Plutocracy

About

Plutocracy is a single player and multiplayer economy management game with economy and historical themes. It was developed by Redwood and was released on November 21, 2019. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

The business simulator Plutocracy gives you the chance to become wealthy and powerful to take control over the America. Join the race with the first billionaires and squeeze them out of the market. Use your brilliant mind and indomitable will to do it or dirty methods of a competitive struggle.

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80%

Audience ScoreBased on 801 reviews

gameplay21 positive mentions

optimization10 negative mentions

Unique and ambitious business and political strategy game with high depth in economic and corporate management.
Engaging mechanics for buying shares, running companies, stock market manipulation, and political influence, providing satisfying gameplay especially for strategy and economics enthusiasts.
Beautiful minimalist art style with atmospheric soundtrack that fits the historical theme, adding to the immersion.

The game is in early access with many features incomplete or still in development, leading to repetitive and grind-heavy gameplay.
Performance issues including crashes, long loading times, and lag, especially late-game and on non-gaming machines.
Steep learning curve and cluttered, sometimes unintuitive UI; random chance mechanics can feel harsh and frustrating, limiting long-term engagement.

gameplay
106 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
20%
72%
8%
The gameplay offers deep and complex economic and political mechanics with significant potential, providing an engaging and realistic business simulation experience. However, it currently suffers from repetitiveness, unclear or underdeveloped systems, and a steep learning curve due to poor tutorials and interface issues. Ongoing updates and developer support promise improvements, making it a solid choice for fans of tycoon and strategy games willing to tolerate early access flaws.
- “The gameplay is deep, with an almost overwhelming amount of options to consider.”
- “The character system is smart and personal, the company mechanics are rich and rewarding, and the overall sandbox of capitalism is engaging and, at times, delightfully ruthless.”
- “The gameplay has a lot of depth but is not too difficult to learn.”
- “The whole game is unbalanced but it has real potential; the concept is very good but some game mechanics are meaningless and it becomes boring quickly like a clicking simulator in a tycoon type of game.”
- “Important mechanics like loaning money are buried behind layers of text with no sorting or filtering tools.”
- “One other thing I wanted to call out specifically is how useless the agents are; none of them feel critical to the gameplay. Same with ambitions—you can do everything without touching these features a single time and save yourself the trouble of clicking through 20 screens.”
graphics
49 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
47%
47%
6%
The game features a charming, unique art style with simple yet visually pleasing graphics that effectively support its strategic gameplay. While the artwork is widely praised for its creativity and immersion, users note the game is still in early access and requires optimization improvements to reduce lag and enhance interface responsiveness. Overall, the graphics complement the game's mechanics well but could benefit from technical refinement.
- “The artworks are stunning and well made, and the core game mechanics are great, but the game is still in early to mid-development stage.”
- “Gorgeous graphics & sound and love the historical comments on the quarter end screen.”
- “The art style is simply stunning.”
- “Please optimize the game graphics.”
- “The UI is a little clunky and the optimization is a bit slow; I find myself lagging often even though the game is graphically and mechanically minimalist (EU4/CK2 runs better while having a lot more going on, comparatively).”
- “Graphics interface unresponsive.”
optimization
30 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
10%
57%
33%
The game suffers from significant optimization issues, causing frequent slowdowns, lags, crashes, and memory leaks, especially as progress advances or simulations grow larger. Despite its potential and enjoyable gameplay, many users report poor performance even on high-end systems, highlighting the need for major performance improvements and bug fixes in future updates.
- “There are still some serious game optimization issues, and the game regularly gets slow and eventually unplayable the further you get into a game.”
- “Very fun game, only negative aspect for me is some performance issues, but looking forward to future updates and would recommend!”
- “There is still work to be done to optimize the game's performance and reduce rare crashes.”
- “There are still some serious game optimization issues and the game regularly gets slow and eventually unplayable the further you get into a game.”
- “The performance is also very poor; as the game progresses, the lags become more severe to the point your game starts crashing regularly. I'm on a rig with an RTX 3070 Ti, i9 10850K, and 32GB of 3600MHz memory, so it's definitely not due to my specs.”
- “It's impossible to finish a game because it's so horribly optimized.”
grinding
23 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
13%
87%
Grinding in this game is frequently described as tedious, repetitive, and overly time-consuming, especially in areas like loyalty management, politics, and early-stage company control. While some players find the grind rewarding eventually, many criticize the lack of meaningful feedback and the "clicky" nature, making initial progress frustrating and disengaging. Improvements such as better search functions or streamlined political mechanics could alleviate the monotony.
- “My only critique (and perhaps I just don't know how to do this better) is that the loyalty management can get really repetitive and grindy.”
- “Wish politics could be easier as sponsoring every individual politician when I have millions of dollars gets tedious.”
- “To me, I feel that the web of influence and the building of the political system is just too muddled, it's very simple but very, very tedious.”
music
14 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
43%
36%
21%
The music in the game is generally praised for its atmospheric and fitting mood, complementing the gameplay and theme well without being distracting. However, some users find the soundtrack becomes repetitive or boring over time and would prefer more variety or the option to change it. Overall, the soundtrack supports the game's immersive experience but could benefit from greater longevity and engagement.
- “The soundtrack is suitably atmospheric—nothing too distracting, but it builds a nice backdrop to your rise to power.”
- “Was tricky at first but with the amazing OST playing in the background and the tutorial it was easy to get the hang of things.”
- “Even in early access, the gameplay can capture your attention for plenty of time, and with music and illustrations that perfectly accompany the main mood of the game, you can feel what it is to be a genuine entrepreneur.”
- “Not a fan of the in-game music; it got boring fast.”
- “The art, music, general game concept and design is quite good but the technical aspects seem to let down the game.”
- “This game has only crashed on me one time, most likely because I tab in and out a lot changing background music.”
story
14 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
29%
64%
7%
The game currently lacks a developed story or campaign mode, with some users finding the existing backstory sufficient and others hoping for more fleshed-out story scenarios in future updates. While the sandbox mode is enjoyable, the absence of a robust narrative or multiplayer reduces the overall experience for some players.
- “2/9/22 update: The game has received a few updates that flesh it out more and make the game run longer. The devs are currently working on story scenarios, and I think the game should be more fleshed out rather than adding a one-time story mode.”
- “It sets enough of a backstory, and like many before them, it is fine without a Hollywood plot and loads of fun.”
- “The sandbox mode is very fun and I can't wait for the story mode.”
stability
13 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game currently suffers from frequent bugs, crashes, and performance issues, especially in late-game scenarios where it struggles to process large amounts of data, leading to freezes and stalled gameplay. While stability remains a concern, ongoing developer updates and optimizations show promise, with the core mechanics still enjoyable despite these rough edges.
- “My big gripe with it is that once you're a billionaire with many companies, the game struggles to process the info, constantly freezes, stalls, and can't fast forward, making it unplayable in late game.”
- “Very badly optimized with crashes and freezes all the time.”
- “There are a lot of bugs, particularly freezes, crashes, and the maddening issue where the game appears running but the video has frozen.”
replayability
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
38%
24%
38%
Replayability in this game is mixed: while some players appreciate the multiple gameplay features and challenges that provide extensive playtime, others find the core mechanics repetitive and the successful strategies often feel the same, limiting long-term variety. The game shows promise but may need more diverse challenges to enhance replay value.
- “I got about 284.9 hours on this game. Not sure how accurate it is to stocks and trading, but it's full of content, has lots of replay value, and you can challenge yourself in multiple ways.”
- “There are many different features and facets of gameplay which make this game a replayable experience.”
- “Additionally, while the game offers endless replayability, the core mechanics can start to feel a bit repetitive after a long session, as you’ll often find yourself repeating similar strategies in each game.”
- “This is one of those games which is really good, but doesn't have much in the ways of replayability.”
- “The lack of replayability comes from the fact that the way to play the game successfully is always the same: buy stocks in a company, take the company over, save up the company reserves, expand the company, save up your own money, take over the competitors and boom you are at the top.”
- “Tldr: awesome game, horrible replayability”
emotional
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Users express a lack of emotional engagement with the game, noting that key features like agents and ambitions feel non-essential and fail to impact gameplay meaningfully. Despite this, some appreciate recent improvements, though the overall emotional connection remains limited.
atmosphere
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's atmosphere is effectively enhanced by a subtle, fitting soundtrack and the immersive setting of the "black gold" era and stock market environment. This strong thematic backdrop engages players despite early access limitations, appealing especially to those who appreciate the era's mood.
- “The soundtrack is suitably atmospheric—nothing too distracting, but it builds a nice backdrop to your rise to power.”
- “On top of that, there’s the flavor of the stock market exchange and the atmosphere of the “black gold” era, which makes the immersion even stronger.”
- “Recommended for those who appreciate the era's atmosphere and are willing to enjoy solid gameplay while the game unlocks its full potential.”
monetization
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's monetization heavily involves advertisements, which add a small cost for minimal demand increase, but players can strategically reduce ad costs through in-game political lobbying. This integration of advertising elements is a unique, central mechanic influencing gameplay expenses.
- “In the current build, advertisement seems to be about 10% of total expenses added on top only for a tiny (~0.9% most cases) change in demand.”
- “An example of how you can use your power in this game is that you may have heard people saying 'advertising is useless' but this is just untrue, as you can lobby politicians to invest government money into funding research for advertising, where each level of investment reduces the cost of advertising by 10%.”
- “It's like someone took their inspiration for this game from pop-up ads.”