Last Oasis, like many multiplayer games, did not have a smooth launch. The early access survival MMO was released on March 26, but by the evening of that day it was plagued with widespread connection problems that quickly worsened and rendered the game unplayable for most people.Three days later, Last Oasis was still not working, with developers working around the clock and frequently still not functioning despite providing updates. However, with no end in sight to Last Oasis' server problems, the developer, Donkey Crew, decided to take the servers offline for a week and give players a full refund regardless of their playing time.

"Our coders are working day and night to fix this problem and they need their sleep." We need to properly investigate why our load test did not pick this up and what the problem was and get it right and fix it."

"Many have said that Early Access games should not be launched this way, and we completely agree," the developer continued.

As the Donkey Crew explained in a previous update, an unexpected problem occurred on Thursday when the main server began crashing and players were unable to log in. Players who had already logged in were able to continue playing, but most were stuck trying to get through the main menu. And despite working on the issue throughout the weekend, the Donkey Crew does not appear to be any closer to a solution.

It's a tragic situation because Last Oasis was truly exciting. I managed to play it for a few hours on Thursday before the servers started to shake up due to an unexpected surge of players. While Last Oasis does have some familiar survival game elements, I really enjoyed both the spider-like land vehicles and the skill-based combat, and I liked the well-realized apocalyptic setting.

It is not uncommon for multiplayer games, especially Early Access games, to experience server issues in the first few days after launch; even big-name games like Anthem are seldom immune to these problems. Hopefully things will go more smoothly the second time around.

Even if you were one of the lucky few who were able to play over the weekend, Last Oasis will not be playable for at least a week. If you want your money back, according to the Donkey Crew, Steam will give you a refund regardless of how long you play.