bandits team is no more. After a long and difficult road of trying to get Deceive inc. in a state where it could thrive, we have reached the breaking point for the studio, unable to continue this adventure with you. While this is a moment of great sadness for us, we are happy to have been given the chance to create this universe and share it with you all. We were amazed by the passion of this community and this has been a driving force for us all along, pushing us to try and make this project reach the potential it has. We’ve put our heart and soul into this game and nothing...

Scoundrels & Sentinels Hotpatch 2 Agents, we are rolling a very small hotpatch to address a variety of issues as well as deploying an all-new skin bundle for Squire. New Content: Rigid Raccoon Bundle It’s time to deploy into the field with the all-new Rigid Raccoon bundle including a legendary skin, a unique intro pose, a title and an avatar! The bundle is now available in the shop for 2000 bonds. General Fix for a server crash issue Fixed Red’s “you have my bow” intro pose (For real this time!) Fix for cross-platform friends/parties issues. Fix for text getting cut off in some ability descriptions. (We are aware of some text going outside the box, but this is preferable to cut text for now.)

Agents! We have two new exciting promotions starting today for Deceive Inc. share! Twitch Drops for Deceive Inc are back with a campaign for the Scoundrels & Sentines season! Twitch drops will be live Thu, Nov 7, 10:00 AM - Fri, Nov 29, 9:59 PM CST. Drops are available for all Platform versions. All players need to do is link their Deceive Inc. account to Twitch to enable drops. Watch for 30 minutes and claim the Duckies: Ink reward Watch for 1 hour and claim the Potion Failed: Intro Pose reward Watch for 2 hours and claim the Pyromancer Chavez: Skin reward For spies who have not yet joined our ranks of professionals at Decieve Inc., we are thrilled that it is currently featured on Epic Games Store giveaways! Players have until...

Scoundrels & Sentinels Hotpatch Agents, like we discussed last week, are rolling out a hotpatch addressing a variety of issues that have been affecting the game. We are also still working on resolving back-end issues and wanted to give a bit more info on where we currently stand. Server Issues While these back-end issues are not part of the hotpatch itself, we wanted to give a bit of an update on where we are with them. Please note that since this is server side, we will continue deploying fixes outside of this patch without any download needed on your side. Party Issues: We have resolved issues with players being stuck out of matchmaking after being kicked out or disbanded from a party. Server Disconnect Issues: We have identified...

Agents, we are expecting one of our partners to be doing backend maintenance on November 5th at 6 AM UTC (1 AM EST). This work is expected to take 3 hours and some services may have irregularities and disruptions during this period.

Agents, The scoundrels and sentinels update is finally out in the wild and we are excited to see how the community uses all the new tools at their disposal. We wanted to provide a short update mostly focused on next steps for the back-end issues and the upcoming hot patch we are preparing. We are actively monitoring feedback and reports to target the most impactful issues as soon as possible. On the balance front, we will be looking closely at how the new gadgets, abilities and changes fare in the wild. We’ll be ready to make tweaks and adjustments to their balancing once we have a clearer picture of where they stand in the current meta. On the topic of back-end issues we are working on right now: -Team composition issues (Matchmaking...

Agents, We are back with a fantastical catalog and a massive update that aims to shake up the meta in a myriad of ways. From ability reworks, to new gadgets and expanded capabilities for existing gadgets, there is something for every build in this patch! Here’s what you can expect to see: A new Fantasy Adventure catalog with 50 levels of unlocks Reworked abilities for Ace, Chavez, and Yu-Mi Two new gadgets The introduction of map Variants A yacht-full of balance changes that aim to shift the meta in interesting new directions. An increased level cap to 700 with a unique ink to acquire to go along with it! Let’s dive into it! Major Additions New Catalog Scoundrels & Sentinels Assemble your party and roll for initiative in our...

Agents, We are back for another look into new elements coming with season 5. This time, let’s take a look at what’s new in the maps department with the introduction of map variants! We want to increase variety when you queue into a match, adding new elements that make matches more different from each other. The map variant system was built with that in mind, allowing us to spin off an existing map in a new version with its own unique element without doubling the work required for the team. These map variants can then be added in the matchmaking pool with the original version of the map to expand match variety. To inaugurate the concept, we have created two map variants that will present a whole new vibe for Fragrant Shore and Hard...

Agents, One of our backend partners will be updating their systems tomorrow morning 6:00 UTC/2:00 AM EDT. We expect impacts to be minimal, but there may be some brief periods of instability over the course of approximately 4 hours as they do this work.

Agents, Player feedback and participation were helpful during yesterday’s testing period. To ensure the update provides the best player experience possible upon final release, the test will be extended to run today. Additionally, during this PC test, bots will be added to the mix to help with the effect of not having access to crossplay. Please keep in mind that this is a temporary adjustment specifically for the duration of this backend change test only and will be reverted once the testing is complete. Double XP will continue. The team will monitor for player feedback, and any reports of oddities will be beneficial. As always, we appreciate your continued support. Backend Update Status: We are now rolling out console builds that...

Agents, Deceive Inc. will undergo a backend update today at 11:00 AM EDT. This rollout will start with PC players on both Epic and Steam. During the first 24 hours of this update PC players will be isolated from console players and the ability for crossplay between PC and console will be temporarily unavailable. The development team will be monitoring the update during this time. We ask that any PC players who experience any oddities or issues please report them as soon as possible so we may address any complications as quickly as possible. The backend update will then roll out to the console platforms, barring any issues. We thank you for your patience during these necessary steps and will provide double XP during the initial 24 hours...

Season 5 Stream Timing Update Agents, We have previously announced our intention to hold a stream on Wednesday, the 23rd, but after further consideration, we have decided to move this stream to next Wednesday, October 30th. We are very close to having everything ready to showcase and sticking to the original date would have constrained us to not be able to show everything new that is coming. By moving things to next week, we ensure we can apply feedback we received from playtests on the new season elements as well as have them all feature complete for the stream. We are very excited to showcase all coming changes to the game and thank you for your understanding! When: October 30th 1:30 PM EDT Where: Twitch Youtube

Join Tripwire and Sweet Bandits for a live stream on Wednesday, October 30th, at 1:30 p.m. EST! We'll give a sneak peek at some exciting new additions to Deceive Inc that are coming your way soon. Where to watch: https://www.youtube.com/@tripwireinteractive Edit: This message was edited to reflect the updated Stream date.

New Gadgets Preview Agents, We are continuing our dive into new elements coming into season 5 with something that has been a long time coming: The addition of new gadgets! Yes, gadgets with a S. This is no mistake: We have TWO new gadgets dropping with season 5 to open up build possibilities in interesting ways. Let’s welcome the newest gadgets to join the deception and recon families: The Bait Box - Deception Gadget (Click on the above image to see a webm in action) Our first new gadget is here and ready to make some noise. The bait box is a new deception gadget based around creating fake sounds to bait your opponents into traps, away from fights or simply drive them mad in pursuit of an illusory keycard. The Bait Box is a...

Agents, Like we previously discussed in our “what’s coming for DI” brief, we have been working on updating expertise options for multiple characters in season 5. We have three characters getting an update to their kit and we wanted to give a sneak peek at one of them here today. Without further ado, let's talk about the one and only Chavez and how his expertise 2 is poised to change in season 5. Keep in mind, the balancing aspects of the ability are very much in the process of being tweaked and might be different at release. Now let’s get to it! Immovable object becomes an unstoppable force. It has become a bit of a meme how passive Chavez is as a character. The entirety of his toolkit is built with a very defensive approach which...

Agents, Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take advantage of Double XP in the field this weekend. It will be available today until October 7th at 1 p.m. EDT. Whether you work alone or have a trusted group of spy professionals to bring along, it's time to suit up in your favorite disguise, bring your favorite gadgets, and put those spy skills to work.

An update on what’s coming Agents, now that the dust has settled around the back-to-school update it’s time to look a bit to the future and talk about our development priorities. First of all, we want to confirm that we are indeed working on Catalog 5 which we plan on releasing in October. The new season will be different from previous ones in a few key areas that we want to describe here (as much as we can without too many spoilers). Catalog 5 will not feature a new agent, but a duo of existing Agents in the leading roles. How are we using the dev bandwidth that previously went into a new character? We will be reworking entire abilities for certain Agents to make them more fun and fairer, and improve their gameplay. These are not...

Back To School Hotpatch Agents, we are rolling out a hotpatch to address top issues around the back to school update. This will require a client update which should be up for download when you get to read this. General Guard Behavior Tweaks We are making more changes to overall guard behaviors to better fit their return to being able to shoot at heat level 0. We are changing how guards follow their target and how closely they will tail players to give a better chance of escaping them and more overall playspace without having guards in your face. We are continuing to look into guard behavior to improve the experience in future patches, but this should help make them more manageable. Bug Fixes General Fixed a large amount of issues...

Back To School Hotfix Agents, we simply wanted to provide a short update on the work going on for the hotfix. We have decided to add more fixes for a variety of issues that have popped up over the course of the week, delaying our initial plans slightly. We are now planning to release the hotfix next week. Some (but not all) of the fixes we are working on are for “ghost npcs” that cannot be shot, multiple agent related bugs and a sound eclipse vault polish pass to fix multiple collision and visual problems. We are also including some more changes like an overhaul of sound occlusion for diamond spire and further tweaks to guard behaviors. Stay tuned for full patch notes next week. Thank you and see you all on the field!

Updated Message: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?threads/back-to-school-known-issues-and-incoming-hotfix.2340535/post-2361718 Original Message Known Issues Agents, Before we go into the weekend, we wanted to quickly acknowledge two of the top issues we are prioritizing right now: Yu-Mi Expertise First of all, we are currently working on a live update fix for issues with Yu-Mi’s expertise cooldown not coming back after a use. We have a fix for this issue and are currently working on getting it live through a server update later today. This will not require any download from users. Setting Values Issues We are aware of an issue where some users are stuck with 200 as a value on some number based settings. We have...