On the initial launch day, it seemed like things would be OK for Street Fighter 5’s multiplayer mode. The game was missing plenty of content, sure, but when matchmaking worked it worked well.
But then things took a turn for the worse this morning. That culminated in an announcement around lunch time, with Capcom announcing that the servers had to be taken down “indefinitely”. Which lasted for less than an hour.
The latest round of maintenance for the SF5 servers began earlier this morning. The maintenance window was supposed to last only three hours.
Servers are now down for maintenance. Thank you for your patience as we attempt to make improvements. We will be back online by 4pm PST.
— SFV Server (@SFVServer) February 22, 2016
But the problems weren’t fixed. The maintenance window was extended by an hour. And then another hour. And then just before 1:00 PM today, the situation became a touch more critical.
We are extending our maintenance indefinitely. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope to reopen ASAP.
— SFV Server (@SFVServer) February 23, 2016
Only just an hour later, however, everything was A-OK. Servers were back online. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
Servers are back up! Thank you all for your patience. Please continue to provide feedback here.
— SFV Server (@SFVServer) February 23, 2016
The question remains: what happened that Capcom could go from extending the maintenance window in hour-long stretches to an indefinite suspension of service to situation normal in the space of a few hours? One answer could be mixed internal messaging, with the communication/marketing teams perhaps being fed one explanation and not being fully updated once the situation had changed.
Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how the servers hold up over the coming week. Multiplayer services are usually far more reliable in the second and third weeks post-launch than their first, although sometimes it can take far, far longer before things settle down. Just ask anyone who bought DRIVECLUB on release.
Comments
7 responses to “Street Fighter 5’s Servers Went Down Indefinitely And Came Back Within An Hour”
The way I read it, extended indefinitely reads extended with No ETA. I think the messaging probably could have been clearer, but was misinterpreted.
Exactly. Indefinitely does not necessarily mean forever.
Hello plebeians and welcome, I am a AAA developer
In my presence you can expect any number of the following
-Long periods of misinformation
-Unfinished products
-Unstable server connections
-Day one paid DLC
-Microtransactions and in game currencies
-Irregular pricing models for international regions
-Long periods of downtime
-Large patches
-The unexpected, but not in a good way
If at any time you believe that these issues remotely concern us, know that we really couldn’t give two shits, we already have your money and are far too busy working on our next source of revenue, which may or may not be some form of paid DLC for a currently broken title. We may get around to fixing these problems though don’t hold your breath, we know you will buy our next big thing regardless of our having burned you in the past.
——–
That said, chances are that at the time of posting the indefinitely update they still didn’t have an accurate time for when it would be fixed so in the interests of damage control it was safer to just say “it’s broken, it will be fixed when it is fixed” rather than promise something they couldn’t deliver on (odd, in light of the current practices of publishers/developers)
Hello Mr AAA,
I’ll pre order 5 please !
Plebeian #355
Will you be tequiring a season pass too? For content that may or may not be released on time but will definitely be released after you grow bored of the game?
I said 5!
having been involved in making delay announcements before, each time a further delay announcement is made, lots of people aren’t happy about it (talking about bosses here, not the clients), people are under the pump to get it done by a certain time and are forced to make time estimates which as estimates go, aren’t always correct. As the pressure cooker builds and more and more people begin to panic (about PR disaster), the people working on the issues stop being prepared to give an estimate for completion and start saying things like ‘I don’t know yet’ or ‘might be 10 minutes, might be 5 hours’. Eventually someone in charge of PR makes the decision to announce an ongoing delay until further notice. Then as so often happens, soon after announcing this, a boffin says ‘wait no I’ve done it, it should be right now’ and up it goes.
technically what they said was correct (indefinitely means unlimited OR an unspecified length of time), however perhaps their choice of words could of been different “We regret to advise that maintenance is taking longer than estimated and servers will be down until further notice. “sorry for the blah blah”