It seems as if every big multiplayer FPS has problems on launch lately. Gamers went through MW2's growing pains (and still are some might say) with Xbox LIVE and the various other things that went wrong keeping people from playing the game, and now there are issues with the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 launch.

EA/DICE is aware of the problem and is looking into it so hopefully we'll have a fix soon or things are going to start getting ugly. Here's the official word from the OfficialBFBC2 Twitter feed

We are aware of the connection issue some PC users are experiencing. We are working on a solution.

Basically the game just doesn't want to let you play online at all or for very long. The list of issues ranges from getting kicked for a Punkbuster violation, random kicks, not being able to connect to EA Online through the game to login, servers missing from the master server list and even some cases of CTD (although those are rarer.) Clearly there are some strange things afoot in BFBC2-land.



General consensus of the server providers is that it's DICE/EA's fault and I'm inclined to agree. Several large providers from Gameservers to MyInternet to Wolf are all having issues pointing toward a connection issue with EA's master server and perhaps with the server software itself.

Now you can't please all the people all the time but the sheer randomness of the connection issues is rubbing gamers the wrong way. Here you have a game that the faithful have been waiting for and have been holding out as a shining beacon of all things right with the world and wrong with MW2 only to not be able to play the game for more than a few minutes. It's disappointing to say the least. Top it off with the fact that this just didn't happen with the beta and you have a recipe for a lot of pissed off gamers.

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Update
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Well it looks like DICE has put together the R4 server software and is sending it out to the providers to see if it fixes the problem. In addition, they suggest you try the following

Here are a few steps to try to connect to servers:

• Uninstall the BC2 BETA
• Look in MY Documents for BC2 BETA directory. If it exists delete it.
• Look where BC2 BETA was installed, if the BC2 BETA directory remains, delete it.
• Try running the game again.

For all the players connecting to servers and being kicked straight away (and pbsetup.exe or manual updating didn't help) then you will be happy to know we are sending out R4 servers to our hosting providers which will hopefully solve this issue.

FYI, I've already done the steps listed above the other day so it's doubtful that will make any difference. I hope the server patch does though.

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Update 3/5/10
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The R4 server update seems to have done the trick for me and the group of guys I usually play with. Server stability has improved and random kicks are not being reported on our server since the change. There are still issues trying to connect to EA Online and network connection lost errors can happen until reloading the game twice it seems for some (I don't have a clue on this one.)

Latest here: BFBC2 Issues Update

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