Studio Wildcard, known for the dinosaur survival game Ark: Survival Evolved, unveiled a new project at The Game Awards 2018: the massively multiplayer fantasy pirate adventure Atlas. The developers promised support for 40 thousand players on a single server. The game was supposed to be released on December 13.
After a series of postponements, streamers began receiving game keys and launching broadcasts on Twitch on December 22. At one of the peak moments, about 300 thousand viewers were watching the game. It was discovered that the menu contained a clumsily hidden button, which, when pressed, opened the menu from Ark. Consequently, users immediately realized that this was not a new game, but merely a mod. Officially, Wildcard positioned Atlas as a new project.
After all interested parties gained access, it became clear that the developers were not ready for the Atlas alpha test: players could not connect to servers, encountered multiple bugs, crashes, and terrible optimization. Wildcard did not take into account the problems of Ark's launch, so the rating on Steam, after 8 thousand reviews, is only 20% positive reviews.
The developers' Twitter reports fixes every few hours. Work is in full swing, but at the moment, it's important to understand that during the New Year's sale, they are trying to sell us a poorly functioning mod for the price of a new early access game. At the time of writing, there are over 32 thousand users in the game.