Kaos to monitor Homefront for "glitches"

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 17 March, 2011

"You can't test for thousands of gamers."

A patch for Homefront will release after players reported freezing and system crashes on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions.

"I'm looking into the reports of PS3 freezing issues and will provide an update once I've spoken with all the teams," Kaos community manager Jeremy Greiner posted in a spiralling thread packed with complaints.

"Will need a bit of time, but in the interim - thanks a lot for your patience."

Near-future first-person shooter Homefront, due out in the UK tomorrow, has been out in the US since Tuesday.

It sold 375,000 copies during its first day on sale in the US - a figure publisher THQ was "delighted" with.

Describing the launch of the game to Eurogamer, Kaos creative director and general manager David Votypka predicted "glitches", but said the team would closely monitor the situation post launch.

"It's kind of like putting your baby out there," he said. "It's never done, right? You always want to polish things.

"We're doing dedicated servers. So it's a pretty big undertaking. We have farms in-house, like 32 consoles, logging in and out, all automated. We've done larger, what we call big daddy multiplayer tests, with about 150 people. Then we did an early product demo on the 360 with a closed group of testers. That was up to 500 people at once.

"But you can't test for hundreds of thousands of gamers hitting the server at once. Chances are there will be a few glitches here and there that we're going to have to patch in the early weeks. We'll be monitoring that closely."

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (13) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Amgzone #1 1 year ago

    Got this today, jumped straight into sp and tbh its fairly decent, i havnt experianced any of the problems people have reported yet tho

  • WiZZyWiGG #2 1 year ago

    "You can't test for thousands of gamers."

    Well you sort of can, its why you do an open beta on big multiplayer releases.

  • MerricK #3 1 year ago

    "Its kind of like putting your baby out there. its never done, right? You want always want to polish things?"


    Who an earth polishes a baby? Lot's of people bring their kids to work but I've not noticed them shiny or smelling of Mr Sheen.
    Edited by MerricK at 17/03/11 @ 15:40

  • randompanda #4 1 year ago

    You should have been BETA prepared.

  • weejok #5 1 year ago

    Got it yesterday, very disappointing game. Looks like a game made 6 years ago and controls are sluggish. Blasted through the single player and thought it was pretty boring apart from the odd parts. Tried the multiplayer and wasn't impressed either, not even going to bother using my online pass code because I have no interest in levelling up past rank 5. Single player is just so dated, it won't let you do anything until you get a on screen prompt, want to climb a ladder you have to wait until the game says you can press X to do so! WTF

  • eviroboy #6 1 year ago

    Gotta love day one sales based on hype, if it keeps it up into weeks two and three only then will I be impressed. After watching the first 15 mins of gameplay it's definitely not a full price purchase for me.

    Each to their own.

  • metalangel #7 1 year ago

    "its never done, right? You want always want to polish things?"

    Is true. I am want two Polish things: is Hania and Katarzyna, is see on Facebook of Sex, yes?

  • Cronan #8 1 year ago

    Not good, but pretty much in line with the rest of the game quality, to be honest.

  • JahB #9 1 year ago

    Yes you can. It's called load testing and is pretty much standard for all AAA releases.

  • WeirdbeardUK #10 1 year ago

    Ill buy it. If its cack ill trade it in for crysis 2. Providing that doesnt have the same problems im having with the ps3 demo. Cant seem to get in a single game.

  • lockload #11 1 year ago

    PS3 frezes or 360 aswell?

  • mrvinny000 #12 1 year ago

    Well if you have a near 100 million console demographic to sell to & you have 300,000 pre-orders then the game should A) Not look like someone threw-up on it ,B) Struggle for demand server side , C) Freeze either console & D) (Ps3) Bloody well drag more than 2 of the 10 party members into the game you join.
    I haven't played many worse looking , annoying or downright ugly shooters in my 15 yrs gaming . I thought KZ3 had been bad but at least it was pretty to look at . Homefront is the girl you pick up in a drunken stupor & instantly regret in the morning after seeing her in daylight.
    less than 24hrs on & i'm getting shot of this poor CoD alike , where did all the decent Fps' go?. Bulletstorm is annoying , KZ3, odd , Homefront Ugly & Crysis is pretty but empty of any real interest . Roll on BF3 to save my sanity from the CoD alikes & just crap games.

  • BeLGaRaTh #13 1 year ago

    Bought this on PC today and I knew there would be issues right from the start.. Not only did it install some stuff from the DVD it then had to download a further 4GB or so from steam, why wasn't it on the disk in the first place? Then when launching it I was prompted that Physx wasn't installed, which I know it is, as it is always installed with the Nvidia drivers.

    After a lengthy call to the rather unhelpful and incorrectly named help desk, I was told that the problem was down to using the latest official version of the Nvidia drivers. Apparantly these contain a version of Physx which is newer than the ones needed by the game, and thus it canot detect it properly. They advised the only way was to uninstall the current drivers (266.58) I have and install 258.96, which not only contain the newer Physx, but as mentioned are now very old drivers and do not support my card :(

    What a croc of crap. Plus I cannot take it back for a refund as the key is now associated to a steam account and thus cannot be resold.