Grand Theft Auto Online, the multiplayer component for Grand Theft Auto 5, has met more than its share of problems since launching on October 1st. Even despite the few updates Rockstar Games has released, the experience still suffers from the odd few bugs.
Speaking to OXM, Battlefield 4 executive producer Patrick Bach talked about GTA Online’s issues, and defended the developer against critics who felt it bit off far more than it could chew with GTA Online. “Seeing how Rockstar handled the launch of GTA Online – they are not stupid people, they’re not incompetent, and they had a lot of problems. Those are the problems you have with an online game, it’s very, very complicated.
“People might think ‘how can they be so stupid, etc’ but it’s extremely complicated. There are so many things that can go wrong, and you can never know until you’ve launched, because you can never fake – you can simulate a lot of load tests, but you can never know for sure. So we wept with them, when they had those problems.”
On being asked whether DICE would ever consider releasing Battlefield 4’s multiplayer later for a smoother transition, Bach replied, “No. We don’t want to play it like that. We think that Battlefield is primarily an online game, not a single player game, so releasing a single player Battlefield first, then weeks later releasing the online? That would be wrong! Maybe we should do it the other way round though, release the single player later, but we wouldn’t release the multiplayer later.”
Battlefield 4 will be releasing on October 29th for current-gen consoles in North America, while next-gen releases are booked for launch in November. And when does GTA Online plan to recover? Stay tuned for more details.