Catan Universe News

Hi Catanians,


in this week's Developer Update we want to give you some insights on the impact of the changes we introduced last week and we will provide you with an overview of what to expect in the coming weeks.

Please note that due to the holiday season we won´t be able to post a developer update next week. But we will be back on Jan 3rd with more info regarding our next moves to resolve known issues with the game.

Week Dec. 12th - 18th

This week we focused on releasing the client update alongside backend updates which heavily focussed on matchmaking and increasing the overall performance of our database. The client update also included a fix for display issues on macOS devices. MacOS users now can load the game scene again. We also saw the number of games being played on our platform increase.

Our metrics show an improvement in the database CPU usage after we released a backend update on Dec 13th.




This massive drop now gives us the breathing room we need to have a much more stable system overall. Based on your feedback we saw that these changes did lead to a noticeable improvement on your end as well. We are happy to hear that. Of course, we are aware that there are still issues and we will address those. We stand by that and won´t stop until the game works as you expect it.


Weeks Dec 18th - Jan 1st

Our team is analyzing your feedback and logs after the latest changes we introduced.

We are aware of issues with placing board pieces and of users dropping out of games. We are also aware of desynced games and of custom-match lobbies not always working as intended. We also got feedback that a certain number of users are still having issues with matchmaking and that the replacement AI is not working as intended.

Our team is working on fixes for these issues.

Now that we have the computing capacity available due to last week's changes we focus on working out these issues while knowing those aren´t caused by a generally poor-performing database.

Our team will keep monitoring your feedback also in the week after Christmas and we are available to resolve immanent issues with the servers or database. But we won´t be able to introduce code fixes to the backend or client between Dec. 23rd and Jan 2nd.

We want to thank you for your patience and ongoing feedback. It helps us a lot.

The matchmaking for Automatches and Freematches will now wait longer for all players to get matched properly, resulting in fewer failed attempts

The Steam version will now continue to run when you switch to another window/desktop

The macOS Version will now properly load the in-game scene

The iOS version won´t display an error message about missing push notification support on launch


For further info about our ongoing efforts to resolve issues with the game please see our weekly developer updates

Matchmaking for Automatch and Freematch is now more robust to ensuring Catanians get into matches more reliable

Hi Catanians,

in this week's developer update we want to talk about the progress we made last week and what you can expect this week.

Last week Dec 5th - Dec 11th


Our team focussed on implementing and testing the client update, which concentrates on matchmaking. The clients will get more time to process matchmaking requests and therefore they should be more reliable. We tested the changes on all the platforms we offer Catan Universe on. We also added multiple fixes to the backend that are also focused on matchmaking itself.

Our team also started to work on improvements for the matches themselves. We saw them being slow, unresponsive, and overall lacking performance causing to often display a “reconnecting” message.

This week Dec 12th - Dec 18th

The builds for the clients have been submitted to the stores but unfortunately, the GooglePlay Store hasn´t approved the version yet.

In our effort to make a noticeable change for all of our Catanians, we will have to wait until the CU client was approved by Google before moving forward with the release. We will let you know once the clients are ready to download.

Our team on the other hand finished their work on the backend improvements for the matches we mentioned above. These changes will be published today on Dec13th. We will monitor the changes closely throughout the rest of the week.

Please note that when we publish these backend changes your running match might restart.

Hi Catanians,

here is the most recent developer update on the tasks we tackled last week and what we are doing this week.

Nov 28th to Dec 4th


Last week we focussed on providing further fixes to the cloud code in preparation for the client update we are working on this week.

We focused on the matchmaking as well as schedulers for the online games. We resolved an issue which caused the matchmaker to completely fail after it encountered an issue. It will now restart if it should encounter an issue. We also moved some part of the matchmaking systems into the cloud code and out of the clients to make them run more efficiently in the future. This change will come into full effect once we released the client update next week. Our team had been able to finish it work on the client last week allowing us to test it this week.

You might have noticed that the map error pop up disappeared. This was the matchmaking failing and not recovering properly.

We also investigated the MacOS graphical issues. So far we haven´t been able to pinpoint down what it causing it but we will keep on working on it.

Our team also worked on resolving rarely occurring migration issues. We have been able to introduce 2 more fixes for those.

If you haven´t been able to migrate yet, please try again now.


Dec 5th to Dec 11th

This week we are focussing on 3 main tasks.

Testing the Client update, further optimizing the cloud code where it is possible and resolving the Mac OS graphical issue.

As mentioned above, the client update will focus on making the matchmaking much more robust. The changes we will introduce to the client, will result in longer waiting times for you. But we are confident, that our Catanians rather wait a little longer in a loading screen than not being able to play multiplayer at all.

Yesterday we introduced multiple smaller updates to the cloud code with extensive logging to narrow down further areas for improving our queries.

It is our goal to make the game enjoyable again for you with the client updates on Dec 13th. But this won´t be the end of the journey. We are fully committed to improve on Catan Universe beyond that and we do have plans for that already.