Bonfire Studio is trying to open only North American, European, and South American servers without considering Asian users and without explaining why.
They are deliberately discriminating against users on the Asian server.
A lack of inclusion is not discrimination. As an example, OCE players have had struggles in multiple games with getting good ping for their servers and it’s not part of a conspiracy or directed campaign. The first servers for the Closed Beta were in Europe and this wasn’t discriminatory to North America, for instance.
It’s fair to ask why there weren’t Asian servers. I’ve seen in other games that the reason concerns multinational partners or instancing that’s out of the company’s hands and perhaps that is at play here. But to call it discrimination is inappropriate. I’ve seen no evidence that Bonfire Studios, its owners, or its employees are biased against anybody based on their geography, ethnicity, or any other factors.
2 Likes
Hello, ItanoCircus
As a player from the Asia region, I think it might be helpful to share some context on what the Asian community is currently experiencing regarding this situation.
To summarize the situation from our end:
- As you mentioned, aside from the very early EU-only test, Asia has been included in every single test alongside all other regions since multinational testing began.
- However, Asian servers were excluded without prior notice in both the previous Encore test and this test.
- Neither exclusion came with an official explanation or announcement. When players reached out asking for clarification, they received no response.
- While exciting new features and content were announced, Asian players can now only experience or test them by enduring massive disadvantages, such as severe high latency.
- Given that an Asian publisher is officially attached to the project, simple indifference seems highly unlikely. Naturally, this lack of transparency left players feeling sidelined. In the absence of any official explanation, discussions within the local community have escalated, with some raising concerns about unfair treatment and unequal opportunities for competitive play.
When an established player base that has participated in every major global test is repeatedly excluded with zero communication, it’s completely understandable why frustration mounts and such narrative forms.
I agree with this framing and the frustration is understandable.
There has been a post regarding why, though it could’ve been broadcast better and/or pinned as to not get lost in general chat. And maybe also not communicated exclusively in Discord.
The link doesn’t really work here, so I’ll copy the contents below.
pants5555 - Comms [AKHN], 
— 7/30/26, 12:42 PM
— 7/30/26, 12:42 PMCatching up on the chat from this morning and wanted to give some insight on why there’s no queues for Asia this weekend, because I know that’s a frustrating thing to run into. Matchmaking needs a certain concentration of players online at the same time to feel good - fast queues, balanced matches, minimal downtime between games. When we looked back at our data from Closed Beta, we saw that our Asia queues didn’t consistently hit the threshold needed to create a great player experience. Knowing this Encore is only a few days, we made the tough call to concentrate testing where we knew we could hit that bar, rather than risk putting you and other players in Asia through really long waits or rough matches. I know the only way to earn pages is to play in another region, which isn’t a great consolation. But if you’d like to play on your own ping in the meantime, Bots and Customs are always open. I want to be really clear that this decision is specific to this one weekend - it’s not meant to be a reflection of how much we value having you in this community. I also know this is a letdown if you were looking forward to jumping in, and that’s not lost on us. Your feedback from Closed Beta genuinely mattered and is shaping how we plan ahead. So, thanks for sticking with us and for playing - it means a lot to us.
3 Likes
Thank you so much for bringing this to light! I really appreciate you taking the time to find and share this.
To be completely honest, many players in the Korean community spent a lot of time trying to find any explanation—checking various channels and even reaching out directly to the publisher—but came up empty. Hearing this context makes a huge difference, and sharing this with our local community will go a long way in clearing up the confusion.
This really proves that the core source of frustration wasn’t just about the servers being offline, but the lack of accessible communication. Knowing the exact wording, I tried searching for the message myself and realized why we couldn’t find it: it was only visible within a general chat that requires assigning oneself the ‘English’ role on Discord. Since most Korean players only visit the English Discord when necessary, very few have language roles assigned, making the message completely invisible to them.
There’s definitely room for improvement in how these updates are communicated. Making sure important news is posted in public channels—without requiring specific role assignments—would significantly reduce these kinds of misunderstandings in the future.
It also seems like even the regional publisher didn’t have access to this information, so better communication channels between the dev team and local publishers would be very helpful as well.
Thanks again for sharing this context. It really helped bridge a major communication gap for us!
1 Like
Hey everyone - really appreciate you raising this feedback. We’ll work with our publishing partners on ways to better communicate this stuff going forward so it doesn’t get buried or unintentionally hidden from players outside of the main Discord. If definitely makes sense why players in Asia would feel frustrated.
I also want to make sure you saw the latest update - we’ve worked with our local publishing partner to add Asia playtest queues for this weekend! We recently announced it in Tower Hour, and you can find the updated times in the playtest-times channel on Discord and on the Arkheron website.
4 Likes