Better service and 50% off

If you have been following recent blogs and forum posts about the direction of iGP, you will know that we've promised to focus the remainder of 2014 on service quality and stability improvements. On December 1st, we will be implementing a major upgrade to the backend of the service.

A new chapter

This is quite a significant moment in the history of iGP. Not only because it is the first major upgrade carried out by the newly structured team, but until now, we've been limited by tools handed down to us (see this blog for more on the changes behind the scenes). This is set to change all of that.

These updates are designed to introduce several major service improvements:

• Greatly reduced latency and pings (no more cars rewinding, warping)
• No more service restarts at peak times (the 'connection problem' error)
• No need to refresh viewers in a race to restore a good connection
• Races resume with the service instead of restart from lap 1 during a service restart
• Better information when it is needed most - admins now have better methods of notifying you of ongoing or scheduled matintenance, as well as much better tools which will allow them to carry out the work more efficiently

I hope that this update will demonstrate that the changes behind the scenes are now beginning to have a significant impact on the service you receive. Of course, no service will ever be perfectly free of its problems (e.g. Windows still features the ubiquitous BSOD, although they added a smiley face in version 8 to make it more user-friendly!). While some issues may still occur, if we're being realistic, they should be insigificant in the bigger picture. I would also urge caution about judging the improvements on the day of release. We would expect a few teething problems when putting such a major update in to a live environment.

What comes next?

Once these fundamental service improvements are implemented, which we believe are more important than any gameplay update, we will resume work the 'version 2' update for iGP Manager, due for release Q1 to Q2 2015. This will include mobile support, a totally revamped car design and supplier system for greater variability of gameplay and a fresh new mobile-friendly design of the iGP Manager websites.

There will be multiple paths to achieve the same outcome in version 2. For example, it will be possible to achieve similar performance by selecting totally different development paths and different suppliers. We will be publishing more information on these updates in the coming weeks, and we're very excited to finally be resuming work on gameplay updates! There are also many exciting ideas in the pipeline once we get beyond that, which we can't wait to bring to you!

Black Friday 50% sale

This weekend is your chance to snap up a 2D Pack for just 14.99 for an entire year. Redeem the offer with the coupon BF14 or click here. This exclusive offer ends Tuesday (GMT).