Of course the Suez ship is showing up in Microsoft Flight Simulator

Last week, one of the world’s largest cargo ships managed to get itself stuck in the Suez Canal, blocking the entire passageway for nearly seven days before salvage teams finally were able to dislodge the Ever Given earlier today. It was a real headache for the international economy, costing countries billions of dollars and disrupting global trading for weeks to come. On the one hand, it’s obviously a super-serious situation... but on the other, it’s also a comically gigantic boat with “EVERGREEN” stamped on its side, which is objectively pretty funny. So perhaps it was only a matter of time that, after replicating a bunch of real life locales and even massive weather events, the Ever Given’s saga was immortalized via Microsoft Flight Simulator.

A global embarrassment available as an add-on — Now, it’s probably important to note that the Suez Canal traffic jam isn’t officially offered via Microsoft or the game title’s developer, Asobo, but it can be downloaded as a fan-made add-on for free. Don’t worry if you aren’t a Microsoft Flight Simulator player, either: there are already plenty of quality videos to enjoy, including the original viral entry via TikTok from the user, donut_enforcement:

“What is that? Oh geez... it appears they have a big problem,” donut_enforcement’s pilot narrates as passes by the Ever Given replica. “What kind of stupid captain would do that?”

Now, to be fair, it reportedly wasn’t entirely the crew’s fault. Heavy winds and a sandstorm probably contributed to the 220,000 ton vessel running aground... but okay, yeah, most are saying human error definitely had something to do with it.

The modding continues — Not all recent gaming mods have needed to tie into real-world geopolitics: someone recently offered up a mod swapping out the legs of OG Doom’s Cacodemons for Mario boots, resulting in some haunted imagery. Mario mods seem to be the rage these days, given the GoldenEye 64 re-skin that’s also available. As for more helpful additions, there were all those... um... “updates” to Cyberpunk 2077 earlier this year, too. We assume there aren’t any Microsoft Flight Simulator downloads adding Night City to your maps, since it’d probably result in the game immediately crashing.

Anyway, kudos to the workers who freed the actual Ever Given from its little jam, and kudos to the community behind the extremely technical simulation game that keeps on giving.