StarRupture is dropping dedicated servers, and Update 3 will ship without them

Creepy Jar is ending active support for dedicated servers in StarRupture. The studio announced the decision in its October developer blog on Steam on 20 October. From now on it wants to focus fully on single-player and co-op, where one player hosts the session as a listen server.

Dedicated servers arrived with the game’s Early Access launch, but only ever as an experimental feature. “We regret to inform you that we are now ending active support for dedicated servers,” Creepy Jar wrote, and apologised to everyone affected. The studio says the change frees it up to expand and polish the game.

The servers won’t vanish overnight. Once Update 3 is out, version 0.3.5, the last build that supports dedicated servers, will remain available through a separate branch on Steam. It will not receive any further updates, so nothing from Update 3 onwards will reach it.

For anyone running a server, that means your world keeps working as long as every player stays on 0.3.5. If your group wants Update 3, someone will have to host a co-op session instead. Taking a fresh backup of the save before the update lands is a sensible move. The blog doesn’t say whether dedicated server saves can be carried over into a hosted co-op game.

Update 3 itself, whose name is still blacked out in the post, brings more than 20 new settings for tailoring a playthrough. Creepy Jar showed off a handful of them:

• Building stability can be switched off, so structures only need to connect to other buildings or terrain
• Passive enemies leave players and buildings alone unless provoked
• Fire wave frequency changes the interval between Ruptura’s eruptions
• Survival stats depletion sets how fast hydration and nutrition drop
• Starting corporations level lets a new save begin at any corporation level you pick

There is no release date for Update 3 yet. If your group currently plays on a dedicated server, now is a good time to decide who hosts once it arrives.