Guns of Icarus Online News

Just a quick note to let you all know that the Steam Wargaming Fest is coming to an end today at 10am PDT so if you’re looking to complete your Guns collection on Steam, now is the time.

We had an amazing time playing with everyone on Thursday and Friday, so keep an eye out for more events like that in the future. If you haven’t already, head over to our Discord server as that’s where we tend to hang out and play some Guns!

Until next time,

- The Team at Muse Games

To commemorate Wargames Fest, we the devs are returning to the game. We’ll be in-game on Thursday, May 1st at 7:00 PM EDT and Friday, May 2nd at 3:00 PM EDT to play with everyone for a couple of hours. We’ll also bring back the old dev games tradition. If you play in a match with us, take a screenshot in the lobby, and you’ll get a code for an item of your choice.

To hang out with us during the dev session, head over to our Discord where the event will take place. We’re looking forward to jumping back into the skies with old and new faces!

Then, take a screenshot of the end-game screen which shows you played with us, and post it in #WarGamesEvent in our Discord to receive any Muse-made item of your choice from the in-game market. Be sure to include your item choice with your post!

In-Spire-d makes a return just to be blown up? We’ll have to find out.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/209080/Guns_of_Icarus_Online/


- Howard for Team Muse

Seeing so many people across the years respond to our post, jumping back into the comments and the Guns Discord, with many little stories and moments shared, we felt really moved and nostalgic, so we wanted to gather some of these stories together for everyone.

If you have a fond memory, a funny story, or met a group of people that have been a part of your life while playing our games, we would love to hear them!

Drop them in the comments here or post them in the General chat in the Guns Discord. We'll collect them all and share them with everyone.

[h3]Let me share mine first, one about how we started:[/h3]

Releasing a game that we’ve worked on for over 2 years should be a cause for joy and celebration. For us, it turned out to be the biggest crisis we’ve ever faced. Leading up to release, positive and supportive articles, previews, and videos by journalists and casters gave the game some momentum. Our Kickstarter backers and alpha/beta players were also incredible at helping us test, fix issues, and get the word out. Later in beta (when people could pre-order) and when the game went live, it reached #2 in Indie and #7 overall on Steam. I took a screenshot and savored for a brief moment. Then disaster struck, literally. Survival was once again on the line.



We had known that Hurricane Sandy was building, but we had no idea how devastating it would end up being. On the eve of the game’s launch, we found that out for ourselves first hand. As the game went live, most of NYC, NJ, and Connecticut’s power and internet were being knocked out, and there was severe flooding and debris falling everywhere. New York was not (and still isn’t) equipped to handle a hurricane, and the city was battered to a halt. There were no subway lines running, no buses or cars on the street. The wind shook buildings, and windows panes were falling away and shattering on the pavements. Cranes on buildings under construction were torn and dangling precariously. Trees fell, houses flooded and uprooted near the shores.

The area around our building was flooded, and we would end up having no power and internet in our space for almost a month. A month later, after the storm had passed, I went out to the Rockaways to volunteer. For miles, there would be nothing open, no electricity, and almost no activities of daily life. At a gas station, people would line up over 10 blocks or what seemed like a mile to get gas under army surveillance. At the volunteer station, we went through huge piles of various items of necessity, and it wasn’t enough. All this hit on the night we released the game.



Around release, we had a lot of players in-game, and a lot of them had very rough experiences. Servers were teetering and going down as the storm slammed our hosting company’s facilities. Steam’s servers that we used for authentication and voice were very unstable as well. Disconnections, match slowdowns, server overloading and hangups abounded. We had slow to no access to Steam’s dev portal as well as our site, so had a desperate time supporting players or even updating our Steam page info. We also had player reported issues with disconnections, crashes, frame drops, etc., that were new to us. The game released, and it was at or near the top of Steam’s charts. Yet, we had no time to do anything else but to buckle down and get to work. I was stressed out and wanted to freak out, but players were waiting and everything that could have gone wrong was going wrong, so there was really no time for that.

For the first week, because most of us had no internet or power for long stretches, we had to divide up the support roles. A couple of us who had internet were on player support, updating players on Steam forum, our forum, and in game for pretty much all our waking hours. The programmers were debugging and trying to divert traffic to server regions that were unaffected by the hurricane. One problem we had was that the build machine we were using to deploy builds was in our studio room, and the building was closed off by the NYPD, and submerged in one story of water. We had quite a few fixes that we urgently needed to commit and deploy. We mulled over our options, trying to figure out if we could deploy without the machine. If we couldn't, who should go in to retrieve it, and where could we relocate and set the machine up. One of our programmers decided to go because he knew what to get and knew the deploy code the best. He biked in, but our building was closed off. He was standing by while we haggled with the building security trying to talk our way in. Finally, he made it in, grabbed what we needed, ditched his bike (which was actually still there a day later), and rode an absolutely cramped bus to my apartment where I had power and internet working. For the rest of the day and night, he set up the build machine while I updated our status and supported players. The programmers made fixes and deployed while the rest of us then jumped on support. And while the servers were being overloaded, we were manually starting matches for people and in game helping people pretty much non-stop.

We probably had one of the most harrowing, stressful, and sleepless launch weeks ever, but we stuck together and fought through it. With conditions being as rough as it was, we lost players for certain. Some people had a rough time in the game and quit the game forever. But to see how supportive a lot of the players were was also very uplifting. We got a lot of nice posts on Steam like this one below:

First off I would like to congratulate you on releasing a great game; the gameplay, art, and music compliment each other incredibly well. Second off, wishing everybody is all right in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and hopefully the team is back at full force soon.

And they definitely motivated us to work hard for the players and to keep the game alive. Over the next few weeks, we would roll in patch after patch. Desperate times called for desperate measures. At least the players knew we were trying everything we could. We identified many issues to fix and things to improve on over the coming weeks and months, but our initial bond with our players was forged through a hurricane. Because of the support of our players and our community, we accomplished the most important thing in the early days of the game - not dying.


Thanks so much everyone!

- Howard for Team Muse

Greetings, captains and crews of the skies,

It’s been a long while since we’ve spoken to you here, and it’s about time we caught up. We, Muse Games, have grown up as a team. We’ve worked on and released multiple titles, and we are independent. So, what are we here to talk about? First of all, you.

The Guns of Icarus community have been with us for over a decade now. That’s incredibly humbling, and heartwarming for the entire team. To see you all still out there, flying in the skies we first created in Flight of the Icarus back in 2010 is amazing. So, firstly, we wanted to say, thank you.

Thank you for investing in our world, and thank you for helping shape and share the story we’ve all made together. Not many studios are as lucky to have a community as strong as the Guns of Icarus community, and we do not take that for granted.

We wanted to let you know that we’ve been working on something. Something we think you’re going to like. A lot. We’re going back to our roots. While we can’t tell you too much more at the moment, let’s just say that the sky is no longer the limit.

You’re going to be hearing a lot more from us in the coming weeks and months, so be sure to stick around and join us on Discord.

See you in the skies, and beyond…

Howard for Team Muse

This year we're celebrating our 10th birthday! 10 years of airships, rams, explosions, and friends.



[h2]A Note from Us Devs[/h2]
To all the privateers, captains, and crew that have ever braved the skies over the wastelands, we want to thank you from the bottom of our souls for supporting us over the last decade.

A decade! Before we set out, we had a dream of making something that people hadn’t quite experienced before, but we certainly didn’t imagine that 10 years later, people would still be playing and supporting the game. Thank you for making our dream come true.

When we started, we had just been digging out a predatory publisher relationship, and we released Guns on the day of a category 3 hurricane. We honestly weren’t sure if we were going to make it or even be able to support the game. Many times I have had those life flashing before my eyes moments - servers blown up, DDoS’ed, hurricane, studio space burnt down, etc. Each time, we found strength and comfort in everyone’s support. All the interactions on forums and at conventions, all the late nights we spent with you in game, chit-chatting about life in the lobbies of Icarus, they mattered, and they kept us going.

When matches did start, it was amazing to see how much creativity and teamwork were possible, way beyond our imaginations and machinations. The thousands of feedback we worked on with you turned into close to 6.5M matches played, 24M ships destroyed, and 8.8B shots fired in the skies. These stats still look surreal to us.

In the last few years, we’ve had to shift our focus to create new game experiences such as Hamsterdam, Embr, and now Wildmender, in order to survive as a team and studio. We’ve handed the reins of game management to our interns, moderators, CAs, and dedicated players. We wanted to take a moment to thank them for all their support - Richard LeMoon, Portable Grump, Lysanya, Kajros, Loosepolygon, Alpha Sierra, Infinity Omelette, Delorum, Josie. Nerdhector, -Genesis, D.Strought, Zetnus, MaddBoi, Abby, Mr Trickery, Nedsvart, Sandy Hawkins, Tindwunnel, Frostbound, Teaco, Psi Crow, Saldarim, Bookkeepper, Krybon, Captainjan, Sprinkler, Ortagon, Chickenrun, Ambiorix, Coldcurse, FrozenHotSauce, Guras, Huskyneer, Mr.Moonwalker, Zyem, and others. We would not have gotten this far without you. Thank you for everything!

We made this game for you, and we’re so thankful that 10 years after release, we get to write this note. To more years in the skies!



[h2]Giveaway Event[/h2]
To celebrate this improbably and special milestone, we're giving away a big pack of goodies, including:

• An exclusive new title
  
• A fancy dye + outfit bundle
  
• A crew loadout slot
  
• A ship loadout slot
  

Additionally, we are asking for your help to Wishlist our new project called Wildmender. For your support, we would like to offer an exclusive new themed outfit based on our new game, Wildmender. You’ll also receive a code to unlock a pair of exclusive hats in Wildmender once they’re ready!



Wildmender is our new project in development. It is an open world survival experience set in an arid world. You get to explore the land, cultivate an oasis, and bring the world slowly back to life.

On top of that, we’ll also enter you into a giveaway for one of these wonderful faction banners! These are one of a kind, so please tell us which one you’d like if you win. 4 banners, 4 lucky winners!

• Anglean Republic
  
• Mercantile Guild
  
• Fjord Baronies
  
• Order of Chaladon
  

Here’s the Steam page to wishlist:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1599330/Wildmender/

If you email us a screenshot of your Wildmender wishlist to [email protected], we’ll send you a code for all of the items! This giveaway will end November 14th, 2022 at 12pm UTC
Happy Anniversary and happy Halloween!

[h2]The 10th Birthday Tournament[/h2]
The 10th Birthday Tournament is a semi-competitive tournament with single ship sign-ups. The matches will include Crazy King, King of the Hill, and Deathmatch.

The matches will be streamed starting at 7pm UTC on Sunday, October 30th.
The matches will be streamed by Fredrik Knudsen on our Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/musegamesnyc

- Team Muse