Friday the 13th: The Game Is Halting Regular Patches to Prepare for Dedicated Servers

The Friday the 13th: The Game provided an update on an October announcement that confirmed an engine upgrade for the game is in the works, an update that'll eventually introduce the long-awaited dedicated servers.

But in the meantime, regular updates will be postponed so that the game can be brought up to the latest version of the Unreal Engine. Upgrading it to this level will fix plenty of problems that plague the game, Gun Media's community lead said, and it'll also be essential for introducing the dedicated servers that the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions lack. As far as the timeframe for the completion of the engine upgrade goes, community lead Daniel "ShiftySamurai" Nixon said that April is a rough estimate due to how involved the process is.

"We estimate that the integration of the new engine will be completed, at the earliest, sometime in April," Nixon said. "The nature of this update means that there will be no regular patches until it is released. Upgrading the engine means touching every piece of content in the game, updating new content that is being created, and needing to retest all core features and gameplay balance to make sure they are not affected."

Among the various improvements that the new version will bring, players can expect to see better ragdoll physics, an improved all-around performance, and the necessary support for dedicated servers on the console versions. However, the dedicated servers won't release at the same time as the engine update patch.

"The engine update patch is, however, a critical component in getting Dedicated Servers functioning on consoles, and is absolutely required for us to get there. Unfortunately, that does mean that our focus has to be on the update first - so we'll need to wait until that's wrapping up to start estimating the work remaining to get to Dedicated Servers, and provide you with that information."

This means that all of the content listed on the roadmap beyond the recently released Part 5 Jason and the Pinehurst map will be delayed to reroute focus towards the engine update. Communication about the update progress and teasers for upcoming content will still come regularly from the devs.