Windrose server status: is it down?
Survival action RPGby Kraken Express (co-published by Pocketpair Publishing)Steam app 3041230
No problems reported in the last 15 minutes.
Checked 01:26 UTC · this page is rendered fresh on every load
Windrose is in Early Access
The head start is open, so the servers are live and the reports on this page are real players hitting real servers. Queues and login failures are normal in this window and are not the same thing as an outage: a queue means the servers are up and full.
The studio's own status channel: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3041230
Report a problem
Select the issue you're having — one tap, no account or email needed.
Your report is anonymous. We store the category and the time. We do not store your IP address — it is hashed with a secret and today's date purely to stop one person filing fifty reports, and the hash cannot be reversed or matched to you tomorrow.
What people are saying
Short notes from players in the last 24 hours. Say where you are and what you see on screen.
No links. Anonymous, no account. Keep it about the game.
- Nothing reported here in the last 24 hours.
Players in game
1,956
Concurrent players on Steam right now. A real outage pulls this number down within minutes, so a normal count alongside a flat report count usually means the problem is on your end.
Source: Steam GetNumberOfCurrentPlayers, cached 60s.
Windrose error codes and crashes
Search your error code below, or browse what we've logged so far — each one links to a full page with the exact symptom, whether it's on you or the studio, and the fix steps other players say worked.
Client-side
- FAILED-TO-CONNECT-TO-SERVERConfirmed
Windrose failed to connect to server / server not found (fix)
Entering a friend's invite code or trying to join a dedicated server does nothing, kicks you back to the main menu, hangs on the loading screen for minutes before closing, or shows a black screen and then closes — with no useful error message.
- UNEXPECTED-ERROR-OCCURREDReported
Windrose "An unexpected error occurred" (invite code fix)
Typing a friend's invite code into the "Join a Game" screen returns the dialog "An unexpected error occurred" instead of connecting, even though other players using the same code can get in fine.
- OUT-OF-VIDEO-MEMORYConfirmed
Windrose out of video memory / VRAM spike (fixed)
A sudden spike in video memory (VRAM) usage, sometimes with a stutter or crash, when opening certain UI windows such as the inventory or map.
- CRASH-TORTUGAConfirmed
Windrose crashing in Tortuga (fixed in 0.10.0.2)
The game crashes to desktop while sailing into or around Tortuga, often tied to ships spawning near the port.
- DIRECTX-NOT-SUPPORTEDConfirmed
Windrose "DirectX is not supported" message (fix)
Windrose refuses to launch and shows a "DirectX is not supported" message, even on a PC that otherwise meets the game's stated requirements.
- CRASH-TO-DESKTOPReported
Windrose crashing to desktop / launch crash (fix)
Windrose crashes to desktop during play (sometimes within minutes, other times after hours), fails to start at all, or briefly shows a black screen and closes — separate from the connection failures covered on this site's connect/join page.
Server-side
- None logged yet.
About Windrose's servers
Windrose is a PvE survival-adventure set in an alternative Age of Piracy, developed by Kraken Express (formerly Windrose Crew/Crosswind Crew) and co-published with Pocketpair Publishing. It entered Steam Early Access on April 14, 2026 (Steam app id 3041230) with a “build, craft, survive” loop across land and sea — solo or in co-op parties of up to 8, though Kraken Express recommends capping groups at 4 for the best performance. No full 1.0 date has been announced. Launch was a hit by Steam standards: over 1 million copies sold in six days and a reported peak above 200,000 concurrent players, settling to a running population in the low thousands concurrent by September 2026.
Windrose isn’t a persistent live service with Kraken Express’s own central
game servers players log into. Multiplayer instead runs on player-hosted
sessions — either hosted from inside the client or as standalone dedicated
servers (self-run via an official windroseserver/windroseserver Docker
image and a free Windows Dedicated Server app on Steam, or rented from
third-party hosts) — plus a separate, first-party connectivity/relay service
at windrose.support that helps two clients connect, or relays traffic
directly when P2P is blocked. That split matters for troubleshooting: a
“can’t connect” report can mean a specific dedicated server is down, the
shared relay backend is degraded, or nothing upstream is wrong and a local
router, firewall, DNS filter or IPv6-first setting is blocking one player’s
client. Early Access week one saw a real, publicly acknowledged version of
the last case: several ISPs were found blocking parts of Windrose’s backend,
serious enough that Kraken Express shipped emergency connectivity patches
within days and publicly asked players for ISP contacts to help diagnose it.
There’s no status dashboard; hotfixes and connectivity patches are posted to
the Steam news hub for app 3041230 and the official Discord.
Maintenance, queues, and real outages
Three different things get reported as "Windrose is down," and only one of them is an outage. The chart above is the fastest way to tell them apart, once there's data on it:
A real outage
Reports spike hard within an hour, then decay as the problem is fixed. Nobody announced it in advance.
Scheduled maintenance
Reports climb steadily and stay flat for the length of the window, because everyone hits the same wall at the same time and keeps hitting it.
A login queue
Matchmaking/login reports climb while server-connection reports stay low, and a Steam player count (if shown above) holds flat instead of dropping. The servers are up and full, not down — waiting is the only fix.
Announced maintenance would show up at the studio's own status channel or the official Discord before it shows up here.
If it's only broken for you
Most "is it down" moments aren't outages. Work down this list before assuming the servers are the problem — it's ordered by how often each one turns out to be the answer, not by how easy it is.
- 01
Check the report count above first
It costs nothing and it settles the question. A flat report count means other players are getting in fine, and everything below is worth your time. A spike means it isn't you, and none of it is.
- 02
Verify the game files
In Steam: right-click Windrose → Properties → Installed Files → Verify integrity of game files. A partial patch is the single most common cause of a game that launches and then fails to connect.
- 03
Restart the whole chain, in order
Game, then your launcher/Steam, then your router. People almost always do the first and skip the third — a stale router NAT table produces exactly the symptom people report as "servers down."
- 04
Rule out a VPN or restrictive network
A VPN fails matchmaking far more often than it fixes it, and so does a corporate or campus network that blocks the UDP ports a game server needs. If you're on a network you don't administer, that's the likely answer.
- 05
If it crashes rather than fails to connect, treat it as a crash
A game that starts and then dies, rather than never connecting, is usually a local fault — most often graphics drivers or overlay software, not the servers.
Windrose server status: common questions
Is Windrose down right now?
As of 01:26 UTC, 0 players have reported a problem in the last 15 minutes — counted as people, so repeat taps from one person don't inflate it. This page updates on every load.
Does Windrose have an official server status page?
No dedicated status dashboard exists. Kraken Express posts outages, hotfixes and maintenance heads-up notices through the Steam news hub for app 3041230 (the same feed that carried April 2026's "Hotfix incoming, online modes downtime heads-up!" and "Connectivity Fixes, Direct IP Added & Save Backup System Update" posts) and the official Discord. There's no @KrakenExpress or @Windrose account confirmed as the primary outage channel, so the Steam news hub is the most reliable place to check first — that gap is exactly why a third-party tracker like this one exists for Windrose.
How does Windrose's online co-op actually work — is it dedicated servers or a relay?
Both, and which one you're using changes what "servers down" can mean. Windrose supports self-hosted play (host from inside the game), rented or self-run dedicated servers (Kraken Express publishes an official Docker image, `windroseserver/windroseserver`, alongside a free Dedicated Server app on Steam), and — separately — a first-party connectivity/relay layer at windrose.support that helps two players' game clients find and reach each other when a direct peer-to-peer connection is blocked by a router, firewall or ISP. Kraken Express's own FAQ explains that this relay is a distinct "Force Relay Connection" option for when P2P fails, and a direct-IP mode as a third option for LAN or port-forwarded setups.
What to try when a connection won't go through →So what does "Windrose servers are down" actually mean, since there's no central server?
It usually means one of three different things, and telling them apart matters for what you should try. It can mean Kraken Express's own connectivity/relay backend (windrose.support) is degraded or blocked for your ISP specifically — this was a widespread, publicly acknowledged problem in launch week. It can mean a specific dedicated server (yours, a friend's, or a rented one) is down, misconfigured or hasn't finished booting. Or it can mean nothing is actually down and a local network setting (IPv6 priority, a firewall/router flagging the game, a DNS blocklist) is stopping your client specifically from reaching it. Check the Steam news hub for an acknowledged incident before assuming the third case.
Where do connectivity hotfixes and outage notices for Windrose get posted?
Primarily the Steam news hub for app 3041230 and the official Discord. In its first week of Early Access, Kraken Express used Steam news to announce a scheduled downtime window for a hotfix ("Hotfix incoming, online modes downtime heads-up!", April 16, 2026) and to detail a follow-up connectivity patch two days later. PC Gamer separately reported that the developers publicly asked players if they knew contacts at a major ISP to help diagnose which providers were blocking the game's backend — an unusually direct sign of how central ISP-side blocking was to that week's connection problems.
The ISP/DNS-blocking fixes that came out of that launch week →Can I rent or self-host a Windrose dedicated server?
Yes. Kraken Express publishes an official Docker image (`windroseserver/windroseserver`) for self-hosting on Linux, plus a free "Windrose Dedicated Server" application on Steam for Windows self-hosts, configured through a `ServerDescription.json` file. Several third-party game-server hosts also rent pre-configured Windrose servers. Kraken Express's own sizing guide recommends roughly 8 GB RAM for a 2-player server up to 16 GB for 10 players, all on 35 GB of SSD storage — full admin-command and setup documentation is on Kraken Express's own site.
Does Windrose support cross-play?
Windrose is a Windows-only PC release on Steam (its Steam listing shows no Mac or Linux client, and Kraken Express's own FAQ says a Linux client "is not officially supported"). With no console or other-platform version, cross-play isn't a relevant question yet — everyone connecting is already on the same Steam/PC client and build.
If a Windrose server goes down or I switch hosts, do I lose my world?
Not by design, but Kraken Express's own FAQ documents a real, ongoing save-corruption risk, most common when the same character is played across multiple machines with Steam Cloud syncing on, or when a save is moved between a local machine and a dedicated server over FTP (FileZilla specifically has been flagged as a common cause; Cyberduck is the workaround Kraken Express suggests). An automatic save-backup system shipped April 19, 2026 specifically to mitigate this while the root cause is still being investigated, and dedicated-server operators get a documented recovery procedure built around a save's `WorldIslandID`.
Incident history
Auto-logged from player reports over the last 30 days. An incident is a run of hours with at least six different players reporting in each, the same signal the verdict above responds to — so one frustrated player pressing a button repeatedly can never put an incident on this list.
No incidents logged in the last 30 days.