TCG Card Shop Simulator, the card-shop management game made by Malaysian solo developer Ding Shen Sia, now counts more than four million players, and its latest free update is live on every platform it runs on. It brings a fresh set of cards to chase and a smoother shop to run, a few weeks after the game took Best Game Design at the SEA Game Awards 2026.
Contents
Quick facts
- Made by one Malaysian developer, Ding Shen Sia of O.P. Neon Games
- More than 4 million players and an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam
- Free update adds the Ascension Card Box and six new Ghost cards, 24 in total
- Lists at RM46.99 on Steam Malaysia; RM39.94 on a 15% discount when we checked on 1 November
If you have not played it, the premise is straightforward: you run a trading-card shop, ordering boxes, setting prices, stocking shelves, hiring staff and growing a small counter into a busy business, with a collectible card game of its own to play on the side.
What the TCG Card Shop Simulator update adds
The headline addition, released as the game's Halloween update, is the Ascension Card Box, a new box of collectibles to open and sell. Alongside it are six new Ghost cards, which takes the game's roster of rare Ghost cards to 24 for collectors chasing its hardest-to-find tier.
The Workbench bulk-box system has also been reworked:
- The Tetramon and Destiny Bulk Boxes are merged into a single generic Bulk Box, so future card sets can slot in without new box types.
- A new premium OG Bulk Box (Omega Grade) sits at a base price of 4,000 in-game dollars, and is created automatically once the value of bundled bulk cards passes 5,000.
- The original Tetramon and Destiny boxes stay in existing saves, but can no longer be created and drop out of the price app.
There is a round of housekeeping too. The Workbench price slider now reaches 100 in-game dollars for finer pricing, the lighting and materials have been pulled back toward the game's original look, and a GPU fix that uses simpler customer models eases the slowdown that busy shops could cause. Two notable bugs are gone: one that could leave players stuck and unable to play cards in the game's TCG mode, and one that stopped quality settings from applying.
A Malaysian indie that kept growing
Sia began TCG Card Shop Simulator in 2023 as a burnout project, mostly to see whether he could ship a PC game and earn a set of Steam Trading Cards. It sold 100,000 copies in its first three days, a number he had hoped to reach in a full year, and has kept climbing since to more than four million players.
The recognition caught up in October. The game won Best Game Design at the SEA Game Awards 2026, the showcase run by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation alongside Level Up KL to spotlight independent games from the region. It sits among a run of Southeast Asian indies finding an audience well beyond home, from the rhythm platformer SURI: The Seventh Note to co-op oddities like the ghost-hunting Steam game Spook-A-Boo.
Where to play it
The update is out now and free for anyone who already owns the game. TCG Card Shop Simulator is available on Steam for PC, as well as Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. On Steam Malaysia the base game lists at RM46.99, and was RM39.94 on a 15% discount when we checked on 1 November; console prices vary by store, so check your platform's own listing before buying.
For a game that started as one developer's experiment, a content drop with an award already on the shelf is a quiet marker of how far a local project can travel.
