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MrFreake_PDX

Lt. General
Community Ambassador
Feb 20, 2020
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Blub blub! Greetings from your favorite aquatic explorer—it's me, Glu Glu! Yes, I know what you're thinking: "A plushie writing a dev diary? Water you talking about?" But trust me, I'm ready to dive right in and spill the kelp!

My journey began when the Stellaris team decided they needed a new plushie. Choosing just one portrait wasn't easy—there were heated debates, passionate pleas, and more dramatic gestures than you can shake your tail at. Then Dave found the old Offishal Pun Document from the Aquatics Species Pack and that sealed the deal.

I arrived at Paradox HQ a few weeks ago — some really nice people followed me around and took pictures and videos of my antics around the office. They said they were getting something called B-roll, I don’t know what that was, but on a scale from 0 to fun, it was infinitely fun!

vlcsnap-2025-05-28-08h55m35s630.png
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Definitely unedited images of some of the Video Producers, including their 100% absolutely real faces.

Later that same day, I may have accidentally-on-purpose “liberated” Community Manager Aurora's laptop. Have you ever changed someone’s passwords as a prank? She didn’t find it that funny, but I didn’t find it funny that there were no pictures of Glu Glu on the Stellaris social media pages. So I fixed it!

AD_4nXcb_E1Im7HxzT8pLDffI3P9Y3J-nbKOd16ywqdbQzDrgTlKm6_zeXBBlAGMn5AkW9bAt9OoXJfuk9ck86LUf_98Sj0DuO-kSx14h9BebD9pjxVmNrOFEzGaGKVyFGjG2av4IQSD


When we first met, Photoshop, I was but the learner. Now, I am the Master.

Before anyone could say "Man overboard!" I had changed all her passwords and taken full control of Stellaris' social media accounts. You might notice that the Stellaris announcements will be extra sofishticated for the next week, that’s me!

We also did a Makeship photoshoot. I perfected my plush gaze, and my pout is betta than ever. Soon, my photos started surfacing on desks around the office. No idea who was putting them there, but whoever keeps putting them there has exquisite taste, and super warm hugs.

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Also seen at the offish: waiting for Game Director Eladrin to leave his desk

I’ve learned a few new terms in the past few weeks of hanging around the Shellaris office. One of them is: merge request. That’s when salmon wants to make a change to the game, they make the change on their local computer, then send a merge request, and - if someone else approves it - it will get added to the game.

Since everyone is off today, I’ve written a few merge requests of my own, if any of them sneak through, let minnow.

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Glu Glu’s proposed Portrait rework

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Another Glu Glu merge request: These are the Ocean worlds you were looking for.


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Glu Glu merge request: added an Easter Egg to the Aquatics battleship

We’ll have to wait until next week’s patch to see if any of these changes get approved and make it into the game or not!

In the meantime, I’ve been busy on the Stellaris YouTube as well. I put together this totally accurate and definitely not-biased 100% sure to please YouTube short.


I also took the opportunity to extend my own Makeship campaign! You’d be amazed at what you can get done when people wander away and leave their computers unlocked and unattended!

I am proud to announce the end of the Stellaris Aquatic Plushie campaign will be June 5th! Don’t miss this opportunity to take me home, I could be your proud co-pilot for adventures in trouter space, a fintastic gaming buddy, or even just be there for a snuggle if you’re feeling crabby.

So that's my tail, friends—I'm Glu Glu, the squishiest explorer this side of Blorg Prime, signing off.
 
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The game is receiving mass criticism - even M**tu is despondent about 4.X. According to some (many?), Bugs are rampant, Lag persistent, AI performance questionable at best. People are (understandably at least, whether you agree or disagree) unhappy about this state of affairs. Many people are intrigued, yearning even, for further news about what is being done and what will be done about this.

And we get a Dev Diary about a damn Plushie. This is how seriously you take the community, and how much its perspectives matter to you, huh?

Yeah, brilliant. Excellent 'reading of the room'. Cheers.
 
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The game is receiving mass criticism - even M**tu is despondent about 4.X. Bugs are rampant, AI performance questionable at best. People are (understandably at least, whether you agree or disagree) unhappy about this state of affairs. Many people are intrigued, yearning even, for further news about what is being done and what will be done about this.

And we get a Dev Diary about a damn Plushie. This is how seriously you take us, and how much our perspectives matter to you, huh?

Yeah, brilliant. Excellent 'reading of the room'. Cheers.

Hey now!

At least the number of bugs hasn't exceeded the version number... granted we have 390+ corrected bugs so we might exceed the version number soon :p
 
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I agree with the bugs, the game is playable, but there are a bit too many of them. Personally, I'd like to see fixed the hegemony bug that send the request to leave the federation to a non-leader empire (letting the "subject" go without the need of a secession war) while the leader is a human player, it makes the hegemonies unplayable at the moment.
That said, the plush cute :)
 
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The game is receiving mass criticism - even M**tu is despondent about 4.X. Bugs are rampant, AI performance questionable at best. People are (understandably at least, whether you agree or disagree) unhappy about this state of affairs. Many people are intrigued, yearning even, for further news about what is being done and what will be done about this.

And we get a Dev Diary about a damn Plushie. This is how seriously you take us, and how much our perspectives matter to you, huh?

Yeah, brilliant. Excellent 'reading of the room'. Cheers.
"Even montu"

Oh please, that guy being pessimistic is literally his default mode
 
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And we get a Dev Diary about a damn Plushie. This is how seriously you take us, and how much our perspectives matter to you, huh?

4.0 already received 14 updates and Devs are working on more. 1 time we got a humorous Dev Diary written by a Community Manager - because the rest of Devs is busy with fixing stuff - and you go off the rails that Devs don't listen to people and don't take them seriously.

Really?
 
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I was waiting for futrure plans, new patch notes, design decisions etc... and all I got was a baby yoda replacement! He's BYR!!!!
 
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The game is receiving mass criticism - even M**tu is despondent about 4.X. Bugs are rampant, AI performance questionable at best. People are (understandably at least, whether you agree or disagree) unhappy about this state of affairs. Many people are intrigued, yearning even, for further news about what is being done and what will be done about this.

And we get a Dev Diary about a damn Plushie. This is how seriously you take us, and how much our perspectives matter to you, huh?

Yeah, brilliant. Excellent 'reading of the room'. Cheers.

As announced in the last Dev Diary, due to Sweedish Holidays shortening the work weeks, the next Dev Diary is meant to come on 12th of June, so nothing of note was meant to be published today anyway. Until then, serious Dev Comments will be in potential Patch Note threads.

I guess someone fom the plushy team decided to just throw their own joke diary instead. And made it very clear, from the title itself, that this was not something serious. And chill down, issues existing doesn't mean that suddenly the entire world needs to enter "Super Serious and Grumpy State of Existence".
 
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The game is receiving mass criticism - even M**tu is despondent about 4.X. Bugs are rampant, AI performance questionable at best. People are (understandably at least, whether you agree or disagree) unhappy about this state of affairs. Many people are intrigued, yearning even, for further news about what is being done and what will be done about this.

And we get a Dev Diary about a damn Plushie. This is how seriously you take us, and how much our perspectives matter to you, huh?

Yeah, brilliant. Excellent 'reading of the room'. Cheers.
>even montu
AH YES THE GUY WHO SAYS “WE’RE GETTING STELLARIS 2 SOON DEVS ABANDONING SHIP EVERYONE PANIC” IS DESPONDENT WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT
that being said i do agree this is an extremely tone-deaf dev diary, even if they probably had to because corporate held a gun on them because whatever deal involving the plush was probably predates the release of 4.0
you guys could have worded it differently lmao
 
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The game is receiving mass criticism - even M**tu is despondent about 4.X. Bugs are rampant, AI performance questionable at best. People are (understandably at least, whether you agree or disagree) unhappy about this state of affairs. Many people are intrigued, yearning even, for further news about what is being done and what will be done about this.

And we get a Dev Diary about a damn Plushie. This is how seriously you take us, and how much our perspectives matter to you, huh?

Yeah, brilliant. Excellent 'reading of the room'. Cheers.
This week and next week are short weeks in Sweden. As others have mentioned and was mentioned in the last Dev Diary, the next official Dev Diary will be on June 12th.
 
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And chill down, issues existing doesn't mean that suddenly the entire world needs to enter "Super Serious and Grumpy State of Existence".

I'm sorry but you can't expect a sweeping statement like that just to be accepted.

It's been understated what was gutted and then broken in 4.x and the cadence of patches is a reflection of that. I'm a supporter of the game and it's people involved in it but we have been let down in some respects and some players might be worried how well this game will play for the summer, when they'll likely be no more patches. Least of all people that say that multiplayer still is unreliable.

So I think everyone is entitled to be a bit critical. Not forgetting usually when a major expansion lands we in some way pay for the free patch. A free patch that has literally broken lots of things in the game and will remain that way for some time. I think I know why it's happened and it's a good reason in the long term but it doesn't mean people aren't entitled to a better experience.
 
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4.0 already received 14 updates and Devs are working on more. 1 time we got a humorous Dev Diary written by a Community Manager - because the rest of Devs is busy with fixing stuff - and you go off the rails

Really?
Yes, really.

I did not go "off the rails" (goddamn, how histrionic). That is one post - slightly miffed, sure but overall calm, reasonable and moderated - as a reminder that there's all this important discussion going on about the state of the game and the vision for it. Why do you seem to think people aren't allowed, or are wrong, to point this out?

that Devs don't listen to people
Except I never said that or anything close to it. I said that this DD comes across as not reading the room given (both) the strength of feeling and the objective number/effect of problems with the game right now. My point is that this DD is poorly timed given what it contains vs the context.

and don't take them seriously.
How is this DD displaying any serious-taking at all? Go on, explain that one.

Hell, if they'd even included even a few lines about what they're working on, some kind of vision or roadmap, a follow-up to Eladrin's post about AI targets, what we might expect in terms of incremental patches, or what might start being in scope for 4.1, then there would have been no issue at all. Even two or three lines, tops, as recognition and to tide us over. Why didn't they? What would stop them from that?

4.0 already received 14 updates
It has, and I've been very supportive and appreciative of them. Why are you implying I'm not?
Some people have taken that patch frequency as a bad thing or a bad sign, but I'm the opposite. I personally don't even 'suffer' from a lot of the problems I listed (because I'm not a multiplayer player). But plenty of other people do, and it's not good for the overall state (or reputation) of the game. Can you not tell that I'm not speaking entirely for myself, but as a stock-take of the collective situation?
 
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This week and next week are short weeks in Sweden. As others have mentioned and was mentioned in the last Dev Diary, the next official Dev Diary will be on June 12th.
Sure, OK, cool. But can you agree that at a time when there are (or at least, perceived to be) a lot of big problems with the game, adding a couple of lines about what feedback has been noted / what work is being done, would tide the community over, right? A three-week gap is a big gap right now.

Dev Diaries get widely shared and noticed, but Dev comment updates inside of threads don't.

>even montu
AH YES THE GUY WHO SAYS “WE’RE GETTING STELLARIS 2 SOON DEVS ABANDONING SHIP EVERYONE PANIC” IS DESPONDENT WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT
that being said i do agree this is an extremely tone-deaf dev diary, even if they probably had to because corporate held a gun on them because whatever deal involving the plush was probably predates the release of 4.0
you guys could have worded it differently lmao
I don't like him and I think he's a muppet (for the "Stellaris II" thing and many others), but it's undeniable that he's a superfan and an influential community voice. If even *he* is despondent and critical (and he absolutely was in his last video), then that is noteworthy and probably a bad sign.
 
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