Deep Rock Galactic: Null Region Bug

DRG_NULL_REGION_BUG.md

Deep Rock Galactic: Null Region Bug

Brief Summary

This bug occurs when the game fails to determine which country the player is located in, and their region is set to... nothing. As a result:

• It is impossible to discover public lobbies unless search distance is set to "Far" or "World";
• All lobbies that are discovered will be labeled "Far", regardless of their origin;
• The absolute majority of public lobbies will remain invisible to the player at most times, with most missions available on the map turning up an empty list;
• Those missing lobbies can be found by using the search bar and typing in anything, even a single letter. If lobby title matches the search string, it will show up;
• Public lobbies that are hosted by the player experiencing the bug will be invisible in the server list to all players, whether they use the search bar or not;
• Affected player can still get friends to join their lobby directly by using Steam features, or by providing an invite over Discord;
• Affected player can also join their friends' lobbies in the exact same way.

Where it comes to scope and causes of the bug, extensive evidence I collected suggests the following:

• The cause of the bug remains unclear. It might happen to anyone, anywhere;
• The bug is tied to a particular game (Steam) account experiencing it. It is not dependent on hardware, network configuration, or using a VPN, and altering any of these variables has no effect on it;
• The bug can eventually disappear on its own. The cause for this is also unclear.

If those last three points sound vague and unsatisfying - welcome to the party, because vagueness and dissatisfaction is exactly what I experienced throughout my efforts of investigating it.

I believe this bug might be related to DRG-2170. In particular, user ZippityZoppity descibed an experience very similar to mine:

While the issue only affected me for a brief time, and hopefully went away on its own, I believe its severity is significant. It made it effectively impossible for me to host public lobbies, and discovering most lobbies of other playes was only possible through obscure search bar mechanics which, I suspect, most people who might experience this bug will never attempt or figure out. Chances are, most people will not even think to increase their search distance, and thus be stuck seeing no lobbies at all. It was a frustrating experience that I would not wish upon anyone, especially people who are less tech-savvy and couldn't do much in the way of investigating it.

Below you can find a more detailed analysis of the bug, as well as all the evidence on it I thus far collected.

Investigation Timeline

On 2nd of October, 2024, I have encountered an extremely weird issue with the list of public servers. While trying to search for lobbies, both for individual missions and checking the list of all servers, I would see an endless loading animation, with nothing ever showing up:

Filter settings you can observe on the screenshot are representative of the settings I had at the time. Note how "Search Distance" is set to "Medium". This would prove important later.

This issue would persist no matter how long I waited, or whether I clicked "Refresh". I immediately suspected that something must be up with my computer or network, so I attempted every remedy I could, including steps offered in "⏳ Network & Connection Issues" section of this article: https://steamcommunity.com/app/548430/discussions/2/1642039362993864094/

After none of that have helped, I switched to an entirely different computer connected to a different network, and installed DRG on there. I even made sure to disable Steam's cloud save feature for the moment, therefore starting the game in a pristine state. After loading into the game and skipping the tutorial, I checked the list of lobbies for the only mission available to my character, as well as total server list. The issue was still present.

I switched back to my previous computer with the main save file. Some more steps I attempted as a fix included:

• Disabling all mods;
• Ensuring my system time was set correctly;
• Checking the beta tab in the game properties in the Steam library, and making sure I'm not on LEGACY;
• Uninstalling and reinstalling DRG;
• Connecting to different Wi-Fi networks;
• Connecting directly over Ethernet cable;
• Uninstalling and reinstalling Steam.

...all to no avail. At some point throughout all this messing around, I tried changing my server filter settings, and set "Search Distance" to "World". To my bewilderment, I could finally see some lobbies!

However, just like in the above screenshot, they were all labeled as being "Far" from me. This included lobbies in the neighbouring countries, and even lobbies in the country where I am presently located, which is Poland. Furthermore, I could only see lobbies when I checked the entire server list. Most missions I would select on the map stilled turned up an empty list. At any one time, a few specific missions would have plenty of lobbies available, while the entire rest would appear empty. What exactly determined which missions turned up lobbies, and which didn't, I still don't know.

Naturally, I was not using a VPN or anything like that. However, at this point I concluded that the game must be having trouble figuring out what country I am in, and may be putting me in the wrong country. Therefore, I have decided to install a VPN specifically to check whether changing my location by using it would remedy this issue, and whether I would see any change in the proximity of discoverable lobbies.

I used Windscribe VPN, and attempted a variety of exit points, including ones located in Germany, Bulgaria, United States, Canada and Great Britain. Naturally, I verified that the VPN was actually working by using https://whatismyipaddress.com. To my fascination, none of these have impacted the list of lobbies I could discover, and at no point I could see any lobbies being labeled any other distance than "Far".

Before this point I have suspected that the issue I am running into might be somewhat more global, seeing as no matter where and how I tried to access the game, it persisted. Not so global as to affect all DRG players at the time, mind you, but perhaps applying to all people somewhere around Poland, or something like that. This hypothesis promised eventual resolution with none of my input, as surely something like that would not go unnoticed for an extended period of time.

Now, however, it was clear that my physical location on Earth had nothing to do with this issue, and it could not be affecting a major region. In fact, I started to suspect that it might be specifically tied to my Steam account.

A day later, on October 3rd, I checked in and confirmed that the issue was still present. Shortly after I reached out to one of my friends, known on Steam as Cwumber. They generously agreed to lend me access to their Steam account with a DRG copy in it, so that I could verify whether using a different account would somehow affect the issue.

And, lo and behold - as soon as I switched accounts, the issue was gone. Vaporized. Reduced to atoms. Since I was using exactly the same PC and network, it completely eliminated the possibility that something was wrong with hardware or software on my side.

At this time I recorded a short demonstration of this issue, which you can view on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhPKczcexSA

As you will observe in the demonstration, there is another peculiar thing. When typing anything in the search bar in the top left corner, even as much as a single a - suddenly, a bunch of lobbies matching the search string shows up, where before there was an empty list. Checking the "Show Only Modded Servers" box also resulted in me seeing some "Approved Mods" lobbies here and there, which were not visible otherwise. However, I believe this in itself is not related to the particular bug that I experienced. Even on my friend's account, typing into search bar revealed a whole lot of lobbies which I could not otherwise see, both with a specific mission selected and in the general server list. Whether or not this behavior is a separate, unrelated bug, or an intended feature - I am not sure.

After recording the demonstration, I decided to investigate the log files located in Steam\steamapps\common\Deep Rock Galactic\FSD\Saved\Logs. I did this earlier too, but did not find any glowing errors or warnings which could explain what I was experiencing. Now, however, I could compare side-by-side log file from an account affected by this bug, and a file from an unaffected account.

For your reference, here are both files in their entirety:

1. Log file from Aizistral session, affected by the bug: https://gist.github.com/Aizistral/b91a413ac0807ba065b718a2243bae89
2. Log file from Cwumber session, unaffected: https://gist.github.com/Aizistral/346d47fc095368349b51473c41fff544

After scrupulous examination, my gaze fell upon what happens to be line 185 in both files. In a file generated using my account, it looks like this:

[2024.10.03-16.02.32:861][475]LogOnlineSession: Verbose: OSS: 		DRG_REGION= : OnlineServiceAndPing

...whereas in the file generated using Cwumber account, it looks like this:

[2024.10.03-16.05.09:389][444]LogOnlineSession: Verbose: OSS: 		DRG_REGION=PL : OnlineServiceAndPing

Theeeeere it is. It appears that, when logged in from my account, the game failed to determine which region I am in. It wasn't putting me in the wrong region either: rather, this region field was left empty. As such, I was effectively cast into a limbo-like space that was very, very distant from any one country on planet Earth.

Worse still, while I could work around the issue of discovering lobbies by using the search bar hack described earlier, my own lobby was completely invisible to other players. Once again assisted by Cwumber, we had a test setup where they would create a lobby for an Industrial Sabotage mission available in Glacial Strata at that time, and I would try to find it. Although the server list for this mission appeared empty by default, their lobby quickly revelead itself to me after typing in its name. Then, we did this exact test in reverse, where I set up a lobby, and they attempted to search it up. Alas, their best efforts failed to locate my lobby, despite it being most certainly set to public:

Since we already know that the cause of this bug is that the game fails to determine the region in which the player is located, it stands to reason the lobby cannot be displayed for the same reason. All lobbies in the list have a label to represent the country they are from, such as [US], [DE] or [PL]. If I was in no country in particular, how would it display mine? Apparently, it just wouldn't bother to.

I intended to perform some more experiments on October 4th, which is today at the time of writing. Unfortunately (or rather fortunately), as I logged into the game from my account in the morning, I discovered that the issue seemingly resolved itself. Naturally, I went on to check the log file, which you can find over here: https://gist.github.com/Aizistral/c74c1e8223de6f209f5ad98c862ae895

As one might expect, the mysterious DRG_REGION field was no longer empty, and now correctly represented the country I was in.

Proposed Solutions

Here's what I believe can be done to address the issue:

• Ensure that DRG_REGION field can never be left empty. This might be easier said than done, as I have no clue how the game determines its contents in the first place. But at least there could be a fallback value with an actual existing country, instead of empty string - say, US;
• Allow players to override their region field. There were numerous complaints in the past that sometimes the game incorrectly sets said region, which results in most lobbies offered by the server list having terrible ping upon joining them. A simple drop-down menu in the game settings, with a list of countries to be manually chosen from, would offer a solution to both those complaints, and the particular bug I experienced.