Hey all! Been a hot minute since our last developer post. Here’s what I’m going to cover:

• Developer Updates 🛠️
  • QoL Updates
  • Security/Moderation Updates
  • Major Roadmap Updates
• Plans for 2026 🔮
• BT Events & Shop Updates 🛍️

Let’s get into it.

Developer Updates

Quality-of-Life Updates

1.) In case you haven’t seen it yet, we got the Color Theme Part-1 update out later last year, so you can switch between more colorful tiles and the classic grey walls.

We also now allow you to toggle between two different renderers. Both of these are designed to give you more choice for performance, since the color and renderer updates initially caused performance controversy.

We aim to continue improving your performance but this should hopefully provide a step in the right direction.

2.) I gave our Map Managers the ability to edit the Blocktanks official map pool 🗺️

• Events like Map Mania were very fun, but tedious for all of us. One of the many continuous tricks the Map Managers and I had to coordinate over was the official ID correlation and replacement of all the maps in the production database for each official mode. So imagine contests like Map Mania, where whole pools for modes needed to be replaced and edited 👀
• Mostly then, I wanted to ensure that Map Masters have exactly what they need, when they need it, and do not need to rely constantly on developer-time to make their map pool edits.

3.) Gave our Community Managers the ability to conduct account transfers, clan transfers, and clan broadcasts via tooling, so they too can better organize clan-related events and account transfers without me being a choke-point 🪖

4.) UnknownUser got several great updates out. For one, replays now have controls, so you can properly skip through them, pause, and change who you are viewing! 🍿

Security & Moderation Updates

1.) During our October post, you might remember us complaining about something that has plagued BlockTanks for years, maybe even since its inception — scamming. We did several things that should collaterally have reduced scamming, such as shop-gifting, clan roles, removing match-spying, etc. Still, account takeovers and scamming were a major threat in the game, despite us working hard to quell scammer group activity. Well, account-takeovers just got a giant spear thrust into ’em.

Indeed, we have finally implemented email-change delays! This means:

• Someone who has your password cannot change your password without access to your email. That was already a thing. But we historically let you change your email on a dime, which was the problem. Now they cannot change your email as easily.
• Instead, a request to change your email is sent to the email you have on-file. If you have access to your email, you can readily accept the change if it is legitimate. If it is not legitimate, you know they tried to change your email, and you can instead decide to change your password and cancel the email change (you will need to do both currently).
• If you, or the scammer, do not have access to your email, the change will still go through after 30 days by default. This is so legitimate account owners — who lose access to their email — can keep control of their own accounts.

So, scammers can still abuse your trust over a long-period of time, say, if you went on hiatus. Recall that folks can also try to farm or do nefarious things on your account, smearing your name. You will unfortunately hold responsibility as well in these cases, so again, be wary. Asking for passwords is still a bannable offense, and we do not recommend sharing accounts with folks, even with this new control in-place.

But when you do log-in, it’s possible you might see a new settings visual:

Definitely keep an eye out for suspicious activity, and take heart that we are equally interested in protecting your time and accounts. Hopefully you will not need to use it, but if it happens to you, change your password, report it immediately, and use that “Cancel Email Change” feature! 🫡

With that, most of our immediate Community Security work is complete, and we will be focusing on other major aspects of the game. 🥳🥳

2.) UnknownUser also got Farming reports added, so if you see someone deliberately farming guests or alt accounts, please try out the new Farm report feature! It will auto-attach a replay for our moderation team to review 🎬

We may expand this setup for exploit-reporting at a later date if this system works out well, although there are realistically only a few known exploits in BlockTanks. The replay control update also makes it easier for our moderation team to review replays as an added bonus, so win-win for all ✌️

Major Roadmap Updates

A number of you may remember that in the summer of 2025, we posted a poll to get your top priorities for the year. We gotta do priorities because there’s a ton to work on and hey, everyone’s time is limited right?

We’ve made what we believe is a strong headway into those 2025 top-priorities. You asked for:

Here’s where we landed on those top priorities:

Ngara attempted an initial first-pass, and Cooldog helped us patch getting stuck in walls, so you should feel a little less nervous making those tighter turns 😅🙏

But that’s the top player-voted priority handled. Disabling Captcha for VIPs and Incentivized Team Switching, UnknownUser expediently addressed both, knocking out another two more top player-voted priorities. After much configuration, we even held a beta test and got that system working again! 🥳

You’ll be able to see Incentivized Team Switching in action likely for bigger matches, and where there is a decent disparity between the teams. It’s certainly subject to refinement with time but, hey we got it 💪

Automated Mission Rotations, Giant_Professor (one of our core Community Managers) has been steadily providing missions while we hammer this effort out more. Yolo began work on this effort but met a wall when working out the scheduling, I said I’d help pick it up after my efforts were complete so stay tuned.

Lastly, Elo/Ranked — this remains a top-priority for us, but communication with our CMs led us to an interesting dilemma. Many players are competitive in BlockTanks yes, and a ranked mode could better serve them yes. But our base mechanics, we were not necessarily comfortable with. We discussed that to approach ranked correctly, we would need to be confident we landed first where we wanted mechanically, and then let the players decide from there what they wanted ranked to look like with those adjustments in-mind.

2026 Plans

So with all that, we wanted to layout a draft of our plans for 2026 and what we’re working on now.

UnknownUser is diligently cleaning-up Gun Game, a brand new mode close-to-release that may find its way into rotations in the coming month 🔫

I am polling around for those very mechanical updates mentioned earlier, and we’re talking about potentially adding selectable tank abilities 🧙‍♂️

Abilities like:

• An invincibility-window-based in-place dodge
• A mini-dash
• Collecting the weapon(s) you dodged in a given moment

Stuff you consciously have to trigger, have limited and controlled use, and get big rewards for using it at the right time.

Why abilities and why now? Because even if we did ranked with no modifications, the game right now can be boiled down to:

• Get more weapons than your opponent and keep them from getting more weapons via bullying

That doesn’t sound for very interesting gameplay to us, since you wouldn’t have many plays during say, spawn-camping. Or maybe you join a match late and it feels much harder to turn around as the losing team, as your opponents have been amassing an arsenal. Not impossible, and hey maybe “skill issue”, but we think more potential plays would make the game more interesting.

Let me know in the comments here or in Discord what you would like to see!

Other than mechanics, you can guess I will next be resolving automated mission rotations, artist credits and a major artist revamp (finally), the long-awaited clan stat role, and additional moderation priorities. We’re not far from being better covered farming-wise as well, and we did mostly handle scamming, which was at the top of the moderation team’s list.

Additionally, we may be looking to implement an earnable currency with a currency-shop, and even a player-cosmetic market where said currency can be used, lot of exciting stuff to come! 👀

BT Events & Shop Updates

Yes we know the shop is still Halloween-filled. Our lead art manager has been extremely busy with school and irl occupations. But we are making gradual progress phasing it out and working on items on the backend. Hopefully we will have something to show for it soon! Maybe I’ll even have the art credit work done by then 😏

As for events, did you know there’s an active one going on right now??

That’s right, and the Europe/Asia region already had their form of it! The name of the game is a giant two-party clan rivalry between HONSE and LEPS, here’s the flavor text:

“Horses are invading the clover fields from Lunar New Year, and the Leprechauns aren’t too thrilled about the invaders. All diplomacy out the window, both factions seek tanks to settle their territorial disputes.”

All you need to do at the time of reading this is show-up and participate! We’re talking giant Payload, CTF, etc. You will get XP just for participating, and

_{maybe a secret item or two to come?? We’re finishing that up still.}

But yeah totally pop-in if you see this in-time and are in the US region, it’ll be the 15th of March at 11 AM PST, or 2 PM EST. This won’t be the last event before summer kicks-in either so stay posted.

Between all we have done and are working on, hopefully there’s a little something for everyone to enjoy or look forward to. We will steadily keep working at the game and hope to have more to share soon.

Thank you all for sticking with us through our journey and for your support as we continue Marching along! ‘Til next blog 🫡

Warm Regards,

SirDrone
Blocktanks Developer