Video Games

Microsoft apologizes for Flight Simulator 2024 server troubles at launch

Project lead admits having underestimated the excitement for the title

Marco Wutz

Microsoft

Hobbyists from around the world took days off from work or slipped out of classes for the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on November 19, 2024, only to be grounded: Unfortunately, the majority of players seemed to run into server troubles as the infrastructure got overwhelmed – a luxury problem for Microsoft, but a severe issue nonetheless, because users were unhappy with that experience. Understandably so, of course.

Jorg Neumann, the project lead at Microsoft, and Sebastian Wloch, the CEO of Asobo, appeared in an update video released a few hours after launch to bring players the newest information on the ongoing problems.

“We knew the excitement was high for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, but frankly we completely underestimated how high and it really has overwhelmed our infrastructure,” Neumann said.

Asobo’s Sebastian Wloch went into more detail and recounted the exact problems the developer was facing, namely a cache for a specific service getting oversaturated. He said that tests with a simulated 200,000 players had gone well, indicating that Flight Sim 2024 hit a concurrent player count – or attempted concurrent player count, to be more precise – well above that target.

Wloch explained that the team had throttled access by introducing queues and user limits, which worked well for a time, but that increasing the number of allowed players later made the cache collapse again. 

“We are doing our best and going as fast as we can to make sure everybody can go in,” he said. Even players who do make it into the game may find that some content such as specific planes is missing – this is connected to the same server issues, Wloch noted.

“We’re really sorry,” Neumann added. “We want to apologize.”

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is now available on PC and Xbox Series X|S as well as via Xbox Game Pass.

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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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