If you play video games in the 21st century, you are no stranger to this – a popular game is released that demands an internet connection. Interested players buy it, cannot access the servers, and cannot play what they paid for. The last offender is Outriders, a class-based loot shooter from developer People Can Fly.
Outriders released yesterday to a kind of sizzle on all platforms. Some players could not overcome the initial charge, stuck in a perpetual “You are logged in!” screen. (The key there was simply to practice patience, the rarest virtue in life.) Some couldn’t even make it to that initial frozen screen, while others ended up getting kicked out of the game in the middle of missions.
Last night, I partnered with KotakuZack Zweizen to test the cooperative. We both play on PlayStation 5 and we both have relatively stable internet service. It took us 24 minutes to have fun. After about an hour of play, I was kicked out of our session at the beginning of a mission. It took us another 11 minutes to get back to having fun.
We are not alone. Social media channels is it so abundant with users exchange Similary experiences. (My personal favorite? Reddit post titled, “Are the servers on Enoch too?”) KotakuJohn walker tweeted that the Xbox servers went down when you were at the end of a mission and then didn’t let you get back into the game at all.
These connectivity issues have persisted into the second day of the game, something people can blow up. admitted in a tweet. As of this writing, the Outriders server status The website lists multiplayer as “operational” and the core components have a “major break.” (Hmm…) Earlier today, the core components were marked as “operational”, while the multiplayer service was shown as “partially operational”.
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“We are aware that a small percentage of gamers are encountering certain issues and our teams are proactively collecting information and working on updates and fixes,” Square Enix representatives told me via email yesterday.
That an online-only launch went awry isn’t exactly surprising. We have seen it with Fall Guys, The division, Destination, and Hitman 3 (a little). The funny thing here is that People Can Fly has clung to the line that Outriders not a service game, like Destination or Avengers or The division—And it is rather one that you can pick up and play as “a complete out-of-the-box experience.” Nevertheless Outriders It shines as a cooperative game, it is also designed to be played in its entirety as a single player experience, and yet you do need an internet connection to play.
“We have a lot of things on the backend so you have to be connected to the internet to be able to play,” said Bartosz Kmita of People Can Fly. told IGN.
This is, needless to say, a total bummer. Obviously you need servers to allow multiplayer connections, and it is obviously impossible to predict exactly how many players will crowd onto those servers on day one. (People can fly saying that more than 2 million players tried the free demo of the game. Those numbers were revealed before Square Enix, Outriders‘editor, Announced that the game would be available on Game Pass at launch). But I think the intention of the game to be single player means that you should be able to load it up and play it. Friends are nice, but ultimately they are unnecessary for Outriders to work. Do not misunderstand. I love the game and am having a great time so far. I just wish I could play it reliably.
Update: 4:00 pm ET: People can fly I take the Outriders offline servers.
Update at 6:04 pm ET: People can fly saying that Outriders servers were back online everywhere except United State.
Update at 6:46 pm ET: The US servers are apparently back online.