It’s been a very exciting few weeks for us and we have a we have a lot of cool news.

First up, you may have heard that we attended Steam Dev Days, and we have to say, the whole trip was an amazing experience for us. We were in Seattle for about a week, and we met with so many amazing individuals and teams there. Being able to spend time with others in the industry was a refreshing boost that we needed desperately. We’re not alone! The conference was a great opportunity to learn from the successes and failures of other developers, and there was a ton of great information about the current state and direction of the industry.

While not entirely relevant to Ira at the moment, virtual reality was a huge focus of the conference, and we have to say, we’re impressed. It’s such an amazingly immersive experience and there is so much potential for interesting and meaningful experiences, we’re totally sold on the platform and we have some solid ideas about our next direction after Ira. Thanks to the fine folks at Valve we now have developer kits for the HTC Vive so we are ready to roll! Fear not though, Ira is the priority so we’ll do our best not to get lost in the world of virtual reality. ;)

Our only complaint about the trip? No Gaben to be seen… Was he busy at work on HL3? Polishing his knife collection? Stuck in a virtual world?… We may never know.

Steam Dev Days was great, and after returning home we barely had time to unpack our bags before the next big development came in. Apparently some guy on Youtube named “Markiplier” decided to showcase our old demo for a let’s play… Yup, the Markiplier played our game, and after few days the video is nearing the 1 million view mark. Yes, the demo is old and outdated, and we have no idea why this happened now, but it’s given us more of a spotlight than we’ve ever had, so a HUGE shoutout to Markiplier for the excellent playthrough.

With Steam Dev Days under our belts and Markiplier’s video play through giving us a huge boost in traffic, we have a new found energy burning in us, and the development train pushes on full steam ahead. We recently got Ira up and running on the Xbox One compiling, which is an exciting new development, and we should have new content to show you all very soon!

Until next time,
Nick and the Ira team

Dont forget we have humble bundle widgets on our webpage for preorders!