Marauders News

Space Pirate Pack Reveal!

"Say hello to my little friend!"

Pre-order marauders.game now to enjoy the Space Pirate pack, available at Early Access launch! 🏴‍☠️

Marauders closed alpha on Steam was "three times" bigger than expected

The last time we spoke with Small Impact Games, the developers behind Marauders, the team were confident they were at the "precipice of a new genre". Extraction shooters like Escape From Tarkov, Hunt: Showdown, and Vigor had long been knocking on the door of mainstream success and Small Impact wanted a slice of the pie. Fast forward a couple of months, and it seems the studio's predictions are looking good, with Marauders' first closed alpha surpassing all expectations.

The alpha, which was available to anyone who pre-ordered the game on Steam, was open for just six days, from May 4-9. During that time, thousands of players flooded the servers - overloading them on the first day - in a bid to take to the skies in their very own spaceship and loot the hell out of floating raid locations.

"It was stressful but crazy exciting at the same time," James Rowbotham, lead designer, tells The Loadout. "It proved to be a lot bigger than we expected - three times that, actually - but the game held up really well, people seemed to find it fun, and loads of people streamed it."

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Message from the Small Impact Games team - Thank you!

We at Small Impact Games are incredibly grateful for all the players that jumped into the Alpha.

The feedback has been invaluable, and will make the Beta candidate even better.
We will be looking to display even more content in the Beta, some of it being planned, and some of it being newly requested features from the Alpha. The community that has grown so far has blown us away, and all the suggestions have been on point. It's a pleasure to have players and developers united in a vision for the game, it makes our job even more enjoyable!

Everything from trending on Steam for followers, or being in the top 10 on Twitch, smashed our expectations for the Alpha, so we are now preparing for an even larger Beta but most importantly...

Having a larger map. 👀

Until next time, space pirates...

- The Small Impact Games team.

Small Impact Games AMA Recap 📑

If you missed the livestream last week, here is our Small Impact Games AMA Recap! 📑

They answered questions about customisation, raids improvements, QoL additions, ship combat and more 🔗 bit.ly/SIG_AMA

Marauders developers didn't expect anyone to cheat in the Steam alpha

When Small Impact Games set the servers live for the first Marauders closed alpha on Steam two weeks ago, the team expected to see exhilarating space battles, extract camping, and squabbles over loot. Instead, in the first 24 hours, Small Impact had to fight a small, but unexpected fire started by cheaters.

Although the servers had only just gone live, the development team had to work out how and why certain bad faith actors rocketed to the top of the leaderboards. The servers at the time were wobbling due to the sheer number of people trying to get into the game, all while certain names became billionaires without playing a single game. It's a problem all too familiar with online multiplayer games, but it's one the team wasn't expecting to fight in an alpha.

That's because, for the last two years, Marauders has been developed with the help of 3,000 loyal players - all who backed the game when it originally hit crowdfunding platform Fig. "I think we've been spoiled by our Fig community," lead developer James Rowbotham tells The Loadout when we ask about the cheating. "They're very friendly, so we never had those problems." The team assumed that because the alpha was being opened only to those who pre-ordered the game the rules of war would stay the same. It didn't.

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