Silicon Pirates Beta 3 Is Live: A Free 3D Homelab Simulator for Your Browser

Silicon Pirates Beta 3 is live. It's a free homelab and server rack simulator you play in your browser, and it just moved out of a flat rack on a screen and into an actual room. Same address as before: sp.silicon-pirates.com. Beta 2 has been retired, with honours.

If you've been following along, you've seen the Beta 3 gameplay videos. That was the dev build. This is the real thing, running on a real server, with real accounts and a real chance to set your own lab on fire.

Why a room?

Because a rack doesn't live on a screen. It lives in a room, next to a desk, a bad chair and a power strip that probably shouldn't have three other power strips plugged into it. Beta 2 did the systems well: power, networking, storage, faults. But every new idea I had kept needing a place to put it. So I built the place.

You start with $1,000 in Lab Credits, a 12U rack and four crates sitting on the rug in the main room. Open them, rack the gear, run the power cords, run the network cables, plug your router into the ISP box on the wall. Then your lab earns money. Then it gets hot. Then the bill comes.

What's in the homelab simulator now

• Machines you open. Every server is a chassis full of parts: CPUs, RAM, drives, power supplies, fans. When something fails, you walk it to the workbench and swap the part yourself.
• Real power. Wall circuits with breakers, PDUs in three tiers, rack UPS units and a house battery. The starter PDU is rated for 100 watts, which one busy server can blow past on its own.
• The internet costs money. An ISP box on the wall with four plans, a monthly invoice, and outages. Add a second line from another carrier and your router fails over in about six seconds.
• Networking and storage. DHCP, your own domain, 8-port and 24-port switches, patch panels between racks and rooms, and NAS units with RAID 0, 5 and 6.
• Racks you pick. 6U, 12U, 20U or 42U, in any room you own. And there are three rooms now: the Main Room, a Back Room at 10 work orders, and a Basement once you've done 30.
• Faults that tell you what to do. A hung service says RESTART THE SERVICE. A runaway process says KILL PID 1337. Yes, that's really in there.
• A terminal that means it. Files, scripts and cron jobs. Anything you can click in the inspector, you can type.

And the things that got a little out of hand

There's a grow room with lights, hoses and an automation server. There's a crypto market with six coins that every player shares, so when somebody dumps a coin, everybody feels it. There's an aquarium, and the fish will absolutely die if you forget them. And there's an arcade cabinet called RACK ATTACK with four games on swappable ROMs, 25 cents a play, and one high score board for the whole game.

Played Beta 2?

Your login still works. Sign in with your Beta 2 email or username and the same password. You start with a fresh lab, since Beta 3 is a different game under the hood and your old racks wouldn't know what to do with a room. If you forgot your password, there's finally a reset link on the login screen.

Is it free?

Yes, and it stays free. The whole thing runs on one server that one small crew pays for. If you want to help keep it online, the JOIN THE CREW button in the game gets you Lab Credits, Chips and crew colours on your name. It's optional. Every Chip in the game can also be earned just by playing, and nothing is locked behind paying.

Where to go next

• Play Silicon Pirates at sp.silicon-pirates.com. Make a free account and you're in.
• Read the device manuals or the quick start guide.
• See everything that changed from Beta 2.
• Watch the Beta 3 gameplay videos, or go back to where it started with the first Silicon Pirates post.
• Follow along on itch.io or talk to other players on r/SiliconPirates.

Come break something. Then tell me about it with the REPORT BUG button in the game.