Tripwire has released a surprise update to the 7-year old Rising Storm 2: Vietnam.

Rising Storm 2 Vietnam was launched in 2017 and the last update took place in June 2021, more than three years earlier. Or so it was, until yesterday when Tripwire Interactive released a surprise update aimed to improve server behavior and security and fix a number VOIP-related bug.

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam received updates fairly regularly until the 1.6.1 patch was released in June 2021. After that, there were few updates except for a "community gaming night" in July 2020 and a double-XP event on Halloween in 2023. It's understandable, since the game is seven years old and concurrent player numbers aren't above four digits since early 2023. A quiet fade-away was to be expected.

Why this new update? The short answer is that people still play and Tripwire had some time to spare.

Mike Schmitt, Tripwire's marketing director, told PC Gamer that "Rising Storm 2 Vietnam still has a vibrant community and we monitor feedback from our players." This new quality-of life update addresses issues that have been raised repeatedly by the fanbase, and we were able allocate bandwidth in the past few months to fix them.

Here is the complete list of changes.

General

• Improved server behavior, security and performance.

VoIP

• Fixes general issues with muting other users as intended.
• The issue where players would still hear other players on the server after they had disconnected from it was resolved.
• Addressed issues where players within the same group failed to listen to each other.
• The Steam Client Headset device settings could not be detected automatically, resulting in the microphone being inactive.
• The issue where respawning players were able to hear active spawned characters on the Spawn Point Selection screen was addressed.
• The issue where muted players became unmuted automatically after reconnecting to the server has been addressed.
• Issues where players could still hear other players after closing the client and ending a session of gaming.

It's great that older games are getting continued support. SteamDB shows a recent increase of 1,390 players concurrently. This is not huge, but it's an impressive jump from the few hundreds who played over the past few months. Fans shouldn't expect a sudden resurgence of Rising Storm 2: Vietnam.

Schmitt explained that updates could become less frequent, given the fact that Rising Storm 2: Vietnam has been around for a while. "But we want our existing community and new players to have the best experience with the game."

Rising Storm 2 Vietnam is on sale for $1.24. Or, you can spend the big bucks -- $1.49 -- to get the digital deluxe edition which includes a bunch of cosmetics and the soundtrack. The base game can be purchased on Steam for just $1.24 or you can pay the extra $1.49 for the digital deluxe version, which includes cosmetics and a soundtrack. It's 95% off, and you won't find it cheaper, barring a sale on the Epic Store, where it is also on sale but for a little more.