Evil Raptor Patches Far Far West After Launch Spike Trips Anti-DDoS Block

Co-op shooter Far Far West shipped on Steam this week and immediately overwhelmed its own backend. Developer Evil Raptor confirmed the network provider's anti-DDoS system tripped on the launch spike, locking players out of public lobbies and freezing the in-game promo code redemption.

The studio first showed off the robot cowboy shooter at the Steam Next Fest in February, where the demo became one of the breakout hits of the event. The full release has gone further, selling more than 250,000 copies in two days and sitting on an "overwhelmingly positive" rating across 8,900-plus Steam reviews three days after launch.

In a Steam update, Evil Raptor said the surge of players triggered the anti-DDoS filter, which read organic traffic as an attack.

"Our network provider's anti-DDoS system has triggered due to the spike in player count that happened today. This means that currently, you won't be able to join public lobbies, or claim promo codes in-game."

— Evil Raptor

The studio warned players to leave the promo code untouched while the system was down, since the redemption flow could mark accounts as having claimed the reward without granting it. The code itself is 250KCOWBOYS, posted on Bluesky to mark the sales milestone.

"HOLY COW!! Thank y'all so much, it means the world to us to see you all enjoying FFW so much."

— Far Far West

I see a small studio paying for its own success here, which fits the run Evil Raptor has had since the demo turned into a sleeper hit.

While the network was down, Evil Raptor pinned the slow turnaround on its hosting partner.

"The network fix is taking longer than we thought as our excellent service provider is currently drinking mojitos instead of helping."

— Evil Raptor

Far Far West remained playable in the interim. Solo runs worked normally, and groups could still play together using Steam session codes or direct invites, which kept reviews from tilting negative during the outage.

A follow-up Discord post confirmed servers were back online but flagged that promo codes were still misbehaving. To stop relying on the strained network entirely, the team rolled out a workaround on a public beta branch.

"We'll no longer need our network to work for everyone to play games in online sessions, which is NICE!"

— Evil Raptor

Players willing to opt in can switch to the Far Far West beta branch on Steam and join the dedicated beta Discord to help test the patch before it reaches the main branch. Evil Raptor framed the broader testing pool as the fastest route to a stable build for everyone else.

I think shipping the workaround as an opt-in beta rather than pushing it cold to every player is the right call, given how fragile the launch backend has been.

A later Steam post then declared the issue resolved, with the studio confirming that promo codes and public lobbies were both working again. That marks three status updates from Evil Raptor inside a single weekend, after the original outage notice and the partial-fix announcement.

Far Far West's premise, a co-op cowboy shooter where the playable cast is made up of robots that also happen to be wizards, explains some of the demand pressure. Its Steam Next Fest appearance generated enough word of mouth to push the launch numbers past what the studio's infrastructure was sized for. The 250,000-copy figure was reached in 48 hours, with the review rating climbing alongside it.

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