After a few fits and starts, pirate MMO Atlas is now live on Twitch, with Steam early access to follow later today. Atlas is the new game from the creators of Ark: Survival Evolved, and fans eager to take to the high seas have had to wait a bit longer than they thought to get their hands on the new game.
Atlas was initially revealed at the Game Awards December 6, and Studio Wildcard sister studio Grapeshot Games said it planned to have the game ready to play the following week. That December 13 early access release date got pushed back to December 21 – only to get pushed back again to this morning.
With the massive popularity of Ark, fans were naturally eager to try the new MMO out – or short of that, to watch their favorite Twitch partners stream the game. But plans for a Friday night rollout to streamers were eventually scrubbed, as problems with the initial build delayed the launch by several hours.
In the grand scheme of game delays, of course, a few hours hardly registers on the radar. But fans were naturally frustrated when things didn’t pan out Friday night. Fortunately, Grapeshot Games eventually got a working build into the hands of streamers, and as of this writing it’s the most-watched game on Twitch with 195,197 viewers – not bad for a Saturday morning in the U.S.
Everyone else will get their shot at Atlas in a few hours – the Steam Early Access build is scheduled to go live at 15:00 EST/20:00 GMT.
Pathfinders, we expect early streaming of ATLAS to start this evening at approx 9:00 PM PST. Following that, the game will be ready for full Early Access Launch tomorrow by noon PST. We’ll keep you updated should there be any changes. Thank you for your patience and support ❤️
— ATLAS (@sailtheatlas) December 21, 2018
Atlas is an ambitious project: Grapeshot says it’ll support more than 40,000 players in a single world instance, and that world is around 45,000 square kilometers of ocean and islands.
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