So, farewell to thee, Titanfall 2. You have broken my heart.
I’ve deleted you, reinstalled you and checked all the trouble-shooting information you have to offer. I still can’t jump into a multiplayer game. There is no reason for you to take up drive space on my console.
Titanfall 2: a sad goodbye
Let me be clear on this: Titanfall 2 is – in my humble opinion – the best First-Person-Shooter (FPS) game released in the last decade. Yes, better than DOOM. Better than Bulletstorm. Better than any Battlefield or Call Of Duty game you care to mention. Respawn’s shooter occupies a place in my heart that was once the residence of Modern Warfare 2. It stands to reason; after the whole Infinity Ward/Activision debacle, most of the people who worked on 2009’s fantastic shooter jumped ship to Respawn.
In the years since, that developer has more than held its own in the FPS space. The first Titanfall was fantastic – yes, it didn’t have a single-player campaign, but it was also one of the then-newly released Xbox One’s killer apps. Titanfall 2 was even better, coming as it did armed with a superb campaign and a multiplayer that built on the impressive bones of its predecessor.
Outside the mech/pilot space, Respawn has established itself as a developer that has yet to produce a bum note. EA wants in on the Battle Royale space dominated by the likes of Fortnite and PUBG? Hello, Apex Legends! EA wants to wash the bad taste of the surprise mechanics PR nightmare that was Star Wars: Battlefront II out of its mouth? Well here comes Star Wars Jedi: The Fallen Order, a critically acclaimed Star Wars adventure game with nary a micro-transaction in sight.
Respawn is arguably one of the best developers EA has in its stable. It produces games that, for the most part, satisfy the wants and needs of players while padding its publisher’s bank balance.
So why is it the victim of rampant server hacking?
A protest inside a protest
After a brief period I spent wailing and gnashing my teeth about my inability to connect with an online match in Titanfall 2, I perused the internet to find out if I was the only poor sod having this problem. Turns out, no I’m not.
A cursory glance at pages on Reddit, Steam and EA’s own site point to an ongoing problem Respawn has with players DDoss-ing its servers for both Titanfall 2’s multiplayer mode and Apex Legends. According to a report on Pure Xbox a hacker known as jeanue has successfully hacked the games’ servers across all platforms.
Some players, like myself, have sadly turned their backs on the game and others report that the MP mode is basically unplayable.
STATUS REPORT :// reports indicate that pc and xbox are officially completely ddosed and unplayable.
He has done it, utterly done it.
The hacker known as jeanue has destroyed titanfall 2 on all platforms. just an update on how the situation is going.
All platforms are down. pic.twitter.com/OxOX2kzFGX— The_Pancake_Satan_666 (@PancakeSatan666) July 12, 2021
A report from earlier in the month has revealed that Respawn are both aware of the problems facing players and are moving to sort them out – although the team in charge of this seems pretty paltry by all accounts.
In the meantime, though, it’s a pretty sad time for one of the best shooters out there. I, like many players, do hope that Respawn will come up with a fix in the near future, but while all of this carries on, there’s no point in keeping Titanfall 2’s whopping 69GB on my console. Having scrubbed the single-player mode, Respawn’s game does not offer much to me if its MP mode is inaccessible.
So farewell to thee Titanfall 2. Here’s hoping Respawn sorts you out. And while they’re at it, can they get to work on a third Titanfall game please? That would be grand – and not before time.