The recent attempt to launch the Atlas was a spectacular failure, twice! An attempt because a countdown timer is supposed to mean something! You don’t just let it hit zero and stick there for a full 50 minutes before offering an ambiguous excuse. And then you reschedule for two days later and do it all over again!
About Atlas
Atlas from Studio Wildcard has been the gaming powerhouse’s pet project only recently revealed to the fan base. Atlas is a survival game reportedly 1200 bigger than a single server on which the studio’s Ark is run. The game is expected to support up to 40k players concurrently an only has two gigantic servers unlike the hundreds of segregations for its predecessor.
In the beginning
Initially, the game was announced to be launched on 11 Dec but was pushed back a massive 6 days to Dec 19 and they were sure to reset the countdown timer on their website. Much to the disgust of their fans, the hourglass runs out on the pirate MMO all over again. Fast forward to 21st Dec 2018 and the gaming mogul through their twitter account, promises that the game will start streaming at 9.00 PM PST and enter full Early Access Launch the following day, Saturday, Dec 22, 2018. They then say “thank you for your patience and support” and this time they meant it apparently. On Dec 22nd, 2018, Atlas final made it to Steam.
The disastrous game launches a cliché!
It’s not as uncommon as you might think for a game launch go wrong. And seemingly this only serves to heighten the hype and anticipation among gaming enthusiasts. The makers of Atlas also the original creators of the Ark have this reputation of poor preparedness for launches preceding them.
Unfortunately, the popularity of their games has somehow gone unscathed even after such open misconduct and mistreatment of their fan base. Perhaps hardcore gamers are suckers for pain and love the torture sometimes meted even by the big games with the powerhouses in the gaming studios industry.
What went wrong with the Atlas game launch?
According to Jeremy Stieglitz, the team simply let the schedule and initial launch builds get away from them. Understandably, so much could go terribly wrong with a launch. From bugs and glitches the development team downplayed or completely missed in the earlier development stages to swamped servers and jammed authentication capacity, there is so much that might just go wrong and it usually does. Stieglitz also apologized to their fans for losing sight of the bigger picture which ought to start and end with communicating with their fan base.
What the future holds for Atlas coming back from a rough takeoff
Some games like the popular original Ark: Survival Evolved eventually recover from their infamous birth and go on to become some of the most coveted video games of all time but that takes time. And this one, in particular, is going to be hard to forget. While some never pull out of their nosedive from zero time, it remains to be seen if Atlas is one of those that make a comeback.