Can’t join your friend’s game? Start here.

Check Steam status first — on both ends

If either of you is set to Invisible on Steam, or has Steam Family (formerly Family View) switched on, the other person cannot see a session to join. This is the single most-reported cause on Icarus’s own Steam forum. Set status to Online, turn Family off, and try again before touching anything else.

On different storefronts (Steam + Epic)?

Icarus’s friends list and invites run on Epic Online Services, not the storefront you bought it from. A Steam player and an Epic player are not automatically friends just because they added each other on Steam — add each other as friends inside Icarus (which uses your Epic account underneath) or on Epic directly, then invite from there.

Icarus has no crossplay with consoles at all — PC (Steam/Epic) cannot join a PS5 or Xbox session, in either direction.

Just after a patch?

A weekly build lands almost every week. If you updated and your friend hasn’t, or Steam hasn’t refreshed your friends list yet, fully quit Steam — not just the game — and relaunch on both ends before trying again.

Region mismatch is the reported cause

Error 008 is players outside the host’s region failing to find their session. Players report it clearing when host and every joiner set the same Steam download region (Steam › Settings › Downloads). This is a community-reported workaround, not an official fix from RocketWerkz — it does not resolve it for everyone, but it is the most consistent report across multiple threads.

One character per prospect, and it sticks

Each prospect holds one character slot per player. Once you join with a character, that prospect is bound to that character — leaving through the dropship does not free the slot for a different character of yours to join instead.

To join with a different character, the host has to remove your character from that prospect’s crew list first (prospect management, from the host’s side). Otherwise, resume with the same character you originally joined on.

Confirm versions match, then just retry

Make sure host and every joiner are on the same build — a mismatched patch is a repeat cause across multiple Icarus updates. Beyond that, players across several Steam threads report the join simply failing intermittently and succeeding on a second or third attempt with no other change — that is a real, reported pattern here, not something we can hand you a guaranteed fix for.

Open the two ports the server actually uses

Icarus’s dedicated server needs UDP 17777 (game port) and UDP 27015 (query port) reachable — forwarded on your router if you’re hosting from home, and allowed through the OS firewall on the machine running the server. Both, not just one; a query-only port lets the server list it but not let anyone in.

Give friends the direct-connect path, not a Steam invite

A dedicated server isn’t joined through the Steam friends list. In Icarus: Join › Dedicated Servers (Beta) › Direct Connect, then enter IP:PORT — using the game port (17777 by default), not the query port. Mixing those two up reads as “can’t connect” with no further explanation.

The config itself

If ServerSettings.ini is the part you’re stuck on — especially getting CreateProspect right, which wants the game’s internal row name and not the name shown in the menu — use the dedicated server config generator already on this site.