Aether Wars aims for 10,000-player deathmatch record

Gaming start-up Hadean has announced a technology showcase for its Aether Engine, unimaginatively named Aether Wars, using which it's hoping to break the world record for number of concurrent players involved in a single online battle.

Described by its creators as 'a hyper-scale simulation engine' and powered by HadeanOS, a cloud-first custom operating system designed to do away with a traditional middleware stack in favour of running an application only one remove from the underlying hardware, Aether Engine's claim to fame is scalability: Its creators claim the game engine, which pushes the heavy calculations to the cloud and streams the result to the end user, scales to 'ten thousand [players] and beyond' - and it's aiming to prove that with a record-breaking space battle.

Aether Wars, the company's first large-scale public demo of the Aether Engine and underlying HadeanOS, has a clear target in its sights: Eve Online, the massively multiplayer sci-fi-themed Machiavellian spreadsheet simulator which holds the current world record for the most concurrent players involved in a single battle with a whopping 6,142. Aether Wars, Hadean claims, can beat that, targeting 10,000 players all going toe-to-toe in a 'free-to-play deathmatch frenzy.'

'Players need to adapt quickly when they're dropped into the Aether Wars deathmatch arena, as the unprecedented number of combatants means old deathmatch tactics no longer apply,' Hadean claims of its creation. 'Using asteroids for cover and outrunning enemy missiles, pilots will need to find the right mix of defensive tactics and aggression to survive the chaos while also securing kills of their own to climb the fiercely competitive leaderboard.'

The company is breaking its platform in gradually, planning a 1,000-player battle in the coming weeks with the record attempt to follow at an as-yet unspecified later date. Those interested in participating will need to hand over their email address on the official website, as well as complete a PC survey 'so we understand more about your gaming setup'.