Hadean hosts 10k-ship Eve: Aether Wars battle

Hadean Games has announced a successful test of its Aether Engine massively multiplayer system, having used the technology to host a 10,000-ship battle in CCP Games' Eve Online - though only 3,852 actual humans took part.

Hadean announced its intention to get into the record books back in February with Aether Wars, a large-scale public demonstration of the company's highly-scalable simulation engine Aether Engine which it claims can scale up to and beyond 10,000 simultaneous players.

This week's demonstration, however, fell a little short of its goal: Using assets provided by CCP Games from Eve Online and Eve: Valkyrie in its own Aether Engine to create what is now known as Eve: Aether Wars, Hadean successfully hosted a battle with more than 10,000 concurrent combatants - 10,412, to be exact - but with only 3,852 actual human players, the remainder being made up by bots driving client software in place of real players.

While Hadean's demonstration of its engine falls short of the Guinness World Record for most concurrent players simultaneously involved in a single multiplayer player-versus-player (PvP) video game battle, which is currently held by Eve Online with 6,142 players, it is being hailed as a successful test of the scalability of its Aether Engine.

'We are thrilled to have successfully debuted the Aether Engine with Eve: Aether Wars,' says Craig Beddis, Hadean's chief executive, of the tech test. 'A deathmatch of this magnitude couldn't have been achieved without the support of CCP and Eve Online's amazing community. After such an incredible showing at GDC, we're even more excited about the possibilities our partnership presents to push the technological boundaries of what's possible in the MMO space.'

'We knew that Hadean's tech held massive potential, and I'm ecstatic to see that potential realised for the first time with Eve: Aether Wars,' adds Hilmar Pétursson, CCP Games' chief executive. 'I remain convinced that our partnership will continue break new ground in virtual worlds, and we will continue to explore creative and exciting opportunities that ensure Eve will outlive us all!'

Hadean has confirmed it will be demonstrating an offline version of Eve: Aether Wars during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) but has not announced when or if it will have another crack at the official record.