Outriders Stuck at Sign-In: What's Going on?

Several new Outriders players have reported being stuck at the sign-in screen when booting up the game for the first time.

No launch is perfect. Massive hype and popularity coupled with the first 24 hours of a live gaming server becomes a recipe for disaster in essentially any context. Even the biggest names have suffered this result—from Bethesda Softworks' Elder Scrolls Online to every World of Warcraft expansion Blizzard has released in the past decade.

Square Enix's Outriders is no different.

Outriders Stuck at Sign-In

First, don't panic. The live team over at Outriders HQ is already aware of the issue. In fact, they're so on top of it, that they've already set up and are actively curating a support-like thread on Reddit to keep fans in the know about all things big and small over the next day or so.

Second, unfortunately, there isn't much to be done about this issue. It's caused by the massive amount of traffic heading to game servers all at once. As we mentioned before, this is extremely common on launch day. Everyone else is just as excited as you are to get in and start playing. The only thing eager players can really do is be patient and keep an eye on all the game's official support channels. This includes the official Outriders server status page.

In the meantime, while Square Enix works out an official fix, players have taken it upon themselves to figure out a work around. The most effective of these is simply restarting the game. This cancels the previous server request and issues a new one which may have better success at getting through—for various reasons we won't bore you with here.

Or, players could wait another couple hours before attempting to get in at all. Sometimes it pays to let others get the jump on a new system before traversing it yourself. Most of the issues and immediate traffic should have died down by then, leaving nothing but smooth sailing for those who hung back.