The Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection launched on March 14, and it sounds like it’s a bit of a mess. As of this writing, the compilation has mostly “Overwhelmingly Negative” user reviews on Steam, with only 19 percent of over 4000 scores being positive. Fans are complaining of online server instability and crashing sessions, and after a day of controversy, developer Aspyr has put out a statement.
The Aspyr team posted on the studio’s support site, claiming that it experienced “critical errors” in its network when the Classic Collection launched, and that the team has been working to fix these problems so players can actually play matches without being disconnected. The full statement reads as follows:
We’d like to thank the Battlefront community for their overwhelming support and feedback for the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection release.
At launch, we experienced critical errors with our network infrastructure. The result was incredibly high ping, matchmaking errors, crashes, and servers not appearing in the browser.
Since launch, we’ve been working to address these issues and increase network stability, and we will continue our efforts until our network infrastructure is stabilized to prevent further outages.
Please continue to report bugs, errors, or unexpected behaviors to our support team via our Request Form.
Online games often experience server issues at launch and improve over time, but sometimes, those server issues are inconsistent across the player base. Our writer covering the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection didn’t experience server issues, but others clearly did. But server issues are not the only problem players are having with these remastered games. According to reviews and social media posts there’s lag, lost audio, and sluggish performance plaguing matches. Aspyr’s statement notably glosses over all of those problems in favor of prioritizing the most public issue of people not being able to play the game they bought.
Aspyr has worked on other Star Wars projects over the years, and this is the latest example of the studio fumbling the bag. The team’s Knights of the Old Republic II remaster was the subject of a lawsuit after it failed to put out promised DLC. The team was taken off the Knights of the Old Republic remake, which was given to one of publisher Saber Interactive’s internal studios.
Saber Interactive and some of its studios were sold by its owner and video game industry gaping maw Embracer Group on March 14, though it still maintains ownership of Aspyr.
