Welcome to our 194th newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we attempt to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed, primarily by the team, throughout the past week.
We’re nearing the end of the Star Atlas Summer campaign, with the final Town Hall happening this Wednesday! Last week felt like the calm before the storm. News was light, with Holosim’s launch (a bit bumpy) standing out as the main update. Fortunately, two high-profile community-organized events took place during the weekend, which we’ll briefly cover below. We’re also excited to spotlight a new initiative from Chip, one of the team’s VPs, who has started documenting his daily development work!
Let’s dive in!
![Star Atlas - Holosim Solfare Skin [VZUS Solos]](https://aephia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1024x565.png)
Holosim – A Rocky Start
The launch of the first chapter of the first official season of Stat Atlas Holosim was rockier than either the team or community expected. The game launched 6 hours later than announced, which caused a slight dip in sentiment. Unfortunately, it was not all smooth sailing afterwards either. Players encountered several major bugs that caused parts (or even the entire game) to stop functioning intermittently, sometimes briefly, but also multiple times for many hours.
Chris (VP of Game Economy) shared the following numbers with us right before publication:
- Total players: 4111
- MUD: 1623 players (39.48%)
- ONI: 1358 players (33.03%)
- Ustur: 1130 players (27.49%)
- Average XP: 315,776
- Median XP: 9,118
If we were to remove all players with 0 XP, however, to get a better idea of who is actually playing (or has played), we would instead see the following:
- Total players: 2376
- MUD: 888 players (37.37%)
- ONI: 798 players (33.59%)
- Ustur: 690 players (29.04%)
- Average XP: 546,361
- Median XP: 223,860
On top of that, Chris shared a chart showing the DAU over time. As expected, we see a decline over time, but we are still holding up at over 1000 players at the moment. It’s not clear how much of this is due to new players being thrown off by the game or the issues that have plagued it since release.
The drop-off from day 1 to day 2 appears significant, likely accounting for most of the inactive players (0 XP) who never actually started playing the game. It’s unclear whether they wanted to play the game or just take a look.
Community Weekend
This last weekend saw two big community events taking place: Iris Quest II and the Comet community meetup in Cologne, Germany.
Iris Quest II
Starting with the former, Iris Quest captured a lot of the community’s attention on Saturday and Sunday. Many matches took place, with many surprising outcomes. The Dyson Sphere team (comprised of ATMTA members) was eliminated earlier than most anticipated, but only because they had to play against (what proved to be) 2 of the toughest teams out there, Vanguard Bravo and Quimera Alpha. Vanguard Bravo took home the win in the finals, where they managed to beat one of the biggest surprises of this tournament, the United Macedonian Gamers (UMG).
![Comet Community Meetup - August 23rd 2025 [Cologne, Germany]](https://aephia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/8C2FBD4B-E8D7-4E7A-A469-699CF77AF4DA_1_105_c.jpeg)
Comet
The Comet meetup in Cologne, taking place during the Gamescom week, was considered (by those attending) to have been a great success (~70 attendees). Many community members met (often for the first time), and two team members came over from abroad as well. Plus, many new faces visited the event, curious to learn more about Star Atlas and its community. There were a few presentations, music, good vibes, and a raffle where everyone went home with a prize.
The community team behind the event expressed their desire to make this an annual event, contingent upon the DAO’s continued support.
Summer Town Hall #3
The third and final Star Atlas Summer Town Hall will take place this Wednesday, August 27th (11 AM PT / 18:00 UTC / 20:00 CEST).
The team has provided no hints so far as to what to expect, but many expect at least an update on SAGE C4 progress. Other than that, expect a few surprises!
From the Engineering Bay
Chip (VP of Game Product) started documenting his daily UE5-related development progress 2.5 weeks ago. He not only shares a short text about his development victories that day, but also often includes a short video to showcase his work. As such, it is highly recommended to follow Chip to ensure you don’t miss one of these.
To bring you up to speed, below we’ve listed all of his “tweets” up until now, for your convenience. From now on, we will post his new updates regularly (aiming for weekly):
If you still haven’t followed Chip on X yet, be sure to correct that mistake before you leave!
That is it for this week! Thanks for reading!
![Star Atlas - Pearce MR8 [Concept Art]](https://aephia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/image-768x432.png)
