Unfortunately, many popular games like ARK or Valheim have major issues displaying all servers in the in-game server list.
This is because these games use the software “Steamworks” for their server listing.
Steamworks can list a maximum of 4,880 servers. If a game has more active servers than this number, players will only see a small portion of the active servers.
It’s completely random whether Player 1 sees Server Y or not.
So Player 1 might see Server Y, Player 2 might not, and Player 3 might see it again but miss another server that Player 1 sees.
To rule out issues with the server provider, you can search for the server under “Steam” → “View” → “Servers” using IP and port. If it’s found there, the connection between player and server is working perfectly because this is a direct query by the player.
A good example to confirm the problem: ARK players who launch the game via Steam often can’t find servers. But if they open ARK through Epic Games, servers are found without issues. Epic Games does not use Steamworks.
Various developers have also commented on the problem. For example, Garry Newman from Garrysmod initially thought the issue was with his server provider OVH. But it wasn’t. The problem affects ZAP-Hosting and every other server provider because it’s directly related to Steamworks:
Source: https://x.com/garrynewman/status/1334446218437681152?s=20
Or Rust, as they write in their blog:
It’s not all sunshine when you suddenly experience such a surge in popularity.
You start to see cracks in the foundations, the clearest sign for us was that the server browser was never designed to handle so many servers.
Without getting too technical: this means many servers don’t show up for users, causing a lot of frustration for server operators.
We are currently working on solutions and exploring options, so please be patient with us.
Source: https://rust.facepunch.com/blog/
We continue to monitor the issue and will update here as soon as a solution is available.
Preferred source on Google
