Hardware Store Simulator

A promising co-op hardware empire, then silence

Hardware Store Simulator sets itself apart from the genre's crowded field of single-shop management sims with a genuinely distinctive structural hook: up to four players compete simultaneously to build the most successful hardware store, each managing their own shop, staff, and pricing strategy in the same shared space. In its early hours, and specifically in the hands of friend groups playing together, that structure delivers real, reported fun. "Its really fun with friends," one reviewer states plainly, and a separate reviewer echoes the same experience before describing what went wrong: "me and my two friends played, started playing and it was awesome." Reviewers who focus on the customer writing find genuine charm there too — one describes a recurring shopper "with dreadlocks who keeps buying all the duct tape" as a small, funny detail that stuck with them.

That early promise is consistently and specifically undercut, though, by what happens as sessions continue and as more time passes since launch.

An abandonment claim that shows up on both sides of the score

What makes this review base unusual is how consistently the word "abandoned" appears regardless of whether the surrounding review is otherwise positive or negative. "Great game! Developer abandoned it... Has a lot of bugs, wish it wasn't abandoned," one reviewer writes, giving the game credit for its concept while stating the abandonment as settled fact rather than speculation. A separate, more detailed reviewer frames the timeline precisely: "very unfortunately this game feels abandoned as it's end of July, and it hasn't been updated or patched since May." Checking that specific, dated claim against the developer's own posted record confirms it rather than contradicting it — the last release notes on file are for version 0.20.0, dated mid-May 2025, with nothing posted in the sixteen-plus months since. Several other reviewers state the same conclusion more bluntly still: "abandoned shortly after release, buggy as all hell too," and "2 updates and then nothing, great concept but its dead."

Bugs specific enough to point at exactly what broke

The bug reports in this sample are notably precise rather than vague complaints about jank, which makes them easier to weigh. A multiplayer-specific bug draws particular frustration: "when friends join again all their shelves and products are gone. My friends are VERY VERY VERY ANGRY ABOUT IT," one reviewer writes, describing a rejoin bug that erases a returning player's entire stocked inventory. A separate reviewer reports a related but distinct multiplayer failure: "one of their vending machines started bugging out and they couldn't fix it. Then my other friend got boxes bugged in their area."

The store's core economic system draws its own specific complaint: "the market system is broken — buy items for [a price] and nobody will buy it unless [it's lower], yes the prices go up and down, but several items will never be able to be sold with any profit," one detailed reviewer explains, describing a pricing simulation that's mathematically broken for a subset of inventory regardless of player strategy. A separate reviewer reports a serious save-integrity bug: loading back into a saved game reverted their progress from level 4 with a substantial currency balance down to level 1 with the game's starting amount, "even when I buy more stuff and level up my save file still saves as [the higher amount] and level [the higher level]" — a genuinely confusing state where the save data and the loaded game state actively disagree with each other. A separate, more exploitable bug is reported independently: one reviewer describes being able to infinitely sell a "SALE" sign displayed in front of a closed store for repeated profit, a clear economy-breaking glitch rather than an intended mechanic.

One further specific complaint concerns the game's online requirements: "the game needs internet to even get to the main menu... so the game, even in single-player mode, is d[ysfunctional]," one reviewer reports, describing an always-online dependency that shouldn't apply to a mode explicitly meant to be played alone.

What the achievement data confirms about the broken state

The achievement spread offers unusually strong, quantifiable support for the "broken" framing running through the reviews. While early milestones sit at reasonable, gradually declining rates — 91.2% for the grand opening, down through the 5-50% range for various mid-game accomplishments — a cluster of more than seventeen separate achievements, covering everything from "hardware tycoon" to "customer satisfaction" to "million dollar club," all sit at an identical, suspiciously precise 0.4%. That degree of clustering at one exact number, spanning achievements that should logically require very different amounts of play to reach, reads far more like a broken tracking condition affecting a whole batch of achievements simultaneously than like a coincidentally uniform difficulty level across seventeen unrelated goals.

Where this leaves it

Hardware Store Simulator had a genuinely interesting competitive multiplayer hook and, by multiple independent accounts, delivered real fun to friend groups in its opening sessions — but the game has been left without support for well over a year, by its own developer's public record, and the review base's near-universal use of the word "abandoned" reflects a genuine, settled consensus rather than a handful of impatient complaints. Specific, serious bugs around multiplayer inventory loss, broken pricing, and save corruption compound the concern, and a large cluster of suspiciously identical achievement percentages suggests the game's own tracking systems aren't functioning correctly either. Not recommended at current asking price given the confirmed lack of ongoing support — if picking it up at all, do so purely for a short multiplayer session with friends and with no expectation that reported bugs will be addressed.