EA Explains Army of Two Multiplayer Region Lock

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Regional lockout in the online multiplayer component of EA Montreal's co-op-focused Army of Two (PS3, X360) was necessary to maintain stable network performance, senior producer Reid Schneider has stated.

The lock prevents gamers in North American, Europe, and Asia from playing online with one another. Addressing the complaints, Schneider said that the restriction was meant to ensure solid connection performance for those playing online.

"[In a multiplayer match] the person with the worst connection brings down the whole group to his/her worst connection level," Schneider told Joystiq. "When playing in Versus mode three people can be highly adversely affected by one player with a bad connection. We use the region lock to minimize the likelihood of this occurring."

Moreover, Schneider explained that a change in the game's physics in the Asian version, which was altered to remove the ability to shoot corpses due to territorial requirements, also had a role in the region lock. The differing physics between the Asian and Western versions of Army of Two would cause a match to de-sync and ultimately fail.

The producer went on to assure gamers that EA is actively pursuing a solution that would allow region-to-region play sometime in the future. "We are looking to find a way where we can do it and not expose users to super slow connections," Schneider said.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    March 12, 2008 4:23 PM

    either that or you have people complaining about how the lag is terrible. people will complain either way. less people will complain about this

    • reply
      March 12, 2008 4:43 PM

      what about co-op with friends on different countries that don' t mind a bit of lag?

      • reply
        March 12, 2008 4:59 PM

        i bet theyre in the minority. sucks i guess

        • reply
          March 12, 2008 6:16 PM

          i think consumers as a whole have proven that leaving things up to our intelligence usually bites the company in the ass. :D

      • reply
        March 12, 2008 5:06 PM

        I agree nutcrackr.
        I was going to buy this game to play with a friend of mine in America (I'm from England), when I found out about this I decided not to buy. It's ridiculous to be honest.

        • reply
          March 13, 2008 1:37 AM

          Same here. I'm surprised, because I thought that EA became a little less retarded lately, and now this.

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