What are the best practices for handling an outage?

Detect fast, communicate honestly, and mitigate quickly, since how you handle an outage matters as much as the outage itself. Detect fast with monitoring and acknowledge to players quickly, even before you have answers (a fast 'we're aware and investigating' beats a perfect explanation an hour later, since silence breeds anger and quick acknowledgment tells players they're not ignored). Mitigate to restore service before perfecting a fix, roll back a bad deploy, restart, fail over, whatever restores the game, since the priority is stopping the player impact, after which you fix the root cause properly without pressure. Communicate on a regular cadence during the outage (even 'no change yet, still working') so players aren't in the dark wondering if you've gone quiet, and confirm resolution clearly when it's fixed (a clear all-clear ends the incident on competence). Players forgive outages handled with fast, honest handling far more than ones met with silence, so the practices serve detecting fast (to catch it early and acknowledge), mitigating (to restore service fast), and communicating throughout (to keep players patient and informed), which together turn an outage from a trust-damaging silence into a competently-handled incident. The throughline is that the absence of communication does as much damage as the outage, so fast detection, quick acknowledgment, steady cadence updates, mitigation to restore service, and a clear resolution are what handle an outage well.

How should I communicate with players during an outage?

Fast, honestly, and on a regular cadence, since communication during an outage often matters more to players than the outage itself. Acknowledge the problem quickly, even before you have answers (a simple 'we're aware of issues and investigating' posted fast beats a perfect explanation posted an hour later, because silence makes players think they're ignored and quick acknowledgment defuses most of the anger). Be honest about what you know and don't, and never give a fix time you can't hit (an honest 'we're working on it, no ETA yet' is better than a promised time you miss, which destroys credibility). Update on a predictable cadence even when there's no change ('still working, no update yet'), so players aren't refreshing in the dark wondering if you've gone quiet, the steady flow of updates keeps them patient through a long outage, and the absence of updates is what turns a forgivable incident into a reputation problem. And confirm resolution clearly when it's fixed, with a clear all-clear once you've verified the fix held, so players know they can return and the incident ends on a note of competence rather than trailing off. Fast acknowledgment depends on fast detection, so monitoring that alerts you to an outage in minutes is what lets you acknowledge promptly rather than learning of it late from complaints. The key principle is that players generally forgive that things break but not being left in the dark, so the worst mistake is going silent, while steady, honest, timely communication, fast acknowledgment, honest status, regular cadence updates, and a clear resolution, is what players forgive and even respect. So communicate during an outage by acknowledging fast, being honest, updating on a cadence (even with no news), and confirming resolution clearly, which keeps players informed and patient and preserves trust through the incident.

Should I roll back or fix forward during an outage?

Usually mitigate to restore service fast, which often means rolling back if a deploy caused the outage, then fix the root cause properly afterward, since the priority during an outage is restoring service, not perfecting a fix. During an outage, players are actively unable to play, so the goal is to stop that impact as quickly as possible through mitigation, and if a recent deploy or change caused the outage (the most common cause), rolling back to the previous known-good state is often the fastest way to restore service, reverting immediately ends the outage, whereas fixing forward (writing and shipping a fix) takes time during which players remain affected, and a fix crafted under outage pressure risks being rushed or wrong. So the general approach is: identify the likely cause fast (check recent deploys/changes), mitigate to restore service with whatever's fastest (usually a rollback if a deploy caused it, or a restart/failover for other causes), and once service is restored and players are back, diagnose and fix the root cause calmly without the pressure of an active outage. Fixing forward during the outage is appropriate when rollback isn't possible (the cause isn't a revertible deploy, or rollback would lose data/state) or when a fast, safe forward fix is genuinely quicker than rollback, but the principle holds, restore service first with the fastest safe mitigation, then fix properly. This 'mitigate first, fix root cause later' discipline is the same as for any incident: stopping the player impact (restoring service) is the immediate priority, and the proper root-cause fix comes after the bleeding is stopped, because prolonging the outage to craft the perfect fix harms more players and the outage-pressure makes a rushed forward fix risky. So during an outage, favor fast mitigation to restore service (often a rollback of the causing deploy) over fixing forward under pressure, then fix the root cause properly once service is back, which minimizes the outage duration and player impact while still ultimately addressing the underlying problem. Per-version/per-deploy tracking helps by quickly identifying whether a deploy caused the outage (so you know whether rolling back will fix it), and monitoring confirms when service is genuinely restored.

Best Practices for Handling an Outage

Quick answer: Detect fast with monitoring, acknowledge to players quickly, mitigate to restore service before perfecting a fix, communicate on a regular cadence, and confirm resolution. Players forgive outages handled well.

An outage breaks the game for players at once, so how you handle it matters as much as the outage itself. Here are the best practices for handling an outage.

Detect Fast and Acknowledge to Players Quickly

The faster you detect and acknowledge, the less anger builds, so detect fast with monitoring and acknowledge to players quickly, even before you have answers. A fast we're aware and investigating beats a perfect explanation an hour later, since silence breeds anger.

Bugnet alerts on crash and error spikes, so you detect an outage fast enough to acknowledge quickly. Fast detection and quick acknowledgment defuse most of the anger an outage causes, by telling players they're not being ignored.

Mitigate to Restore Service Before Perfecting a Fix

The priority during an outage is restoring service, so mitigate first, roll back a bad deploy, restart, fail over, whatever restores the game, before perfecting the root-cause fix. Restoring service stops the player impact, after which you can fix properly without pressure.

Bugnet's per-version and error tracking helps you find what to mitigate (e.g. a bad deploy). Mitigating to restore service before perfecting a fix is the core outage discipline, since stopping the player impact matters more than the elegant solution.

Communicate on a Cadence and Confirm Resolution

Communicate on a regular cadence during the outage (even no change yet, still working) so players aren't in the dark, and confirm resolution clearly when it's fixed. Steady communication keeps players patient, and a clear all-clear ends the incident on competence.

Bugnet's monitoring confirms when the outage is genuinely resolved before you announce the all-clear. So practice handling an outage by detecting fast and acknowledging quickly, mitigating to restore service, and communicating on a cadence while confirming resolution, since players forgive outages handled with fast, honest handling.

Detect fast with monitoring, acknowledge to players quickly, mitigate to restore service before perfecting a fix, communicate on a regular cadence, and confirm resolution. Players forgive outages handled well.