Bandai Namco Entertainment announced that the Ver.1.01.002 update and accompanying server maintenance for Ace Combat 8: Skies Unknown, originally scheduled for October 23, have been postponed. The revised implementation time has not yet been determined, and the official announcement will be made once the schedule is finalized.
The maintenance was originally scheduled from 15:00 to 17:00 on October 23, affecting the online mode "ACE COMBAT ONLINE." The publisher stated that the delay is related to a system-wide incident impacting the entire industry and its response measures, and had previously indicated on October 22 that the implementation schedule might need adjustment.
As originally planned, Ver.1.01.002 was set to adjust enemy aircraft behavior in Campaign mode, fix issues preventing progression under certain conditions, and tweak special weapons in Online modes.
The official name of the aforementioned system incident has not been disclosed, so the reason for the delay cannot be directly attributed to a specific vulnerability at this stage. On October 21, two major PHP vulnerabilities with a severity rating of 9.2 and their patches were made public; during the same period, several online games in Japan underwent emergency maintenance, and some long-running titles announced shutdowns due to difficulties in addressing the vulnerabilities.
Ace Combat 8: Skies Unknown is now available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. The new schedule for game updates and server maintenance is still pending official confirmation.