Gamers are no strangers to delayed seasons, but The Division 2 players are in a particularly awkward situation. Ubisoft has revealed that a development "error" has broken the shared-world shooter's build generation system, and thus the studio's ability to update the game. The team not only can't introduce the new season it delayed last week, but can't extend the outgoing one until it repairs the build functionality.
Ubisoft says it has made "good progress" in fixing the issue in recent days, and there are hints a solution is in sight. The company is in the midst of a three-hour "unscheduled maintenance" session as we write this, and it's using the downtime to fix problems that include an inability to make seasonal in-game purchases. The servers should be back online around 1PM Eastern if there are no complications.
A message from #TheDivision2 team. pic.twitter.com/KuPiz7t9PL
— Tom Clancy's The Division (@TheDivisionGame) February 9, 2023
The timing is particularly bad for this…
2023-02-10 12:25:27
Source from www.engadget.com
On March 16th, the game-publishing giant, Ubisoft, released an update for its popular action game The Division 2, which had disastrous consequences for players. Within moments of the update’s release, players reported severe bugs and glitches, including missing textures and an inability to launch the game, prompting a prompt response from the developers. Unfortunately, these problems were further compounded when the developers attempted to fix the issue with an emergency patch, which caused further disruption, breaking the game’s ability to update with future patches altogether.
This major issue has since been affecting gamers’ ability to play and stay up-to-date with the popular action game. This serves as a stark reminder to the industry of how important it is to test and properly vet all software updates before their launch.
The Division 2 is the follow-up to Ubisoft’s hugely successful Tom Clancy’s The Division game, released in 2016. Much like its predecessor, the game sees players venturing into the post-apocalyptic environment of Washington D.C to take on enemy factions and complete missions. It’s an immensely popular game — as of October 2019, it had broken the record for best-selling game of the year.
Unfortunately, this was all undermined on the 16th when its stability and playability suffered a sharp decline. As well as glitches and missing textures, players reported unable to launch the game or having “infinite loading” issues after attempting to launch it. Needless to say, the update caused an uproar among players who felt forced to either forego the game entirely or simply wait it out in the hope of a revert — as was eventually provided.
This revert was in itself flawed; it was never fully tested by Ubisoft and was released far earlier than the usual updates (which are normally released early in the morning). What’s more, the revert further damaged the game’s ability to accept future patches, meaning that players were totally unable to update the game afterwards.
Ubisoft’s mishandling of the situation has prompted much backlash from players and critics alike. While it’s important to recognise that these issues were resolved to an extent by the developers, the incident serves as a grave reminder of the need to test all software updates before they’re released to the general public. Ubisoft should have realised that a hasty mess could have been avoided by taking the necessary time to properly test their software, before releasing it — something that must be heeded by other game-publishing giants in order to avoid similar issues in the future.