Atlas hasn’t had a great deal of luck since its launch at the end of December. An incident yesterday that saw an Atlas admin account compromised led to some rather chaotic in-game events, including planes falling from the sky, a number of tanks being randomly deployed (despite having no place in the game), and a large group of whales chilling out in the sea.
A player named BurkeBlack happened to be streaming on Twitch at the time that the events unfolded and managed to capture the footage of a plane as it exploded in the sea, next to his ship — thanks, RPS. You can check out his reaction in the clip below:
Developers Grapeshot Games were quick to take action, rolling back the NA PvP server where the incident took place. They have also issued a statement on the official forums stating that the incident was not the cause of a hack, third-party program, or exploit, but simply someone managing to get hold of an Atlas admin account on Steam. They also stated that they have “taken the appropriate steps to ensure this does not happen again.”
This doesn’t seem to have mollified fans if the replies on the forums are anything to go by. Many players are calling for a complete server wipe to “remove all the duped s**t out of the game” while others want confirmation that those responsible for the incident have been banned or dealt with appropriately.
The pirate-themed MMO from Grapeshot Games has been plagued with various bugs and performance issues, as well as several delays leading up to its initial launch onto Steam Early Access back in December. Network failure messages, exploding Ramshackle Sloops, and poorly communicated level decreases aside, Atlas does have a lot of potential if it can overcome its (quite substantial) teething problems.