Union Update: Hippodrome contest and road to release

Hey Anno Community!

Today we have updates on the recent contest and voting, as well as on what’s awaiting you in terms of news in the coming weeks.

Contest Winners

At the very end of June we asked you to create a sponsor for the Hippodrome – or rather: for the inaugural chariot race taking place in the Hippodrome! Cause this very race will be featured in our trailer for the upcoming expansion, aptly named “The Hippodrome”, and will go live on August 20^th – release day!

The winners were chosen by an internal dev team jury based on a variety of factors like style, creativity, fun and how well it fit into the Anno universe. While slowly reducing the list of finalists, we ended up with the magic number of nine – nine submissions we just didn’t feel comfortable reducing further.

We therefore decided to expand the number of winners from four to nine, all of them will receive both the physical prizes and the inclusion in the trailer.

The winners have been contacted earlier this week, and we’re excited to now also share the winning entries below. Congratulations to all of them once again!

Voting Winners

Following the contest for sponsors, a public vote was held to decide on the racers for this very first Hippodrome race. It was surprisingly clear decision by you for the Sausage Purveyor Quirinus Rubellius as well as Dorian. When counting across all three platforms (Anno Union, Reddit and Discord), it then became a close race which Whataboutist Watis and the Diviner of Dough decided for themselves. Athr, meanwhile, has brought shame on the Jorgensen family as a whole…

(Apologies for the display issues with the voting on the Anno Union, we’ll have this looked into for future votings)

That means in the final trailer, on August 20^th, we’ll have these four compete in the Hippodrome, proudly sponsored by the Anno Community!

So, don’t forget to tune in to our live Twitch stream!

Road to release

You won’t have to wait quite as long for the first information about the upcoming “The Hippodrome” expansion and the update accompanying it.

Starting next week, both on our social channels as well as on the Anno Union, we’ll have updates on both topics for you – small teasers as well as full blog posts. You can expect:

• An article with the highlights of Update 2.0 and its new features and bigger changes, first week of August
• A DevBlog on the content of the “The Hippodrome” expansion, first week of August
• Full Patch Notes, August 18^th
• Release Day, livestream and the inaugural race itself, August 20^th