Hey Underworld Dealers and Fans, we’ve got some news. May sound as a bit of a downer at first, but believe it or not — it’s actually great news!

The time has come to retire Underworld to give way for the new version coming. As of today, the game is no longer available in either the AppStore or Google Play. You’ll be able to continue playing until October 15th, 2013. All your profiles will be stored safely with us in order to give you head-start bonuses when the sequel comes out!

Hard to believe it’s been almost 5 years since the very first launch of the game. Some of the old-timers may still recall the game being originally known as Drug Lords and distributed via Cydia, a jailbreak alternative to the AppStore back then. It was quite a ride with countless ups and downs and we’re incredibly thankful to all our fans for staying with us, for your continuous support and enthusiasm along the way!

Now to the best part. Despite a few recent hiccups & delays during the development, we continue working on the sequel, full steam ahead! In fact, we just passed an early Alpha and are totally happy with it. We’re extremely careful announcing exact dates this time, but we’ll keep you posted on everything that happens with the development, when to expect Closed Beta and such. We know, the wait is exhausting, but we’re doing our best to make it worth your while!

If you want to stay in the loop and get a priority to try out Beta when it’s out, consider subscribing to our Facebook page: Underworld 2: Black Market. As usual, we’re extremely happy to hear from you, so whether you’ve got a question about the game, our progress and whatnot or just dropped by to say hello — you’re always welcome!

Ever since we launched Underworld, we’ve been asked constantly if there’s going to be a version for Android. Fair question, considering impressive platform capabilities and its growing popularity!

Today, we are happy to announce that Android people will be able to get into Underworld this fall. We’ve been working on it for some time already and the launch date is really close now.

Details on the upcoming game on Underworld site >>

Bad news kicked in about the anticipated Traffic theme of Underworld. Got rejected again. Apple contacted us, saying that nothing that involves trafficking of illegal commodities won’t pass the bar.

Is it the time to make a theme featuring medical use of Underworld commodities? Seems like this works pretty well for other iPhone apps. Prescription only, 100% legitimate business, eh?

Anyway, this doesn’t stop us from improving the game along the roadmap. We are releasing a new version in the next couple of days. Feature preview;

• Push notifications about your sales and new messages;
• The improved map screen: you’ll see not only your current tile but also tiles of other dealers you can reach;
• A couple of other useful improvements suggested by the community: like an option to make the system bar visible in the game;

What happened to the In-App purchase functionality? Although we have already done a lot of work to make this mechanics happen in the upcoming version, we’ll have to postpone it to the next release. The thing is, AppStore has a very strict policy on the in-app purchase usage and selling UW points as in-app goods doesn’t comply with this policy very well. We have to work on that a bit more and push another update within a week or so.

Well, how about new ranks then? Right. New ranks (=upgrades) will come out together with a big new chunk of gameplay, right from the top of the Open Roadmap based on your votes. Yep, we’ve promised ‘Missions’ some time ago and to bate your curiosity, we’ll squeeze a separate post soon about the stuff we’re cooking right now.

Stay tuned!

Image credits to GenMed64, via Flickr.

If you follow the news, you probably know that since the release of a new firmware, the whole iPhone/iPod Touch community expected it to bring a lot of apps previously rejected from distribution in the AppStore. Yet we are still unsure if it helps Underworld to get its original setting back, but we promised to take our chances anyway.

Yes, we have re-submitted the gray-trade version of the game, called ‘Underworld: Traffic’. It is rated ‘17+’ for Frequent/Intense Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References and Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive themes.

Underworld: Traffic will bring players into the same world as SweetDeal, with a difference in available commodities and dealer ranks.

Now we wait for the news from Apple and will let you know as soon as we get an update. Stay tuned!

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Update [July 10]: Hey, we’ve  got an update from Apple. Not a very fruitful one though:

‘Your application, Underworld: Traffic 1.0, is requiring unexpected additional time for review. <…>’

Sounds like bad news to us, considering that a previous response like that led to two and a half months of waiting and then to a reject.

Well, fingers crossed, we let you know the minute something new comes up. Meanwhile, we are still working hard on the planned game improvements. Stay with us