Revision 5

SAND: Raiders of Sophie is an always-online PvPvE game. A run puts you on shared servers with other real players alongside the AI threats, so a stable connection and the online systems below matter as much as your build.

Online Requirements

The game requires a broadband internet connection and cannot be played offline. Matchmaking is based on your crew size, and the server population scales with it. The figures stated at launch were 15 players on solo servers, up to 36 on small-team servers, and up to 45 on large-team servers. The bracket boundaries themselves were redrawn in August 2026, when a duo-only queue was added and the small and large brackets became three-to-four and five-to-six players respectively.

Anti-Cheat and Controller Support

Supported Languages

At Early Access launch the game supports ten languages: English, Ukrainian, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Italian, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese.

Server Stability and the Server Slams

Server scaling shaped the launch timeline. Two pre-launch network stress tests, called Server Slams, ran in June 2026, drawing tens of thousands of players. The first surfaced server-scaling problems that were not visible at smaller test sizes and led the team to delay the launch and move to Early Access. A second Server Slam a week before launch served as a final check after the team shipped server-stability and bug fixes. Players who took part in a Server Slam receive an exclusive weapon skin in their inventory when they buy the game.

Launch Stability

The Early Access launch on June 22, 2026 drew a large player crowd and ran into heavy server problems, including outages and denial-of-service attacks. The team responded across the opening week. A server-side hotfix on June 23 added denial-of-service protections and corrected matchmaking that had placed solo players against teams, and a first update on June 26 added further protections while the developers continued investigating outages. A second update followed on July 3; the team briefly rolled back an earlier version of it after players hit connection and queue problems, then redeployed a corrected build. That update also tuned the BattlEye anti-cheat to reduce false-positive bans.

The team has continued to patch the live game after the opening week. A third update on July 10, 2026 added new content and fixes, and on July 12, 2026 a hotfix temporarily disabled the ability to capture rival players' Tramplers, a stopgap against a wave of cheating that relied on no-clip and teleportation exploits. The developers described the capture change as a temporary measure and said a dedicated update with protection against the most common cheats would follow. On July 14, 2026 a fourth update continued improving hit registration and how players and objects behave on moving Tramplers. On July 18, 2026 the team shipped the first phase of a broader anti-cheat overhaul, which it described as sharply reducing the most common cheats and hacks. A fifth update on July 24 followed with further anti-cheat work, terrain streaming improvements, and a fix for an item-duplication exploit, and the day before that the team removed duplicated items server-side from the accounts that had exploited it. Capture of rival Tramplers finally returned on August 3, 2026 alongside a sixth update, which the developers paired with further detection work and fixes for false positives.

The developers have also described a planned safeguard they call an emergency parachute: if a server crashes during a run, players would keep the loot stored on their Trampler, with expedition progress saved roughly every ten minutes. As of late July 2026 it had not yet shipped. On console play, the team said in a July 2026 community Q&A that it is not planning crossplay between PC and console at this time, while adding that it hopes to share console news soon.

One known matchmaking issue persisted past the first update: solo players could still be matched into larger crews. The developers acknowledged it was not fixed as of June 26 and, in early July 2026, said the fix was proving more complex than anticipated but remained one of their highest priorities. As with any Early Access release, the live service is being patched frequently, so expect both downtime and rapid fixes early on.

For hardware requirements, see System Requirements. For the launch date, pricing, and platforms, see Release and Platforms.

Ban Waves and Appeals

Anti-cheat enforcement runs through BattlEye rather than the developers directly. In late July 2026 a large ban wave went out, and the studio published an overview explaining how to recognise it: a banned account works normally up to the point of entering an expedition, where it is kicked. The team said it reviewed the wave in detail and put its accuracy at at least 97 percent, leaving roughly 3 percent that might be false positives or cheaters its own systems had not caught.

Because the bans are issued by the anti-cheat provider, appeals go to that provider rather than to the studio, and players are asked to include their account ID. The developers warned that repeated login attempts on a banned account make the penalty harsher, and said they intend to signal ban messages more clearly in a future update. They have also acknowledged that separating genuine exploits from legitimate play is difficult, since the system has to account for whether a player is on foot or riding a Trampler, whether they have grabbed a ladder, whether a machine is accelerating or has just collided with terrain, and for high ping and packet loss.

Console Online Requirements

The console listings carry their own online details. The PlayStation 5 listing states that PlayStation Plus is required for online play, that online play is required generally, that the DualSense wireless controller's vibration function is supported, and that the game supports up to 90 network players. The Xbox Series X|S listing is tagged for online co-op, online multiplayer, broadcast support, Xbox achievements, and optimisation for current-generation consoles. Neither listing carries a release date, and the PlayStation 5 entry still shows a rating of pending. See Release and Platforms for platform status.