LAST THURSDAY: Ultraviolet - Weekly Event

Cyber nightlife met luxury streetwear, and you dressed for both. Ultraviolet went live on 8/20 and washed the whole place in neon purple: glowing city-edge skylines, after-dark glamour, and fits that looked like they belonged under a blacklight. Watching you all pour into that world in head-to-toe UV was genuinely a highlight of our week.

The round also brought new Purrlings energy into the mix, and your Leaderboard climbs were fierce right to the final hour.

One thing we owe you a straight answer on: there was an exploit in that event that contaminated both the individual and crew leaderboards. We saw you policing it in the feedback threads, and you were right to. Tickets earned through the exploit have been clawed back on live, and the top crews are back in their legitimate standings. Thank you for your patience while we cleaned it up, and thank you for caring enough about fair play to keep flagging it.

THIS THURSDAY: Highrise Academy - UDC Style Challenge Event

Class is almost in session! Highrise Academy goes live Thursday 8/27 at 12 PM EST, and it’s a UDC Style Challenge, which means the whole drop was designed by your fellow community creators. Pack your backpacks and serve your best campus look, because at Highrise Academy a bad outfit is an automatic detention.

Expect the full spread of campus energy: crumpled-paper auras, cheeto-dust hair, art rat ears, graduation gowns, spiked skull bags, crimson plaid, and a very cozy line of midnight study sweaters. Over 80 items came out of this one, across seven sets from a huge roster of community designers.

New this round:

• Dice Game, 2 days only - a limited-run minigame with its own Progress rewards and a League to climb.
• Pachinko, 2 days only - Pachinko returns alongside the Dice Game with its own Progress and League track.
• Cup Climb - Cup Climb returns!
• Two new Academy Purrlings in the Leaderboard - a nerdy little scholar with glasses and a pencil, and a cheerleader in a pink bow. Cheeri comes with a Pink Sparkle Magic Trail animated item!

RECENTLY RELEASED

Everything fresh from the shop this past week:

• Bonfire Nights (8/24) - an avatar-items grab for the last warm nights of summer.
• Model Walk IAP (8/25) - strut like the runway is yours.
• Purrlings: Creepyborn (8/28) - the softest, cutest little kitties around. Wisp comes with an animated ghost trail!

ON THE HORIZON

The Fall Crew War is coming on 9/3, so start rallying your people now. And if you want to see what else is in the pipeline, view all our upcoming community concepts here!

IN 4.29.14 (NEXT CLIENT UPDATE)

4.29.14 is rolling out now across Android, iOS, macOS and Windows, with iOS in review:

• Worlds can now suppress event reward pop-ups by item type - event currencies like coins and tokens no longer interrupt you with a pop-up every time you earn one. Avatar items still get their moment.
• Why: During events you were earning small currency drops constantly, and every one of them stopped your run with a pop-up. Now the celebration is saved for the things worth celebrating.
• Fixed: opening a Pal during the reveal sequence no longer auto-selects it for recycling - a genuinely scary one.
• Why: You could lose a brand-new Pal to a mistap at the worst possible moment. That’s fixed.
• Fixed: bottom nav bar disappearing in event worlds
• Why: Losing your navigation mid-event meant backing all the way out to get around. It stays put now.
• Fixed: Pal footprint FX - no item re-upload needed on your end, it just works after you update.
• Better diagnostic logging - more detailed error descriptions under the hood.
• Why: When something breaks for you, we want to find it faster instead of asking you to reproduce it.

Note: the Studio release that would normally ride along with 4.29.14 was cancelled this cycle, so Studio creators, no new build to grab this week.

YOUR FEEDBACK

We’ve been reading, including the parts that are hard to read.

Bubble and battery pricing. This is the loudest thing in our channels and our reviews, and it has been for weeks. You’ve told us in numbers, not vibes: bubbles going from six figures to nearly nothing in a single event, Claw runs eating stacks you spent months building, and event energy pricing that makes competing feel out of reach. Some of you have told us you’ve stopped spending, and some of you have said you’re stepping back from eventing entirely. We hear the specific critique too, that calling the Bubble Claw optional doesn’t hold when it appears as a task inside the event. We don’t have a dated answer for you in this post, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise. What we can tell you is that “when do meaningful bubble earn paths actually ship” is the question we’re carrying into our next planning cycle, and you deserve a real date rather than another reassurance.

Event exploits and fair leaderboards. You asked for enforcement and you got it: exploited tickets were removed and standings corrected. The sharper criticism, that the event kept running while it was known to be compromised, is fair, and it’s the part we most want to do better on next time.

Lag and connection trouble in event worlds. Several of you reported long loads, being stuck on the loading screen, and lag bad enough that it changed how you played, with a few noting that switching from wifi to cellular fixed it instantly. That’s a real lead and it’s with our infra folks. If it happens to you again, telling us your network type genuinely helps.

Thank you for the sharp feedback, the receipts, and the outfits. See you in class.

#HIGHRISEACADEMY