Activision Apologizes, Promises Fixes to PS3 Call of Duty 4 Online
By Chris on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 10:20 PM PST In Activision, Call of Duty, Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Games, Sony
As you might have noticed in the comments of a story I posted in November, there are some issues with Call of Duty 4’s online play on PlayStation 3. (If you didn’t, I don’t blame you for plowing through 850+ comments. ) Developer Infinity Ward’s community manager, fourzerotwo, has posted a message from Activision’s Chief Technical Officer, Steve Pearce, which attempts to explain what has caused the problems and what’s being done to repair the situation.
In short, they didn’t have enough servers to maintain the load of players. They’ve implemented a fix, and to make some additional changes, the servers will be taken offline tomorrow, Wednesday, January 9, at 4:00 AM PST. It should only be down for a few hours at most, but that seems like a small price to pay to allow IW to ensure there won’t be any further latency problems from their end.
Check after the full message from Pearce after the break.
Firstly, on behalf of Activision and DemonWare, I’d like to apologize for the difficulties you’ve experienced while playing the PlayStation 3 version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare during the holiday season.
The fact is that we’ve experienced an unprecedented load on the DemonWare backend servers, which has steadily increased since late December beyond our expectations. In spite of all of our planning and precautions, the extreme load revealed several issues. These issues triggered unscheduled downtime this past month. As we encountered issues, we deployed additional hardware and/or optimized the server infrastructure to keep the service up and running. However, while the servers were active for the vast majority of the time, many players experienced significant wait times repeatedly when joining games.
To overcome this issue, we’ve implemented a fix today, which should dramatically improve the time it takes to join an online game. And, in order to make additional improvements we are briefly taking the servers offline tomorrow, Wednesday January 9th at 4:00 a.m. PST
As a rule, we try to avoid scheduled downtime whenever possible. However, at this juncture we will need 1-2 hours to update a number of server infrastructure components. We apologize for any short-term inconvenience this may cause, and appreciate your ongoing support and patience.
Our expectation is that the server load will continue to increase as system bottlenecks are removed. So in the coming days, we will continue to monitor our system and make further optimizations and improvements as necessary. We will be deploying additional hardware to improve our database throughput and load handling. In addition to the added hardware, we are further optimizing components of the underlying server software to improve performance. We hope to be able to hot deploy these updates while the system is live. In the event that the system requires further scheduled downtime, we will post a message both here and in-game via the “Message of the Day” to keep everyone informed.
Rest assured that we are taking every possible action to insure that your Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare online PS3 experience is smooth and trouble free. We apologize for the trouble this has caused and ask for your understanding and cooperation as we get things sorted over the coming days.
Thanks,
Steve Pearce
CTO, Activision
THIS IS A FUCKING JOKE!
I think we all needa start a mass of spam on the infinity ward/cod4 complaints about this issue page, and maybe even spam links to this page coz lots of good comments on here about this fuckin stupid issue, great game, shame we cant fuckin enjoy it due to errors. “host ended game” “game lobby closed “downloading game settings” and shitty updated playlists that nobody asks for, we r all familiar with these issues we all needa band togetha n slap this shit right in activision/infinity ward or wateva retarded company is fuckin us about n wasting our time like this’s face.
This is a complete joke, it lets me online to play when i come in from school until about 4:30 then doesnt let me join any games and when i try to sign back in it says ” DOWNLOADING GAME SETTINGS ” then black screen telling me it is unable to connect me to the matchmaking server i’m getting really annoyed at this. My friend across the street from me can get online but why can’t i ? Really annoying when it cost me £50
While I can understand that they had been working on the servers and such im grateful. But seriously its already January the 20th for fuck sake this article came out on January the 8th they have had over 11 days to fix their fuck up and its STILL broken. “Downloading game settings…” if I wouldve known I could only play the single player I would have just rented this game.
all it says is downloading game settings
You fucking basterds, i finally got ma ps3 online yesterday and was on for a while NOW I CNT GET ON BECUASE OF ERROR 33, I love the game, Shame it cost me £50 and i baught a headset so i could to to my friends online. Bunch of nob heads =/
I think we should all receive a refund for stress and mental damages this game has caused me and my fellow PS3 Gamers. The game is beautiful, to put something as beautiful out and have problems with its online gaming is a crime. All we want to do is play the fuking game, not hear about why they are having problems. How about setting up the online servers before the game is released, FUCKING RETARDS.
I wonder what chance we would have if we returned the game back to our place of purchase as faulty? I think if thousands of us bombarded our local stores they would have to get the arses into gear & fix it. I love the idea of a refund or compensation, but its never gonna happen…..
\mine worked fina for monthes then after the recent updates I cant get past downloading settings
I just got this game 4 days ago. I have yet to join one single game. I’ve tried to join at least 100 games. Not one has worked. It searches for matches and quickly fills up the screen of people who are also playing. 90% of the time, it doesn’t even let me to the load screen, and kicks me out saying “lobby is full”
When I do finally get to the load screen, it gets stuck on “awaiting connection”, and then kicks me back to the lobby.
WTF am I doing wrong? Surely there’s something with my connection that isn’t working. I know people have had problems, but I’ve not been able to play one single game in 4 days, in spite of downloading the patch and trying to connect a hundred times.
the only problem i am having is that it wont let me party up… i have the game for 360 and dont have any problems im one error away from marching over to infinity ward and slap them around wit my meat
I have COD 4 for PS3
Is there anyway I can play online with 2 players on a split screen on seperate accounts?
is the the online game european or world wide
Well I’ve not been able to play online either–were do I download a patch for PS3 at? I don’t see one anywhere. I’m using the COMCAST HOME NETWORKING MODEM WITH ROUTER built in as well. All of my ports are open and still no go. Even set it up the way the forum guy said and it still doesn’t work. I wonder if WAL-MART WILL TRADE ME FOR SOLDIER OF FORTUNE PAYBACK? I’ve played it online with no probs and it’s alot more bloody then this cod 4 is. I think that I’m going to try that if this isn’t fixed soon-The only reason I bought this FPS was for online anyways–and that sure as HELL isn’t working for me!!!!
FIX THE ONLINE PLAY NOW, THIS IS GETTING RIDICULOUS, I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO PLAY FOR DAYS NOW!!!!
Well they must have fixed something because now I can play everything(knock on wood). Hopefully they’ve got something ironed out.
mine works online but i cant connect to friends partys, i get the ‘ unable to connect to host message!
and has anyone elses game got them weird numbers in the top right corner!?!?!???!?!??
Curtis, I’ve had those numbers in the top right even back in the good ‘ol days when this game actually worked. Now all I got is the dreaded “downloading game settings” B.S.
Please fix this… for everyone…. please
*PSN name: sprkr12, add me bro!”
this is really annoying
i can play from when i get home until around half past 7
as soon as i come off the PS3 for my tea i try to rejoin later
and it lets me online but then says, Downloading Game Settings
then it redirects me to another page saying
‘Error, unable to connect to activision matchmaker service’ error code 33
this is a joke
this is bullshit. can’t get on call of duty 4 fter 6pm which is wen i get hme. ment 2 be cos of ur ISP im with pipex the shit cunts
I’m SICK AND FUCKING TIRED OF THIS BULLSHIT LAG. SERIOUSLY. The framerates are slowing down, and I’m SICK of all these lag-abusers taking advantage of it as well. I get tons of connection errors anymore, I see people FUCKING TELEPORTING!!! THIS. IS. RIDICULOUS. Fucking get some dedicated servers for the goddamned game and get it over with! FUCK.
I can’t join my friends in this game, if I do this errror shows up with ‘unable to connect to host’ I hate it!! Plz help me if somebody knows how to fix this..
it may be the internet company i red that from other website
just wait untill the pach comes out they say it will come out at the end of the month
it better
i just got my ps3
so its not from the ps3 
i have done prestage mode 4 times
hope they r’nt lying
if it is ur internet company just ring them and thell try and do the best
some people have called them and the problem was fixed i am going to do that
tomorrow
hope they fix it
Hey dudes, gettn really pissed off. . . . .loving the call of duty! but, due to my sky broadband the connection is really really poor. Does anyone else have sky at all? I cant get cable as the location where I stay it is not permitted.
Have not been able to play for 5 days now. This “DOWNLOADING GAME SETTINGS…” screen is really irritating. I made it to Level 26 and now nothing. Will they ever fix this problem, or do we have to ask for refunds for the game.
When will that patch come?? And will it help the error ‘unable to connect to host’ ??
wen i go 2 play call of duty 4 online i can be waitin up 2 half an hour nd den sumtimes it takes me a couple of minutes 2 find a game how cum??? casue it can get real annoyin
shut up u square wankers
does any1 know how 2 fix the activision matchmaking problem on ps3?
Error 33 is down to your ISP during peak times i’am with Tiscali and they are the worst time to change ISP i think.
I never have any problens with cod4 online when i first got it took ages to find game settings after half hour once i got on to it no problems after that i use bt internet 8mg its fine for me game on
Xbox Call Of Duty 4 has never failed me but PS3’s version has been downloading games settings for over an hour. Whats up with that?
I don’t have a problem downloading game settings, I just wait forever to get into a game. Anyone else have this problem, or am I doing something wrong? Sometimes I get into a game right away, and other times it takes forever….
*DOWNLOADING GAME SETTINGS* thats all ive seen for the past 5 days!
Greetings from Denmark. Hi everyone i´ve sufferde just as much as you guys, like waiting forever to find online games and to join friends.I have a internet broardband 8mb download and 1mb upload..! is should be enough..!!! yes..?
Yesterday i got a second internet shared with the others that
live in the complex..it aint fast..! 1mb download 1nd 300kb upload
Now i plucked it into my ps3 and went online Cod4 and guess what.?
The waiting is max 30sec and i can ivite friends and join them
every time..!!!! my conclution..! it must be the broardband router
what suould it else be??????
All I get is DOWLOADING GAME SETTINGS. But this is after the game gets my rank and everything else…then i try to find game. After that it shows DOWNLOADING GAME SETTINGS and does nothing else. If I try to load a private match the game and my whole system lockup.
okay theyve pretty much sorted the server problems, but what about the whole leave a game for whatever reason try to get in to a different one and voila your in the same one for the next ten attempts of getting a decenet play.
“# arachnight says:
February 2nd, 2008 at 2:09 am
All I get is DOWLOADING GAME SETTINGS. But this is after the game gets my rank and everything else…then i try to find game. After that it shows DOWNLOADING GAME SETTINGS and does nothing else. If I try to load a private match the game and my whole system lockup.”
Exact same thing for me.. wtf
Have the same problems that you guys are having…..trying to load a private match locks the whole system up and I have to shut it down. Still wating to find out what the heck is going on with this game.
Great game, shame you cant get online to play it tho – which is why I bought it!
Activision you bunch of tw@s
IF anyone hears of a new patch or someone new to bitch at …..activision or anyone else ……. let me know. Meanwhile I will be considering which drink to set on my call of duty coaster
it must suck to not be able to play and to lag all the time. Ive only had 1 hr where i couldnt play on my PS3 and its been fine ever since
iv read ppl posting about the same error on here but theres not direct replies..
iv got like 10 friends aprox on ps3 and wen i try to join their parties and vise versa its all fine, except for one person (who annoyingly i play with the most).
everytime we try to connect to eachother it comes up with the black screen and message “Error unable to connect to host”
we both have good connections, both live close together, both have same versions of cod4 and he can even connect to an invite i send him whilst im in someone elses party..
is there anyway of fixing this? or is it going to b fixed in an upcoming patch at all?
would love any feed back
cheeers