Hello everyone!
I’m here to announce a surprise update to the game. But before we get our expectations blown out of proportion, this update contains only a change to our Multiplayer Backend. We are rolling out the Nakama infrastructure to host cross-store PC multiplayer.
With this update we are completely removing our internally developed Multiplayer backend (PDXMP) that is currently used by all stores excluding Steam, which uses the built in Steam backend. The reason for this change is because we believe that Nakama, developed by an external partner, is more stable than our current in-house solution.
What this will mean for you as a player is hopefully nothing different from how you normally play the game. This update should not affect your single player experience whatsoever and if you have the game installed on Steam and don’t have friends on other platforms you won’t be affected by the Multiplayer change either.
The only people this will affect are those of you that play the game on Steam and want to play multiplayer with your friends that have bought Stellaris on other platforms (such as the Microsoft store). You might already know about the crossplay Steam Beta branch we have had in place prior to today, but from this update and forward you will now be able to launch the Crossplay version straight from the launcher!
All you have to do is go into “Game Settings” in the launcher and scroll down to “Cross Store Multiplayer” and click “Launch” as shown below:
If for some reason that doesn’t work, you can also add “-nakama” as a launch option in Steam. Do this by Right-Clicking Stellaris, Going to Properties, General Tab and adding “-nakama” to the Launch Options. This will force the game to switch from the Steam multiplayer backend to the new one for crossplay purposes!
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######################### VERSION 3.0.4 ###########################
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# Performance and Stability
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* Replaced PDXMP multiplayer backend layer with Nakama.
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Thank you for playing Stellaris, and if you experience any issues with Nakama Multiplayer please report them on the Bug Report forums!