The new multiplayer shooter Scavengers (PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X) has entered an early access stage on Steam, but the rush for the keys has been too high: The team ran out of access codes for Steam on the first day. They sent people to the Epic Game Store. Therefore, starting the evening of May 1st, everyone can join.
What’s going on with Scavengers? Scavengers initially wanted to restrict access to early access on Steam. You need a key to get in:
- The key was supposedly available through giveaways, with the MMO website “Mein-MMO.de” allegedly distributing 3,000 keys for the Steam version, as people say on the street
- or you had to watch Twitch for 30 minutes and get access to Scavengers through a “Twitch Drop” – that’s the “Valorant tactic”. With Twitch Drops, Riot Games made their shooter “Valorant” a hit on Steam and Twitch in 2020
However, the Twitch method was exhausted on the first day of early access. As the team explained on Steam, some Twitch viewers did not receive keys for Steam anymore, only for the Epic Games version.
Because Scavengers simply ran out of Steam keys.
This is what Scavengers is doing now: Yesterday, the team said: They did not want to simply open access because they were worried about the servers.
But today they are doing just that:
- Starting at 6:00 PM today on May 1st, Scavengers will be freely accessible to everyone, even without a key. You can download and play Scavengers on Steam or the Epic Games Store.
How many players do they have? According to Steam charts, they had a peak of 12,263 players online at the same time. For a game that actually has such limited access, that’s quite a lot.
Is Scavengers also coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X? At the moment, Scavengers is only available for PC. However, the game is set to be released for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, and Xbox One.
Scavengers is a field trial for the MMO wonder technology SpatialOS
What makes Scavengers so special? Since 2017, the server technology “SpatialOS” from the company Improbable has been regarded as “the possible new innovation” for MMOs and MMORPGs. An overlapping server technology should enable games to represent and simulate vast worlds – even without being a massive AAA project.
The company’s technology is considered so exciting that the start-up Improbable received a $500 million investment in May 2017, which made the company worth over a billion dollars early on. Improbable now employs over 600 people.
This technology has only been used by a few indie games so far, none of which have managed to establish themselves. MMORPGs like Worlds Adrift or Chronicles of Elyria are already dead. The other games with SpatialOS either have not released yet or are totally niche.
The indie studio Midwinter, which was working on the shooter Scavengers, was ultimately bought by Improbable, so they could finally get a game that made their technology accessible to a wide audience.
We explained the connections in our MeinMMO podcast this week.
With the new server technology, Scavengers is now able to simulate enormous worlds with up to 9,000 simultaneous participants. This apparently interests some players. And from now on, anyone who wants to check out Scavengers can do so:
9,000 players at the same time in a battle? The new shooter Scavengers wants to make it possible
