Microsoft says Flight Simulator 2024 still suffers from access problems despite adding more server capacity to handle demand

After a troubled launch that has only grown more concerning as time goes on, Microsoft has provided an update on the ongoing situation with MSFS 2024 and its severe stability/crashing issues, and all is still not well. The team behind MSFS 2024 posted on X that more server capacity has been added to the simulator, helping improve player accessibility. However, this has not permanently fixed accessibility issues for all players.

Microsoft is continuing to struggle to meet the incredible amount of concurrent players playing (or trying to load) MSFS 2024. Playability issues began on launch day two days ago, when the vast majority of players couldn’t play the game, with some even unable to install the game at all, representing one of the worst game launches in history. The cheery on top was that Microsoft neglected to share any pre-launch codes with reviewers, preventing many 3rd-party reviewers, including Tom’s Hardware, from providing a thorough review of the game at launch.

A day later, Microsoft provided a video update on the state of the game and clarification on the issues occurring. It turns out that Microsoft only tested the game’s servers with 200,000 simulated users before launch to ensure that the game could handle that many players. However, despite Microsoft’s preparation attempts, the backend was purportedly instantly overwhelmed on launch day and the days after. Obviously, player counts for MSFS 2024 are well over 200,000, which gives us an idea of how popular Microsoft’s new simulator is.

MSFS 2024 is suffering from overwhelmed backend services responsible for virtually all game accessibility problems and the vast majority of game stability issues. The mission service database, in particular, is completely maxed out, resulting in many users being unable to fly missions in-game. Default planes are also missing from the user’s libraries.

Thankfully, Microsoft is working on stopping these issues entirely. However, the trillion-dollar company has still not provided a roadmap or a deadline on when full game functionality will be restored to all players. We’re monitoring for more updates from the Microsoft team and will follow up as neccesary.