Freelancer market: Every Development project card now has a Freelancer button. It opens a sub-panel filtered to the project's language and sorted by match quality. Freelancers come with language levels, framework expertise and domain tags (accounting, scientific, game, payroll and 19 more). Pay a daily rate, get an immediate productivity boost, and they leave when their contract ends or the project ships.
Live market events: 13 new weekly events drive the world forward: a BASIC hype that boosts payouts, an energy crisis that thins the market, a tax audit, a competitor going bankrupt, a trade show that pays off, a research paper that cuts your bug rate, and more. The TopBar ticker shows what just happened so you always know what's going on.
Massively expanded NPC names: The applicant and freelancer pool now draws from a 1,000+ name catalogue with German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Slavic, Nordic, Turkish, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and more cultural roots. A reserved-name index ensures the same person never appears twice in a single save.
Improvements
Tutorial extended: The Development panel walkthrough now covers the new Freelancer button so first-time players meet the mechanic in context.
Localized everywhere: All 28 Steam languages get the new freelancer system, market events and tutorial steps with native translations.
Bug Fixes
Event cooldowns no longer block each other: A long-standing issue where triggering any event would freeze every other event with a cooldown is fixed. Each event now tracks its own last-fire timer, so the market feels much more varied across a play session.