'Satisfactory' fans are banding together to celebrate the game's fifth birthday

Factory simulator Satisfactory celebrates its 5th anniversary on March 19, and in recognition of the occasion, community members have organised a tournament on March 16.

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NME spoke to a community member organising the event, Barry, and Satisfactory‘s community manager, Snutt Treptow. The event is completely community organised and will consist of several challenges, including parkour, puzzle-solving, art, and more. Coffee Stain will be entering its own developer team into the fray top see how they compare to the community members.

Barry told NME they work on many aspects of the show, from backend technical support to graphics, social media, and liasing with hosts and participating teams. “I am surprised I’ve not gone grey!”, they tell NME.

Barry is happy to have a developer team joining in the fun, saying it “really strengthens the bond between Coffee Stain and the Satisfactory community”. Growing up watching their parents and family work within the entertainment industry, creating shows and events like this seems to have come quite naturally for Barry. What’s been more challenging is the technical aspects.

Wanting multiple different feeds so viewers could tune in to a variety of viewpoints will ensure high quality, but it’s demanding. Barry has had to consider how to enable this in a way that’s intuitive for audiences while also keeping people’s IP addresses secure and the stream stable. Barry learns from previous events, too.

“In the past I experienced significant issues with memory and CPU, causing the stream to grind to a halt towards the end of the show,” Barry said. They’ve since figured out a solution involving multiple PCs working together to ensure none is overloaded.

Community manager Treptow says that while Coffee Stain has helped by raising awareness of the show through reposting on its own social channels, he can essentially “just show up and enjoy the event!” He added, “Organizing something like this is something I don’t think we could’ve done as well as our community does it. I don’t think we could quite capture the charm and wholesomeness that comes from it being organized by members of our community on their own volition.”

Still, he assures Coffee Stain’s door is always open for these kinds of community events, and the developer will help nurture these communities. Just don’t expect Coffee Stain to start its own challenge show any time soon, it’s leaving it to the passionate people who play its games.

You can watch the event live on the Satisfactory Events Twitch channel Saturday, March 16 at 2pm GMT, and you can get updates via the Satisfactory Events X page.