Eight players, one lobby: our first worldwide playtest
On May 9, 2025, it finally happened: eight different people, connecting from around the world, joined the same lobby and played VHL together. Not a local test. Not a LAN session. Real players, real distances, real internet.
This was the session we'd been building toward since the April stress test announcement, and it was the biggest test the game had faced. Every previous multiplayer milestone happened under controlled conditions. This one didn't. Eight clients on eight different connections meant the matchmaking lobby, the server, and the netcode all had to hold up under conditions we couldn't script.
They did. Players found the lobby, matches ran, and for the first time VHL felt like what it's meant to become: strangers and friends on the same ice, competing in real time no matter where they live.
A playtest at this scale also produces something no solo session can: a long list of things to fix. Real connections surface the edge cases that controlled tests never do, and that list shaped a lot of the work that followed. That's exactly what playtests are for.
Want to be in the next one? Sessions are always announced first on Discord, and recordings land on our YouTube channel.