A week before launch the studio is calling everyone in for a stress test on 2 September, 17:00 UTC. It is called DROP INTO THE FIRING RANGE, and its purpose is engineering rather than play: to put the login queue and the backend under real load before everyone arrives at once on 10 September.
What is actually being tested
Not maps and not balance — the backend: login, queue, server allocation. Exactly what buckled first during the closed beta, when players met a queue in the first minutes. The studio is openly asking people to slam the system: this is the case where a crowd is worth more than a dozen testers.
Game servers may go up too, but the wording is careful: "a handful of servers for the evening, no promises". The point of the day is the firing range and the ability to get in at all, not a full match.
What we do not know yet
The studio has not said who can join — whether entry is open to everyone or limited to pre-orders and Steam Playtest access, the two routes that worked for the closed beta. As soon as that is clarified we will add it here rather than start a second story.
Why now
The date is not a coincidence. On 3 September the studio runs its own show with a promised major announcement, and on 10 September comes Early Access. A stress test the day before the show means meeting the wave of attention with a login queue that has already been hit — instead of finding out on launch day.
We will be measuring the player count that evening with our own collector, as we do every ten minutes: the curve will be on the stats page.