Sledgehammer Games switched off leaderboards and turned Call of Duty: World War 2's vaunted Headquarters space into a solo experience to help stabilize servers following a rickety launch for its latest first-person shooter.
COD WW2 is partly a victim of its own success here, bringing in so many millions of users that even Activision's vast arrays of servers buckled under the pressure. In an update on Sunday, Sledgehammer talked about the steps it had taken to address this.
"At launch, we experienced an extremely high volume of players connecting to our servers in a very short window. This resulted in players experiencing mixed online connectivity across all platforms. In response, we pushed a change enabling higher capacity load balancers, resulting in improved live connectivity.
"In addition, we made HQ a solo experience, and deactivated Leaderboard updates in the short term. This has resulted in improved live connectivity and the best in-match experience for fans. The game is stable and network performance is strong across all platforms. If you experience any issues online, please reach out to @ATVIAssist for support.
"Headquarters will return to its fully-populated, shared experience shortly. In the meantime, you can invite your friends to join your HQ experience at any time. Also, rest assured, your leaderboard stats are being recorded and stored, and leaderboard data will be reflected soon."
Apparently a few players also lost some progress in multiplayer, which is unfortunate. Although "the vast majority lost 5 or fewer levels", Sledgehammer said it wasn't happy with that and would find a way to make it up to them. The issue causing the problem has apparently been eradicated already.
Call of Duty: World War 2 is a return to form for Activision's FPS series. Check out our COD WW2 review to find out why, and here's how to turn on the power in Nazi Zombies if you're getting stuck into that.