Once Human preload and release time guide

Once Human is a highly anticipated looter shooter set in a vast open world that’s filled with all sorts of enemies that wouldn’t look out of place in a sci-fi military book. It’s out on July 9, 2024, but there’s some important information you’ll need to know if you want to play it as soon as it drops.

In Once Human, you’ll explore 256 square kilometers of open world on foot and a wide range of vehicles you can customize to become a home on wheels. Settling down is far from frowned upon, and you can team up with others to farm resources and food to eke out an existence in a hostile world that will regularly throw paranormal entities your way. If that sounds great to you, you’ll want to play when the game goes live.

Can you preload Once Human?

No, there is no way to preload Once Human. Developer Starry Studio confirmed this on the game’s official Discord server. While that’s not great news for those of us with poor internet connections, we do have some information that can help us out nonetheless.

The developer has suggested that fans clear out 70 GB on the PC they’re planning to play Once Human. I would go even further and say you should clear out maybe 90 GB just in case there are issues with file verification and a day-one patch of some kind. With that added space, you won’t need to spend any longer messing with files than is absolutely necessary.

What time does Once Human release?

Once Human will be released on July 9, 2024, at 2 PM PT/10 PM BST. This time is pretty great for those in the US, but players in the UK will be burning the midnight oil by the time they’ve downloaded it and can access the servers. If there are any server woes, though, it’s going to be a write-off because it’ll take some of us well into the following day.

I love the idea of hitting a game and playing it as soon as it goes live, but online games tend to have issues around launch that make them difficult to play. Even if you get into a server, you might be kicked because of bottlenecks in player numbers.

I recommend waiting a day before jumping in to play, but if you’ve got the time to stay up all night playing, you may be able to circumvent some of these early issues as fans fall asleep. Perseverance definitely pays off with game launches like this.