'I am surprised I’ve not gone grey!': Satisfactory's community is celebrating its 5th birthday with a grand tournament, and even the devs are joining in
Enter the Thunderdome.
We're just a few days away from Satisfactory's 1.0 release and fifth anniversary, and to celebrate, the community has decided to put together a tournament. Everyone's invited to join, including the developers.
The tournament will include a special version of the Satlympics, which involves teams from the Netherlands, France, Germany, USA, UK, and Coffee Stain Studios. All of these teams will compete head-to-head in three games: an extreme version of parkour, solving complex puzzles to build a radar tower (and parachuting off said tower), and replicating a QR code—the first with a successful scan wins.
Talking to NME about the event, a community member and organiser who goes by Barry reflects on how much fun it is to have some of the developers join in: "[it] really strengthens the bond between Coffee Stain and the Satisfactory community."
It's not all sunshine and rainbows, though. While this event looks incredible, it's taken a lot of hard work: "I am surprised I’ve not gone grey!" Barry says. It's important that this event looks as professional as possible—after all, the fifth anniversary and 1.0 release are significant milestones. With this in mind, Barry was set on providing multiple different feeds for viewers to enjoy and watch, but that's not easy. "In the past, I experienced significant issues with memory and CPU, causing the stream to grind to a halt towards the end of the show."
"Organizing something like this is something I don’t think we could’ve done as well as our community does it," Snutt Treptow, a community manager at Coffee Stain Studios, told NME. "I don’t think we could quite capture the charm and wholesomeness that comes from it being organized by members of our community of their own volition." However, he also reassures players that Coffee Stain is always open to nurturing these kinds of events and supporting the community.
The tournament will begin on March 16 at 6 a.m. PDT/ 9 a.m. EDT/ 3 p.m. CET/ 2 p.m. GMT, and you can tune in on the Satisfactory Events Twitch channel to experience the competitive chaos firsthand.