Yesterday, November 19, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 was released, but the launch hasn’t gone smoothly. Players have encountered bugs, crashes, and especially long waiting times. Just take a look at the reviews on Steam to see how dire the situation is; as of this writing, the game has an extremely negative rating, with only 18% positive feedback out of 3,113 reviews. As a result, the development team at Asobo Studio has had to take action, even releasing a video in which Jorg Neumann (head of Microsoft Flight Simulator), Sebastian Wloch (Asobo’s CEO and co-founder), and Jayne (Sr. Community Manager) shared updates and priorities for addressing these issues, apologizing to the community for the problems.
Here’s what Neumann said:
“Unfortunately, we knew that the excitement for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 was high, but we frankly underestimated just how high it was, and it really overwhelmed our infrastructure. Once again, while it was a big launch day, we know that many people are frustrated, and we are truly sorry. We want to apologize, and we created this video to be as transparent and honest as possible.”
Sebastian Wloch provided more technical details, stating that the team had tested for up to 200,000 concurrent players, but on launch day, that number was exceeded, causing overload.
The team underestimated the player influx on launch day, but here are the words from the official site statement, showing some improvements:
The server responsible for handling data requests became overloaded, causing delays and errors. As a result, players are experiencing long loading times and missing content such as planes. We have resolved the issues, and players are now arriving at a steady pace. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. We will keep you updated on our social media channels, forums, and website. Thank you very much for your feedback and support.
Below is the video with the Asobo team.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: the developers apologize for the launch issues
