Taking forever to join a server

[IMMINENT]

Title. Need solution. Thanks

[SpikedFreddy]

reasons to why that might happen-

Bad Network Connection-
Your PC might just be slow-
It Is Prob a bug-

[Xonerix]

Yep, same here, but in my case it's worse, I can't join at all...
Used to play a year ago, decided have some fun again, after so long.
Installed, Can't even join anything, it's like getting stuck at "Joining, please wait..." for forever. :/

[JOY]

Same here. Beefy PC, beefy internet connection. Even though I see many players are in the servers, I'm stuck in the joining screen.

[JohnBanana]

I just kept trying, scroll down further and keep trying random servers. Also sometimes you just gotta wait, takes like 30 sec sometimes. I also got the frozen player fix and modlist mod, you can google them, maybe that helps idk but I seem to be getting into more lobbies after getting them

[Gibson]

Explaination here :
https://github.com/lammas321/CrabGameFloatingPlayerPatch/tree/main

"Some time ago (around March 2024) after an update to the way Steam handles Peer2Peer connections, Crab Game lobbies with around 12 players or more started seeing players just floating in place for the entirety of games, never moving or rotating, only punching and using items. The reason for this is whatever that Steam P2P update did made it more difficult to establish P2P connections with players, especially with those located further away or when the lobby has larger player counts

Most games will make clients send position and rotation data to the host for the host to verify, and then the host will either forward that information to all clients or block it if the data seems illegitimate or cheated, which is why server side anti cheats work. The problem with Crab Game is that this position and rotation isn't sent to the host and then to all players, rather it is sent directly from client to client with no host to verify it as the middle man. This technically means cheaters can lie to the host about their position to seem legit, and then use movement cheats and fling other players out the map without the host knowing who is doing it and I hate it, but that's getting off topic haha

Because of this method of sharing player position and rotation data, and with players not being able to establish connections with each other due to the Steam P2P update, player position and rotation packets never reach each other, thus resulting in players floating indefinitely until a connection is randomly established. Some may ask the question: "Why does the server host never see any floating players?" and that's because a connection had to be established for the client to join the lobby in the first place. Another question that could be asked is: "Why can I see floating players punching, holding items, attacking with said items, and firing guns?" which is because that information isn't sent client to client. The client swinging sends the packet to the host, and then then host sends a packet to the rest of the clients to handle

Though this method Dani used isn't exactly safe against cheaters who abuse it or good for the Steam P2P connection issues, it was good at updating player positions and rotations faster (as it'd take less time for packets to reach each other if there's no middle man) and also helped somewhat with internet bandwith usage. You can see it when looking at players far away on maps like Sussy Slope (the ice Race map with the large slide), the game sends less postion and rotation packets the further you are from somebody, resulting in them looking like they're telporting a couple units at a time"

[Gibson]

The floating players are related to difficulties to enter lobby, since making a p2p connection with host is more difficult too, especially when a lot of player try to join a server at the same time (which happens with big lobbies)