Today’s Shadow news is brought to you by Luc the wise (Community Lead), Malte the fabulous (German CM), and That Ryan guy aka “Text to speech guy” (US CM).
As per usual these past few weeks, it will give you the latest update about COVID 19 impact on Shadow, followed by a Q&A session!
Don’t forget to check out Shadow’s blog article here (for Europe) and here for the US, as it is updated daily!
I) COVID 19’s impact on Shadow
1) Activations
a) Europe
Thanks to thorough monitoring and some actions taken, Shadow’s teams were able to mitigate the situation as much as possible. It allowed Shadow, among other things, to continue activating people on Shadow boost. Almost all people who should have been activated in February and March received their Boost.
Last weekend showed some positive results as there were no critical impacts during very high usage time, the overall situation is, little by little getting under control.
A reminder of Shadow’s actions to reduce COVID-19 impacts :
- Reducing the hibernation system to 30 minutes
- New prioritization system for the queue when necessary
- New technical measures to allow more concurrent users on Shadow at the same time
b) USA
Right now, there is a 3 to 4 week estimated wait time to get activated on Shadow’s data centers (New York and Dallas), if you were to subscribe now that is.
As for the Chicago data center, the estimated wait time is around 4 to 5 weeks.
Finally, in the California data center, there have been some networking issues spike up that their team has been monitoring very closely. As a result, activations are on hold there, but they hope to solve this very quickly.
NB: Regarding the payments issue, Shadow is still working on it and is actively working on a fix. Right now, the best thing to do if you have faced this issue, is to contact support so they can monitor your ticket and keep you updated on the matter.
2) Extra storage
Shadow is still on track for mid-April in Europe and very shortly after in the US. More news to come very soon (FAQ on discord, mail, etc.).
3) Shadow Ghost
There are still ongoing discussions with the factory in China. They are slowly opening it back up and Shadow is hoping to get news very soon about a delivery date and will keep users informed.
4) The VR exploration program
The application period has now closed. Two rounds of evaluations were made :
- A general one opened to everyone with some specifics requirements.
- A second one filtered from the first one to get the most motivated participants.
So far, in the VR exploration program…
The first week of the program was about :
- Onboarding selected users
- Getting setup and out of ruin
- Letting the participants meet each other and interact with the developers
Participants are now starting to experience Shadow in VR and everyone is working on the next testing steps of the program.
To get the latest available information about the VR exploration program, check out Shadow’s Reddit post here!
Valorant is the new closed beta that was released by Riot, and there have been issues with Shadow being detected as a virtual machine. Riot’s anti-cheat system has flagged that, which results in users being unable to play Valorant on Shadow.
This is not the first time this has happened, Shadow has had similar issues like that with other games in Beta (Borderlands 3, Destiny 2 DLC, etc.). But, silver lining, they were all eventually fixed.
Shadow has reached out to Riot and is trying to work out a solution as fast as possible to enable users to play Valorant on Shadow.
Q & A
Q: When are the new plans coming to the USA?
A: If you were an active user before shadow Boost arrived on March 12th, you should go into your account page and designate whether you want the monthly or annual Boost pricing because, now, you can.
As for ultra and infinite, it is planned for summer 2020 in a limited volume launch and in broader availability later on.
Q: There is a new test flight app for iOS, any new regarding Apple in general?
A: We pushed out a new update on the test flight side of things (aka the Beta in the iOS AppStore ecosystem). Right now, we’re just testing things to see what will work to fit Apple’s guidelines.
But, as of now, we’re still unsure, and we’re just trying to test a new version to see if maybe it will get approved in the app store. So far, we don’t have any official confirmation on this. As soon as we get more clarity on the situation, we will let everyone know.
Q: Is there a limited amount of storage for everyone to order or is it first come, first serve?
A: It will be available to all at the same time. However, you will be able to add only a maximum of 8 x 256 Gb of storage per account. Whenever it comes out, we will talk about it on Shadow news to make things clear for everyone!
Q: Why has my order disappeared from my account page?
A: It is most likely a bug though you should contact support so they can investigate this issue. In the meantime, you can try clearing your cache or a different web browser to see if that solves it.
Q: What about the US Shadow makers program?
A: We are working on the finals details to get everything set up and rolled out. If you are in the program, you should expect an email by the end of next week or so.
Q: Any updates on the S101 bug?
A: Shadow is still actively working on it. If you face this issue, please contact support or check out our Help Center page here.