DRM News

UPDATE : Well, here we are towards the end of March, and the game now officially has non-Beta, fully functional dedicated servers. An absolutely pathetic display of Rebellion clearly saying one thing while intending something else entirely, but at least the servers finally fully exist, right?

“Despite rumours, Rebellion has always been planning to support dedicated servers for Aliens vs Predator PC and we can now officially confirm that this is the case. Rebellion has always appreciated fan support,” said Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley.

That quote, made in an article on Gamesindustry.biz, was made approximately 3 months before the latest iteration of the Alien vs. Predator franchise released. In the wake of the hubbub caused by Modern Warfare 2 doing away with dedi-servers, it was seen as a bit of a return to form for the PC platform, a sign that not everyone was going to flee from the sort of customization that PC gamers had grown accustomed to.

Here we are at the end of February, the game has been out for weeks…and dedicated servers are nowhere to be found. All that can be found is this nebulous post from a Rebellion staffer in the game’s Steam forum :

Further information regarding the dedicated servers closed beta will be announced on the 1st of March, as stated in “Patch 2 notes” thread which has been stickied in this forum.

The only further mention made in those notes, which can be found here, is this sentence here :

We will also have news on an additional feature we know many of you have been waiting for which is now ready for a closed Beta test!

So, not only are the promised servers not available, they’re not even in a closed Beta yet. It strikes me as rather unlikely that something as intrinsic to a game as the way its multiplayer portion functions would be left until after that game is released to be added.

No, what seems increasingly more likely with each passing day is that Rebellion saw a chance to grab some cheap publicity for themselves. Then, they hedged their bets on actual server support until they got an idea of what sort of reception the game would actually receive from consumers. Oh, it’s good? Great, let’s get on adding that dedicated server support, then.

And these companies wonder why sales are diminishing on the PC platform?