Wishlist on Steam

Pre-signup is now available on the website.

Discord Now Available

The Discord server is now open.

Be a Tester

If you’d like to help with testing, please join the Discord and ask.

See you in there!

The club level cap has been increased from 30 to 100 to provide plenty of room for growth through new league divisions.

Go grab some more trophies!

League Progression Update

We’ve changed the league progression to create more challenge in higher division levels.

Previously each division level contained a range of 6 Club Levels, e.g. Levels 1-6 in Div 1, and Levels 7-12 in Division Level 2, and so on. This has changed so that every 2nd division level the range of levels increases by 1.

So we’ll have Club Levels 13-19 (7 levels) in Division Level 3, CL20-26 (7 levels) in Division Level 4, and L27-34 (8 levels) in Division Level 5 and so on. This means all current level 30 clubs will find themselves in the middle of Division Level 5 and will need to battle their way to promote. See the wiki for more.

Clubs can now also promote by winning the league.

Training Intensity Multiplier

On the training screen, managers may now increase the number of sessions that will be applied in a given day’s training. The normal daily training session is free for everyone while any extra sessions cost tokens. Extra sessions after the 2nd provide diminishing returns.

Training Matches

Clubs can now enter into a special type of instant friendly called a Training Match. This requires a small number of tokens which can be acquired from sponsors or other in-game rewards.

Training matches provide 10% of either a forwards or backs training session (depending on each player’s position) to all players who get onto the field including bench players who come on to replace an injury.

New Card Rarities

All existing cards in the game are now known as commons and foils. The new card tiers are uncommon, rare, epic, and of course, legendary. But be warned, these cards can be difficult to obtain.

Read more on the wiki.

Overpowered? Maybe…

There are several new categories but the most exciting is our new legendary player match cards which honour some legends of the game.

Take the Lomu card, which gives a holder a guaranteed try if they get the ball in the opposition half , or Pocock with the ability to turnover any ruck they attend!

There are cards which provide extra training, accelerate academy development, heal players instantly, or even heal your entire squad! See them all on the wiki.

These may break the game. You decide, and let us know what you think in Discord. Genuinely though… we may have overdone it.

New Academy Slot

If you’re coming back to the game after a hiatus—or maybe you’re returning from your ban handed out by World Rugby after a world cup final—and you need to add some new blood into your team fast, we’ve got you covered!

You can now play extra cards when developing new youth players and there are some powerful new cards called “Academy Fast Track” to help you get players through the academy even faster.

Please report any issues to ⁠the #bugs channel in Discord and we’ll sort’em right out!

How Cup Works

Each club will automatically be entered into their nation’s Cup, with each country having one or multiple Cups depending on how many clubs the country has. If a country has less than 32 clubs, these clubs will be included in a Cup hosted by another country.

Unlike Leagues which schedule matches against all the different clubs, this tournament is instant elimination, which means if you lose, you’re out! Every match will have just as much tension as it will top tier rugby talent.

Every match will be randomized as you proceed through the bracket and make your way towards the finals, in order to prevent any club from having more home advantage than others. Once the Cup reaches the late stages (specifically the quarter-finals, semi-finals, and grand final), there will be no home advantage for either team to provide the most balanced match possible.

The winning team will be rewarded with a special, exclusive trophy, with the runner up winning a different trophy for second place. We’re keeping the design of the winning trophy a secret, for now, so you’ll have to go for the win to get a glimpse of it. In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at the runner up trophy.

When Does It Start?

Matches for the first Cup will start on the first Tuesday of the next season. Specifically, Tuesday the 21st December between 5 pm & 6 pm (local time in each club’s timezone). Kickoff times may be adjusted (into the future) if either team has conflicting matches. From here, matches will proceed every 2nd day as your club battles its way through the Cup.

Cups will run every season, meaning if you don’t make it as far as you hoped in the first Cup, you can always try again next season and tweak your team/tactics accordingly.

Cup matches proceed before your league matches (at 8-9 pm). This gives time for you to manage any injuries you might acquire in the Cup match.

How Do I Access The Cup?

Once the update is released, Cups will be very easy to find. To find your Cup bracket, simply click on the “Comps” button, and you’ll be able to access the Cups screen, where you can view previous Cups, along with Cups taking place in other countries.

For more information about Cups, including winner rewards, and logistics, check out the wiki page.

Now go forth! It’s time to show the world what you’re made of, and how far your club has come. Good luck!

That is why we’re proud to announce that we have officially joined the API3 Alliance as founding members — a strategic coalition of 125+ like-minded API providers committed to bringing our data currently offered to traditional web applications directly to the Web3 economy, compatible with decentralised applications on the blockchain, without relying on third-party middlemen.

Leading first-party oracle solution, API3 is breaking the mold and offering their tools and individualised support to us, as well as a growing community of Alliance members.

Not only will this collaboration benefit our business, but it will play a major role in creating the Web3 API economy and building the open infrastructure for the growing world of dapps (decentralised applications).

Blackout Games will utilise API3’s serverless Airnode technology to easily create first-party oracles used to bring our functionality to Web3 applications. Invented by API3, Airnode effectively forms a bridge between blockchain and the rest of the digital world.

We are extremely excited to embark on this journey and will keep our valuable 3rd party developers updated on progress. For more information about API3, please reference our official API3 Alliance page.

If you’d like get started with our traditional API ahead our API3 version with Airnode, see the Blackout Rugby API documentation.

Broadcast Building

We very much appreciate those of you who choose to support Blackout Rugby by spending money in-game, however, we realise that this isn’t an option for everyone! We wanted to provide a way for all players to be able to gain extra rewards in the form of cards, club cash, and tokens. The solution to this is the Broadcast building where you are rewarded for watching ads. You can improve/customise the rewards you receive by spending points in the tech tree.

Friends List

Next of our social features is the ability to search for a club or user to add as a friend. Now you can keep track of your most worthy opponents, and stay in touch with anyone who’s taken you up on our existing referral programme. This version doesn’t include any features that tie in with the friends system, as the blocked list intentionally does not affect the Unions or any competition type. Later versions will add the ability to talk with one or more of your friends, currently only available for users in the same union as you.

Tutorial

The tutorial has been a problem area in the past so we have done a massive refactor on the underlying tutorial system making it a much more stable and consistent experience for new users.

Feedback system

We’ve created a new way to send us feedback, good or bad. You can find this button on any screen in the game on the sidebar menu. We enjoy getting all kinds of feedback so don’t be scared to use it. Whether you’re wanting to let us know you’re enjoying the game or if you are unhappy with something and want to let us know, don’t hesitate to use this new feature. If you want to report a bug that system is still there(and there’s a handy link to it from this new system).

Fixes

• Fixed psychology building construction asset not displaying correctly
• Fixed in-app purchase price display issue
• Fixed training session items displaying incorrectly at some aspect ratios
• Fixed error displaying when switching your ‘next sponsor’
• Fixed founded date in club info
• Fixed squad scroller highlighting making scroll bar invisible
• Fixed settings graphics option drop-down setting incorrect value
• Fixed building labels showing in visiting mode
• Fixed friendly challenge clock not accounting for a day change
• Fixed selected side menu item not updating when navigating to a different scene from buildings or dashboard links
• Fixed blown out colours in match view during day time games
• Fixed treatment room modal sometimes being the wrong size

• The Ladder competition is now available! Ladder is a global leaderboard (also filterable by country, division, or country+division) in which you may challenge any club in the bottom half of the ladder above you. If you win, you will jump to their position while they and everyone in between move down by one.
• Campaigns are now available! Campaigns are groups of achievements each with some sort of theme, including getting to know the game. Each achievement comes with a small reward, and each campaign comes with a trophy and bigger reward on completion. We will continue to add to the list of campaigns over time.
• Fog of Score – This feature prevents match scores from being spoiled or revealed until you want them to be. This is on by default and you may opt-out at any time.
• New Building Levels – You may now construct building levels 16-20. This also comes with some new tech-tree upgrades.
• Mobile versions getting closer – Mobile is now in closed testing, and making great progress.
• Unions, Psychology Building, and Broadcast Building are all in development, and will be the next major features added to the game.

Firstly we’d like to announce … that we will be announcing a beta release date very soon! We also have the API details for any keen developers out there, and finally some exciting screenshots.

API Now Available

In Blackout Rugby Classic, we saw many great apps surface over the years, built on top of our API and bringing incredible value to the game community. Desktop apps, web apps, and even a mobile app was under development for a while, all by people who are passionate about rugby and our game.

The new API is still under heavy development, so please be aware that things remain to be fluid, at least until beta ends. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or feature requests.

The API documentation can be found here. Think big and don’t hold back!

Screenshots

Please enjoy the following selection of screens!

A brief history

Over the years with BR Classic, I was blown away with what people did once we began providing direct access to the data in the game. We saw desktop apps like BoRganizer, BRM, and BRAT which allowed people to download team data and get more insight into teams with extra tracking and recommendations. We saw online tools which provided people with fun stats about the game; and some people even had a go at building mobile apps.

There are more than 1000 users who signed up for an API key in BR classic. Each one of the tools that were created for private and public use brought incredible value to the BR community and legacy. I’m humbled by the sheer number of developers who poured time and energy into their apps and scripts for the game, and so I want to make sure people have all the data they need to create new tools, apps, websites, and who knows what else the future holds, for the new game.

The new API

The new API is similar to what I started building for the now deprecated BRv2. If you’re a developer and you’re itching to get a feel for the new API, you can start reading about the deprecated API here. There are many similarities, such as the use of the JSON API Spec and the Accept-Language header for internationalisation. Just be aware that there are also some key differences such as inability to openly “scan” many endpoints; i.e. you cannot just download all clubs, players, or managers. You must apply a filter to get players for a known club, for example. This is part of the limitations of our underlying data storage systems, and also prevents abuse of system resources.

Access

Once available, there will be no special requirements to get access to the API. It will be publicly available just like a website. However, we reserve the right to change this in the future if necessary. We have built a scalable system using AWS serverless architectures (Lambda + API Gateway) so we don’t foresee system performance being an issue as long as people are respectful.

Availability

The new API is currently private while we are still in heavy development. We will be releasing it publicly at some point during the first closed beta season in April. This will be announced here on this blog – so if you want to be notified please make sure you signup to the email list.

Websockets and the future

Part of our system is the use of websockets to provide fast real-time communication to client apps. However this will not be available publicly, at least at first because we are less experienced with websockets, and scaling is an issue we want a little more time with before opening the doors.