November (& October) 2025 Recap

Where was last month’s update?

As we mentioned in our Discord, we skipped the October recap. Although a lot happened behind the scenes, there simply wasn’t enough that we could publicly showcase or talk about yet. So this time, we’re just bundling the two!

Lots of work behind the scenes

We’re still in a phase where most of the development for PaintSquad 3.0 is happening deep in the background, so there isn’t much visual progress to share right now. Still, quite a bit has been moving forward over the past two months:

We explored several options to improve how game resources (textures, 3D models, and more) are delivered. We’ve now settled on a solution that should allow players worldwide to access and download these assets quickly and reliably.

We’ve reworked our internal service responsible for distributing game data like levels to the individual game servers. This gives us significantly more flexibility going forward.

And finally, we’ve continued refactoring various core systems. This lays the groundwork for adding new features far more easily in the future.

Plans for the PaintSquads release

Our original plan was to host regular playtests to evaluate individual features and then release PaintSquad 3.0 once we reached full feature parity with previous versions. However, we’ve realized that with our current team size, this approach would simply take far too long — and we want to get PaintSquad back into your hands sooner.

That’s why we’re excited to share that PaintSquad is now planned for an early access release in 2026. We know the term “early access” can ring some alarm bells, so here’s what that means for us:

On release day, our goal is to deliver an experience that is fun, stable, and as polished as possible. However, the initial release will not include all the features from earlier PaintSquad versions. We’ll start with a curated section of mechanics, maps, game modes, and weapons. From there, we’ll release regular updates that bring back the features you’ve come to love — some exactly as you remember them, and others with a totally new spin!

Because of changes in our game and art direction, some content will not return. We’ll keep you informed about what this includes as development progresses. At the same time, we’re working on plenty of new ideas and content that we hope you’ll enjoy just as much!

Once we’re satisfied with the amount of content and have reintroduced everything that we consider essential from previous releases, PaintSquad will officially leave early access. By that time, the game will already closely align with our vision, so the transition should feel completely seamless. At that point, we’ll also ramp up our marketing efforts, including more social media activity and collaboration with content creators.

A word on player data

We know this may disappoint some of you, but after careful consideration we’ve decided that we cannot transfer player data from PaintSquad 2.1 to 3.0. However, we’ve come up with a solution that ensures previous players won’t have to start completely from zero.

The decision ultimately stems from how different PaintSquad 3.0 will be from previous releases. Core elements such as game and level design, balancing, progression, and more will be changed too drastically to ensure a clean and fair transfer of data.

To make the transition a bit fairer, you’ll receive a compensation reward the first time you log into the new 3.0 release if you have played previously. The exact amount will be based on a system that takes several aspects of your previous player data into account. To set expectations clearly: this is meant as a small head start, not a full replacement for everything you had before.

We hope this serves as a reasonable compromise for everyone.

Although all of this is still a while away, we’re incredibly excited about everything we have planned and we hope you are too. If you’d like to stay up to date with everything we announce, don’t forget to join our Discord server if you haven’t already.

And finally, thank you for all your continued support and patience. See you next month!