One of the biggest issues facing the launch of Friday The 13th: The Game when it launched this past weekend was that a bunch of people couldn't get on to play. Well, the developers caught tons of flak for it but they explained why the server problems happened in the first place.
In a timeline of updates relating to the issues facing Friday The 13th: The Game, developers Illfonic rolled out some explanations for fixes and the status of the game on Facebook, starting with an explanation of how they attempted to address the server load issue on launch day for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC, writing....
We thought we were [prepared]. We looked at average concurrent players during the beta; 5K. We then took PC pre-order numbers, as well as backer numbers and tripled it for three platforms (XB1, PS4 and PC). We then added more cushion just to make sure. We were forecasting somewhere around 30K concurrents and that's what we setup our database to handle. However, when we flipped the switch, making the game live, 75K players showed up in the first 20 minutes. 50K players got in, but at that point our database was melting. We immediately started spinning up new database servers to meet demand. But in the process, the original database started getting damaged nodes due to the influx of players. We were moving just as fast as we could to meet the demand. But it wasn't fast enough.
This directly addresses one of the common complaints that gamers levied at Gun Media and Illfonic, where many within the community blamed the studios for not better predicting the turnout of players for Friday The 13th: The Game.
As you can see from the explanation above, they accounted for all of the base platforms and then cushioned the load for an extra couple of thousand players. They setup the network to handle only 30,000 players but they got more than two and a half times that much on launch.
Actually, those are fantastic numbers for a movie-based game on an indie budget. Friday The 13th: The Game was Kickstarted back in late 2015 to the tune of just over $820,000. That's a rather tiny budget for a game with a console-quality scope. Nevertheless, they managed to churn out a decent enough multiplayer product during the beta but failed to address some pressing issues during the actual launch.
The Facebook page for Friday The 13th: The Game also addresses some of the other issues they've been dealing with, such as the DLC codes not activating properly for home console and PC users, along with trying to troubleshoot other hiccups and problems plaguing the launch.
On the upside, as of May 28th, 2017 -- this past Sunday -- the developers did manage to get the servers up and running for all of the gamers across the Xbox One, PS4 and PC after undergoing server maintenance.
The Facebook post offers some additional tips and tricks through a troubleshooting FAQ guide for Friday The 13th: The Game. Some players didn't think it was enough, but at least the server problems are fixed, for now. They'll still need to get the backer rewards and DLC issues addressed before they're out of Crystal Lake.
