Hey, everyone! Wanted to give you all an official update on the progress of online multiplayer and apologize that it's not ready yet. We're making progress, however - BlitWorks has already finished two of the three major improvements that were planned and our current estimate for when online will be ready is early December.
ːspel2caverːːmattockː
Now, as for why it's taken so long! The truth is, we were hoping online would be available on Steam by now, but there are a couple of reasons why it's taking longer:
We're taking a more methodical approach that involves deeper optimizations.
From the beginning, our strategy for online has been focused on providing a great experience long-term, with cross-platform play and rollback. Unfortunately, while we were expecting some issues, the disconnects we were seeing on PS4 after we launched there were much more severe than we anticipated. Some players could play fine and a lot of players couldn't really play at all. BlitWorks has already pushed a number of significant improvements to online on PS4, but ultimately, some deeper changes of the internal game logic and the rollback were required to get it to where we want it to be. These changes require more testing before they can be released.
"Why are you talking about PS4 so much on a Steam update!" Good question! First, these improvements to the rollback will also affect online on PC. But second, it's critical that we address these PS4 issues first so that when online comes to PC we're not dealing with too many problems at once. That's what I mean by a "methodical approach".
We've been doing a lot of regular post-launch support, which has taken time, too.
If you've been following our patch notes, you'll see what we've been making lots improvements to the offline game - fixing bugs, adding options, removing blocked paths and other scenarios that feel too unfair, greatly increasing the number of reducing the amount of moles in the first area of the game, etc. Not only is Spelunky 2 a more complex game than 1 by magnitudes, but its launch was also much bigger, which means that there's been a LOT of feedback! It's something we're really grateful for and we feel like the best way to show that is to listen thoughtfully and patch steadily.
But this work does slow down the development of online somewhat, since there's a lot of overlap in the relatively small team working on Spelunky 2. But hopefully you've found it to be worth it! In the end, all of this work is going toward the same place, because Spelunky 2 is a game where the different modes and systems are all very interconnected. So rest assured that anything we're doing, whether it's for PS4 or Steam, single-player or multiplayer, local or online, will improve some aspect of the game that you're interested in!
Hopefully that clears up some of what's been going on behind-the-scenes! To reiterate, our current estimate is that online multiplayer for Steam will be ready in early December. We'll keep you updated on that as our work continues.
As always, thank you! And Happy Spelunky-ing! ːgoldidolː