In an open letter addressing the recent server outages and lengthy matchmaking times Rocket League players have been experiencing, Psyonix CEO David Hagewood apologized for the quality of online play and said they’re focusing all of their resources on improving it.
Hagewood wrote:
In regards to both backend (PsyNet) issues, and game server performance, we agree that the server outages and recent lengthy matchmaking times are totally unacceptable. We sincerely apologize to all of our players for the quality of online play, and we are focusing all of our available resources on addressing PsyNet’s capabilities and performance, and the quality of our game servers.
The number of monthly active Rocket League players has jumped roughly 40% over 2016 in the first few months of this year alone. While our player population continues to grow at a healthy pace, we need to do a better job at scaling up our systems and internal processes to handle this kind of growth. We are growing so fast, both as a company and as a game, that we are racing to fill new positions on our Online Services team… We are effectively becoming an Online Service company, as Rocket League is primarily an online game, and we continue to grow in size and scope. Growing this team is one of our top priorities as we approach Rocket League’s second anniversary in July.
Following the February outages experienced around the same time as when the Xbox One Free Weekend took place, Psyonix has assigned additional dedicated staff from their Online Services team to PsyNet database stability and reliability. They’re working to separate high-traffic features like Player Trading and “Scraper API” from the core services, which will reduce the load on the database and reduce outages during peak hours.
As for the matchmaking delays, they’re a new problem that Psyonix is still investigating. Hagewood adds, “We have made changes in the interim to reduce the likelihood of it recurring, but more substantial improvements will be made throughout 2017.”
To further help address the game server issues, Psyonix will complete a performance pass on the newly released Dropshot (expect a hotfix soon), investigate new hardware options in regions like Asia and Central America, and improve their internal metrics to detect problems more rapidly.
In a recent interview, Psyonix Vice President Jeremy Dunham said roughly 10.5 million copies of Rocket League have been sold so far, and they broke records month-after-month in December 2016, January 2017, and February 2017.
[Source: Rocket League]
