Prison Architect is a simulator game in which you build and manage a high-security prison; keeping, working, and most importantly feeding the prisoners in your care. If they don’t get their needs met well enough, you’re likely to have a riot on your hands. Unfortunately the game is still in an Alpha state (even if it’s quite a well fleshed-out one) and that means some issues still need to be fixed, and one especially has been causing the developers a headache for a while.

Smaller prisons do well with just one kitchen and one canteen to feed their inmates, but the problem comes when the prison grows beyond the size that one of each can adequately provide for all the prisoners. The food needs to be kept in a storeroom, then cooked, then laid out in the canteen for the prisoners to fill their foodtrays from. The problem is that more than one kitchen and canteen tends to confuse the AI about where to take the food, which leaves the canteens empty causing hungry prisoners and as their food needs aren’t being met… well, it results in riots.

The last Update, Update 26, attempted to fix this by having the chefs make the food and store it, and it instantly teleported to the canteen when a prisoner requested their daily meals. It seemed a great fix, and then some creative players found a way to exploit it.

Like all staff, chefs are susceptible to attack from armed and rowdy prisoners. One of the work and class spaces you can assign prisoners to is the kitchen they work in; the same kitchen that just so happens to have loads of sharp things in there that would make wonderful weapons. You can see where this is going.

The exploit basically had the players building a kitchen outside of the area that the rest of the prison was located in, ensuring that the chefs never needed to have contact with the prisoners and the prisoners never had the chance to steal knives or attack the chefs.

So Update 27 has come along with a new method of attempting to fix the food issue. A new logistics system will automatically map which canteen prisoners use based on their level of security clearance and their schedule. Chefs can now know how many people will use each canteen and hopefully prepare enough food so that all hunger needs are more adequately met and hunger-based rioting will become less of a problem.

Got to love it when players get creative with the mechanics of a game.