Respawn Entertainment has managed to curate some fans in the past couple of years, thanks to the wonderful polish and execution of both Titanfall and Titanfall 2 (which came with a fantastic single-player campaign), and then pushing out a new battle royale called Apex Legends.
Unfortunately, it appears as though Apex Legends has the majority of Respawn Entertainment’s attention, which is disappointing some fans that have been clamoring for the next iteration of the mech-heavy Titanfall franchise.
Yesterday, the original Titanfall title made a surprise appearance onto Steam, also available through EA Play (the new Origin Access available both on Steam and Electronic Arts own platform, Origin) which led to a fair bit of celebration.
At least, until people downloaded the title and attempted to play it.
It’s worth noting that the original Titanfall only has multiplayer play (an aspect that some pointed out may have harmed the original title’s popularity): effectively, this means that the value of the title is based entirely on Respawn Entertainment‘s (and by extension, Electronic Arts) ability to offer servers with reliable connections without interference.
This seems to be beyond both companies, and has been for a while; and actors have been running scripts that immediately kick players from any multiplayer match, and the problem has been widespread for quite a while at this point without any company appearing ready to take action.
If you tried playing Team Fortress 2 during the botting fiasco that Valve finally managed to crush (although not without players making their own bots to hunt bots hunting players), it’s the same idea: stop people from playing a game they enjoy for whatever reasons they managed to curate inside of their minds, and then argue with people on anonymous forums about how they’re justified in their actions.
Reports have already been bleeding forth from Steam regarding the multiplayer servers still being unplayable, by and large: you may be able to squeeze in a few matches, but the majority of your time will likely be spent in the main menu without being able to play.
This does raise some questions: namely, how Respawn Entertainment was able to bring the title over to Steam without at least taking a look inside of the servers and noticing something was amiss. Or glancing at any of the forums surrounding the original title for the past year and attempt to eke out a fix.
Regardless, many are currently reporting the title as wholly unplayable, and the Steam reviews currently reflect that. Buyer beware.
Note: Some new comments on Steam are stating that this issue has been fixed as of shortly after writing.
