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, activations (US and EU), extra storage, updates about shadow followed by a Q&A session!
Don’t forget to check out the FAQ section on discord (updated every Thursday) and also Shadow’s blog article here (for Europe) and here for the US, as it is updated daily!
I) Shadow & COVID-19
1) COVID-19 updates
Right now, shadow teams are seeing, across all data centers, a stabilization in activations, in peak times, and they can monitor and solve issues a lot easier than before, and they will keep doing so. Finally, there have been a lot of improvements compared to what it was four weeks ago.
2) Activations
a) Europe
Amsterdam data center
Shadow has finally caught up with the delay in preordered activations and can now move on to the regular pace. Although, some users are still not fully upgraded but shadow teams are on the case to solve this issue asap!
Paris data center
COVID-19 is still impacting usage and peak time a lot more than expected. Shadow has yet to catch up with the delays in activations. But they are working to find ways to activate more people!
Users who received an email in March, asking them if they wanted to continue with Shadow, will be activated sometime next week!
b) USA
Since the beginning of COVID-19, activations have slowed down at a drastic rate. Despite that, the overall situation has stabilized a lot since then. California data center is still more closely monitored than others due to the previous network issues it encountered a few weeks ago.
Activations estimated wait time across all data centers (if you were to sign up today):
- New York and California data centers: 4 to 6 weeks
- Chicago and Texas data centers: 5 to 7 weeks
If you are an existing user that subscribed before March 12 (not concerning the $12.99 offer), when Shadow boost became widely available, please go to your account page to choose the boost offer (monthly or annual plan)!
3) Additional storage
a) Europe
Last week, shadow delivered all preordered storage. If you pre-ordered extra storage but don’t see it in your Shadow, check out this link here.
This week, the storage management tool (allowing to add up to 2 TB of storage or remove it) is now available on your account page. Extra storage was available to add in the Paris data center but, after only a few days, it is now all sold out. Shadow does not know yet when it will be resupplied (especially with the COVID-19 situation).
If you have any questions regarding extra storage, please check out the dedicated FAQ here!
b) USA
For the first time only, extra storage is now available in the US, go to your account page if you want to add or remove it!
Storage tips
- To activate your extra storage you have to shut down Windows and then restart your Shadow
- It can take up to two hours to show up on your D: drive.
If you have any issue with it you have to contact the support team!
II) Community and product news
1) Shadow university program (US)
Shadow kicked it off last week. They received a lot of applications, around 50 to 60 teams registered. If you want more information about it, check out this link here.
2) Valorant
Unfortunately, Valorant is not compatible with Shadow at this time. This is due to the nature of the game’s “Vanguard” anti-cheat and how it is installed. Since Riot uses a custom anti-cheat mechanism, this makes it nearly impossible to run on virtual machines, including cloud platforms.
This article might be helpful: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/309320-riot-games-new-anti-cheat-system-runs-at-system-boot-uses-kernel-driver
3) Shadow Ghosts
No updates about a delivery date. Shadow is still in discussion with the factory in China and waiting for these to be shipped.
4) The new desktop app
A new shadow desktop app was recently released in Alpha. With its news interface, it allows you to launch your games directly from the launcher.
Known bug: all the games do not always sync properly.
If you have any issues using the Alpha version, please go to Discord or Reddit and not the support team.
If you want to know more about the Alpha and how to install it, check out this link here.
5) iOS
Shadow is still trying to work around to see what they can do for the guidelines to get it back in the App Store. But they did push a small update for the test flight version that fixed a couple of crashes. Other than that, no further updates.
6) The public roadmap
Shadow just released a brand new public roadmap, check it out here! It allows you to see what Shadow worked on in the past, what they are working on now and in the future. They chose Trello to release it so they will be able to update it quicker and more efficiently. A dedicated Q&A session will be organized later on!
7) The masks
All 4000 masks, that Shadow ordered a few weeks ago to their factory in China, were delivered to a hospital in Strasbourg!
III) Q & A
Q: Will my Shadow boost offer be automatically transferred to the Shadow Ultra offer I preordered when it’s out?
A: Yes. You will also receive an email 48h before that to warn you to back up all of your data since the transfer will wipe it out.
Q: How do I know which data center I’m connecting to, and how is it possible that someone preordered Shadow boost after I is activated and I’m not?
A: If you want to know which data center you’re on, check out this page here. As for your activation, it should happen very soon and if not, contact the support team.
Due to the COVID-19 situation, The average wait time for the support to answer a user ticket is 1 week across all region. If you feel like the support team is not responsive enough or it takes too long to get an answer, go to Discord and contact your dedicated CM and they will help you sort it out !
Q: When will we be able to order Shadow Ghosts again?
A: So far, with the situation in regards to COVID-19, no ETA for that so far.
Q: Can we talk about the VR program: when it will be in beta? Will it be opened? Will there be new applications?
A: What I can say right now is that we don’t have all that information to share at this moment other than that we want to bring the plan to be more broadly available to many more testers. Just no details yet on that.
However, I can say that those details are certainly in the works, and I would keep my eyes out on all of our social Channels for some fun VR news if I were you.
Q: What about the reset feature issue?
A: It is now back on your account page! If you wanna make sure to use the reset feature in the best possible conditions, follow these next few steps :
- Shut down your Shadow
- Close the launcher
- Wait a couple of minutes
Only after this should you proceed to reset your Shadow. If it doesn’t seem to fully work, please contact the support team!
Q: Why is there a Live Chat Support for the US but not for the EU?
A: The bot is quite new, and we are slowly rolling it out and testing it. We have our US team working on the initial test of it, which is why we’re focusing on the US region first. I believe it’s in the Netherlands as well.
But we’re really just trying to refine it for now until we do a full rollout to the other countries and regions. It will also have to take into account translations, localization of different information. So, right now, we’re still in the very early stages, testing and developing the bot.
Q: Can I transfer my Shadow from one data center to another?
A: Right now, this is not a functionality that we are able to offer. Although, we hope to change that in the long term.
Q: How does your data centers work?
A: If you want to know more about it, check out this video we made back in November 2019: Discover the secrets of a Data Center – SHADOW.
Q: Will my Shadow works properly in Spain and can I pause my membership?
A: Right now, Spain is not a supported country for Shadow. Still, you can ask one of our moderators: Wrongman (discord name: WrongMan#2784) as he is in Portugal, and he will be able to tell you about his experience with Shadow in an unsupported region close to Spain. Lastly, you cannot pause your Shadow membership.