The year 2013 had been called an important one for the entire gaming industry. This was due to the fact that the two major gaming companies namely Microsoft and Sony were planning to introduce their eighth generation consoles this year, after Nintendo had unveiled the Wii U in November 2012. But, more importantly for the fans and gamers, it was the year when Grand Theft Auto V would be released. Grand Theft Auto is one of the most popular action-adventure game series of all time and this installment was being launched after the Grand Theft Auto IV launch back in 2008. To say anticipation was high would be an understatement.
The game finally hit the stores on 17th September 2013 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. It became a smash success by making about a billion dollars within 3 days of its launch. Then, on Tuesday, the much-awaited online version of the game was launched by Rockstar Games, but it was replete with the connectivity problems that people had been afraid of. Similar to releases of online versions of other major games, the launch of Grand Theft Auto V’s online version was also plagued by connectivity problems and server issues. The online version of this game adds a multiplayer mode to the console version.
Shortly after the game was launched online, gamers began to complain of server issues that were preventing them from accessing the game. Disconnection issues and failure to load were also amongst reported problems. A webpage was created by the company in response to the complaints where it was providing updates regarding this issue. They apologized for the problems and asked for some patience from the gamers. The support website created by Rockstar is offering gamers the service of automatic email notifications every time an update is posted. But, no comment was made by the company regarding the problem.
According to experts, the popularity of the game is partly responsible for the problems that are associated with its online play. One expert was of the opinion that the company was attempting to scale its hardware quickly in order to cope with the unexpected requirements that had surfaced because of the incredible sales of the game. He said that the company would have had to add cloud server farms for providing support to the huge number of gamers. Rockstar itself warned last week that the popularity of the game may not be handled efficiently by its servers.
Rockstar stated that they were trying to cope with the higher than expected number of players and was working round the clock for alleviating the additional pressure on the servers. They said that the first few days would be temperamental because of the excessive load. The problems being faced by the company are simply an echo of the ones that were encountered by Sim City of Maxi and Diablo 3 of Blizzard Entertainment. Apart from these dilemmas, the company is also facing pressure from the fans to launch a PC version of the game as soon as possible.
