Bioware Explains Connection Issues VIP Anthem Demo

Anthem’s VIP demo has suffered from connectivity issues. Since day one, many players are unable to login or access the server. Bioware states that the problems had various causes.

Chad Robertson, Bioware’s head of live services, said the developers are still working to resolve issues with platform connectivity, software permissions, and loading times. Robertson rejects the claim that the servers were not prepared for the traffic. “To ensure stability, we wanted to adapt the servers to the growing number of players. In general, we had additional capacity ready for growth and we will keep that,” said Robertson.

According to Robertson, the platform connectivity issue did not occur in internal testing. This was caused by the increase in players after they logged in. In addition, a bug was found in player rights. A number of players who had a certain combination of rights were unable to access the demo due to the bug. It is not further explained what this combination was. Robertson reports that the bug has been mostly fixed, but the developers are still working on a few individual cases.

There are also players who have had to deal with ‘infinite loading screens’. Initially, the developers believed that this issue only occurred during the internal testing and that it was resolved. “Unfortunately, the problem has grown externally, where the disparity between players’ ISPs and players’ home networks are introducing new behaviors.” explains Robertson.

Anthem’s VIP demo was live January 25-27 for players who pre-ordered or have access to EA’s Origin Access Premier service. This was extended by a few hours due to connection problems. The demo will be widely available for Windows, the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One from Friday 1 to Sunday 3 February. The game will be released on February 22.