Puck B897 is finally here! It's the biggest update the game has ever seen. After nearly a year of work, this release introduces matchmaking, parties, a full UI overhaul, significant security improvements, and a major wave of bug fixes and stability improvements that followed shortly after. Here's everything that's new:
Matchmaking & Parties
ELO-based ranked matchmaking with a starting rating of 1000 - queue solo or with your party
RTT (ping) & ELO-based matching to keep games fair and low-latency
Set a maximum acceptable ping for matchmaking directly in the game settings
Cooldowns for match abandonment and failure to join matches
Full Steam lobby integration - create, disband, and invite friends to parties via the in-game UI or Steam overlay
Match history tracked on the backend (in-game UI coming in a future update)
Voting & Ranked Progression
Voting system reworked from the ground up with full matchmaking integration
New /forfeit (/ff) command to forfeit a match early
/kick now limited to members of your own team
Teams that abandon a match are automatically given a loss
Getting kicked from a match no longer results in a matchmaking cooldown
MMR gain and loss per match increased for more meaningful ranked progression
UI Overhaul
Sass integration for a more streamlined development flow going forward
All UI elements unified for a consistent look across all windows and popups
Performance improvements for both game clients and dedicated servers
Server browser filters improved and moved to a dedicated window
Scoreboard visual improvements
Security
Steam ID validation on server connection, further validated with the backend
Automated throttling and banning of backend communication abuse
Filtered data flow - game clients and servers only receive information relevant to them
Improved message parsing and error handling for unexpected backend communication
Improved game chat filter covering Unity rich text and profanity
Modding
Refactored all mod download and installation logic
Informational popup listing all required mods when connecting to a server
Subscriptions, upvotes, and downvotes visible in the confirmation popup and mods management window
Mod titles are now clickable and open the relevant Steam Workshop page
Mods that fail to install or are cancelled are now properly disabled
Gameplay & Client Fixes
Fixed game crashes caused by DirectX 12 - Windows clients now default to DirectX 11
Special characters now render correctly in the UI, fixing missing characters for most languages (font atlas now generates dynamically)
Starting warmup while in the FaceOff phase no longer leaves players frozen
Knocked-down players are now properly reset when prepared for a FaceOff
Player names now correctly display above heads when the setting is enabled
Fixed player sticks jittering during replay playback
Fixed /votestart (/vs) during a replay failing to dispose replay objects
Dedicated Servers
Ping/RTT server switched from UDP to TCP
Server now provides detailed state data to the server browser via TCP socket
Tick rate bumped to 200 for all dedicated servers, including matchmaking servers
Performance optimizations for dedicated server builds
Additional CLI arguments for controlling multi-server instances
Fixed a dedicated server crash when no goal was scored for a prolonged period
Backend
Fixed infinite resource drain that eventually crashed the backend after server capacity was reached
Fixed rate limiter falsely triggering on legitimate requests
Build versioning
You might have noticed a big jump in the build number - from B202 all the way to B897. Game client and dedicated server versions are now based on commit count, so that's not a typo! Thank you to everyone who stuck around, reported bugs, and jumped into games right after launch. It means a lot.