A 17-year-old Star Wars strategy game just got an update to revitalise its multiplayer

A 17-year-old Star Wars game just got a brand new update.

Yesterday, November 20, Star Wars: Empire at War received a brand new update on PC via Steam. The strategy game, which first launched all the way back in 2006, was updated with a "maintenance patch update," according to the game's update history log on Steam.

Headlining the surprising new update is a feature which takes Empire at War from 32-bit to 64-bit applications. This will apparently "solve many out-of-memory bugs and crashes that players were experiencing," the update history log notes, which is a  pretty huge overhaul for an old game.

"Multiplayer out-of-sync issues" have also been addressed in the new patch, which should improve online stability for Empire at War players. There's also "numerous" gameplay fixes targeting balance adjustments for individual units in the strategy game, as well as fixes for incorrect unit behaviour.

Rounding out the new update are "minor bug fixes, player balance changes and optimized performance." All in all, it sounds like a quietly significant update for Star Wars: Empire at War, especially considering stability is paramount when you're conducting real-time strategy battles.

If you've never heard of Empires at War, we can hardly blame you. Developed by Petroglyph Games under LucasArts (before the publisher got all its Star Wars projects canned by the Disney deal), Empire at War takes place between Star Wars episodes three and four, and focuses on the new Empire dealing with the beginnings of the Rebellion. 

Multiplayer was actually discontinued with a server shutdown back in 2014, but was reactivated six years ago in 2017. It's not really clear why the servers were reactivated, but we'll take it as a win for game preservation.

Check out our guide to the best Star Wars games to see if there's any other hidden gems you've left to uncover.