Outriders is a single-player loot shooter with optional cooperative play. So why did it become completely unplayable after the first few days due to server issues? This is not the first time People Can Fly has designed a game like this, but it is a reminder of how it can backfire.

Outriders' subreddit is full of fans eager to see the main player level up, but instead many are complaining about being stuck on the login screen. Meanwhile, People Can Fly has been sending out hourly updates on Twitter in an attempt to restart the servers and return Outriders to a healthy state. We know that the server problems will eventually be resolved and it will be smooth sailing. The sudden fade to black feels almost intentional, as if People Can Fly, noticing my poor performance, decided to close the curtains on themselves so they wouldn't have to watch anymore. The oddly cinematic setback also creates an already tragically funny moment of timing.

Even when the servers are at their best, "Outriders" is a worse game for not having an offline mode. Repeat after me: I can't. Can't. Pause. Always. From Software's "Souls" series has been neglected for too long, and more and more games have recently been unable to pause in single-player. For some reason, Valheim restricts single-player pausing; Destiny 2 has historically prohibited pausing, but at least most areas of that game are shared worlds that players can organically enter and exit. Also, Destiny's areas are large enough that you can ride a sparrow west for a few seconds, find a quiet place to stand up and pee.

Outriders levels are delimited arenas, and you can either get caught up in a conflict or move on in a straight line to the next one; co-op is completely optional, so you can opt out of random players joining your squad and pause the game for a You should be able to opt-in.

Unfortunately, Outriders' online requirements are likely to go nowhere. If the game was built from the ground up to constantly ping the servers (which it seems to have been, seeing as how the game shuts down completely on the first issue), then removing that feature may not be a trivial task.

Let the disastrous release date of "Outriders" be a warning to studios working on single-player and multiplayer hybrid games. It will be worth it just to have something for thousands of players to do when all the servers are on fire.