In order to ensure all servers are updated to the most recent versions, developers will restart all servers in a place, or all places under a universe. This can be done on either the root place’s game page, or on the creator dashboard.
Expectation:
Pressing restart server should shut down all servers within that place over the course of a minute.
Result:
Even after pressing shut down servers multiple times for each place, there continues to be several outdated servers that remain unaffected, which may result in future complications such as data corruption for games like ours when both new and old servers coexist. This happens regardless whether you press “shut down servers” once, or several times over the course of a few minutes. And also happens regardless of the device being used, such as PC, Mac, or mobile.
This issue has plagued our game, and several other games for the past few months.
Additionally, we also added a globalshutdown command on our in-game admin system to force shut down all servers. Essentially using the :kick() function on loop to ensure everyone is removed from the server. Although everyone is “kicked” from the server, the server still remains open for up to several minutes. Consequently, people who press Play on the game-page are often rerouted to these ghost servers and then get kicked again, which then extends the lifespan of the ghost server. Before we discontinued this method, it wasn’t uncommon to see ghost servers exist for upwards to an hour after the command was executed.
Not only do the above methods not guarantee all servers are properly shut down, or ensure the stability and availability of servers afterwards, but Privating a place does not ensure all places are shutdown.
When a place is put on private, we commonly see ~99% of servers shut down and players are completely disconnected. But oftentimes theres at least a dozen or so servers that still remain open despite being under a privated place. Joining these servers still shows the game fully operational and players can interact with anything with no issues, other than the fact that they cannot rejoin.
Therefore, the only way we have been able to guarantee everything has been shut down, is to private a place so 99% of servers are shut down, then press restart servers on each place in our universe about 2 times over the course of 5 minutes. And wait around an additional 3-6 minutes to ensure everything is shut down since it can occur in waves, then re-open a place.
Page URL: https://create.roblox.com/dashboard/creations/experiences/3647333358/places