Star Citizen's New Update Caused a 'Major Outage'

The long-awaited launch ofStar Citizenupdate 3.18 has come with a comprehensive set of problems, making the game outright unplayable for the vast majority of players, who couldn’t log into the servers. Featuring a number of remarkably promising new technologies, version Alpha 3.18 may have been too complex to deliver a reliable experience early on, and players jumping in to give the new content a fair shake haven’t had much luck.Specifically,Star CitizenAlpha 3.18has introduced Persistent Entity Streaming and Server Meshing, the combined functionality of which essentially allows the game to “store” placed overworld items for an essentially indefinite amount of time. Other notable additions include the entire gameplay loop that relates to salvaging, a wealth of new locations and events, and the introduction of vehicle racing, to name a few.RELATED:Star Citizen Releases Alpha 3.18 UpdateStar Citizenhas had a long and storied history of development, with its first playable portions launching in 2013. Version Alpha 3.18 is the next big step forward for the unique space-faring MMO, but its servers haven’t held up. Players have been experiencing long queue times, an assortment of login errors, and serious progression bugs, all of which came to a head late on March 13, when the status of the server was escalated to “Major Outage.” Developer Cloud Imperium Games has alleviated these problems to an extent, but many issues caused by the launch of Alpha 3.18 are present still.

The introduction ofPersistent Entity Streaming inStar Citizenwas always going to be problematic, mainly due to the complexity of the feature itself. Being a persistent, always-online MMO, it’s particularly important that things stay where they ought to be. This includes players setting up secret stashes, but also crashes and combat scenarios, for example. Though PES does not have a direct effect on any given gameplay loop, implementing it affects the core backend of the game, which is likely what led to the current instability.

Server meshing also came paired up with PES, and its functionality means that the game’s standard 100-person servers can interact with one another to deliver a smooth, organic interaction between them. This, in turn, should help in makingStar Citizen’s space combat, exploration, trading, and other assorted scenarios much more believable and immersive once its ongoing problems clear up.

Late in 2022,Star Citizenpassed $500 million in crowdfunding, which is an impressive feat indeed. Yet the obvious concern is that the game is still in its early alpha stages of development, almost a decade following the start of its piecemeal launch schedule. While it’s hard to deny CIG’s inventiveness in makingStar Citizenalmost entirely unique in its niche, it’s also easy to see why some may be disappointed by its lengthy production.

Star Citizenis now in the alpha stages of development for PC.