How a managed server picks up new engine versions — at once when empty, or at a quiet moment with an in-game countdown when players are online.
Game Server Updates
When we ship a new version of the game server, your managed server picks it up by itself. If nobody is online it updates right away. If players are online, it no longer waits for the world to be empty — it schedules the update for a quiet moment, warns everyone in game, saves the world, and restarts. Players reconnect on their own.
Where to set it up#
Account → Studio → your project → Server → Game server updates (the panel above Custom domain).
How to set it up#
- Open the studio dashboard and select your project's managed server.
- Find the Game server updates panel.
- Choose When players are online: Schedule the update (recommended) or Wait until the server is empty.
- Pick Update at the latest within — the longest an update may wait while your world is busy.
- Pick Update early when players online are at most — the update starts as soon as your population drops this low.
- Optionally set Quiet hours (start hour in UTC and length) — the update starts inside that window.
- Pick the In-game countdown length.
- Optionally tick Dry run first to see in Activity what would happen without restarting anything.
- Click Save update settings.
Fields#
| Field | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| When players are online | Schedule the update: roll a busy world using the rules below. Wait until the server is empty: the old behaviour — the update waits until nobody is online, however long that takes. | Schedule |
| Update at the latest within | Hard deadline. Once a new version has waited this long, the countdown starts no matter how many players are online. 1 h – 7 days. | 1 day |
| Update early when players online are at most | Start the countdown as soon as this few players are online. Off means only quiet hours or the deadline start it. | 2 |
| Quiet hours start (UTC) / length | A daily window (UTC; may cross midnight) in which the countdown may start regardless of population. None turns it off. | None / 3 h |
| In-game countdown | How long players are warned before the restart. Everyone sees a message when it starts, then at 10, 5 and 1 minutes (whichever fit), then "restarting now". | 10 minutes |
| Dry run | Logs "would start a countdown now" in Activity instead of restarting. Nothing changes on the server. | Off |
What players see#
- A system chat message: "The server will restart in 10 minutes to update…", then reminders at 5 and 1 minutes.
- At zero, "The server is restarting now." The world is saved, the server restarts on the new version, and the game reconnects automatically — usually within a minute.
What you see#
The server's Activity list shows each step: Update scheduled, Update countdown, Scheduled update (or Update plan (dry run)), and Automatic update when an empty server updated immediately.
Gotchas#
- An empty server always updates immediately, whatever you choose here.
- "Wait until the server is empty" can mean never on a world that is always busy — you would stay on an old version (and miss fixes) until the world empties.
- Changing the settings during a countdown: switching to Wait until the server is empty or turning on Dry run calls the running countdown off, and players are told the restart was called off.
- Older servers whose server agent predates this feature cannot run the in-game countdown. They only update at the deadline, with a short "server is restarting" notice instead of the 10/5/1-minute warnings. Re-creating the server (or the next agent update) brings the countdown.
- Quiet hours are in UTC, not your local time.
- If the panel says scheduled updates are not enabled on the control plane yet, the platform hasn't switched this feature on; your server keeps the wait-until-empty behaviour until then.
- Only managed (ED5-hosted) servers are affected. Servers you host yourself update when you choose.
- There is no feature flag — this is a hosting setting, not a game feature.