Titanfall is almost upon us. Next Tuesday, gamers all around the world will hop into mechs and fight for supremacy. Well, almost all around the world as one country is no longer getting the game.
EA announced today that the planned South African release of Titanfall has been cancelled. Surprisingly, the cancellation wasn’t made in response to some perceived controversy or violence. Instead, the country’s Internet is to blame as EA says performance rates “were not as high as [they] need to guarantee a great experience.”
Of course, this doesn’t mean that Titanfall is permanently cancelled for the region. Instead, it looks like EA will continue to monitor the situation and see if the game can be released in the region at a later date.
As you might expect, however, the news was met with a lot of anger. South African gamers, who took part in beta last month, took to the company’s Facebook page to voice their complaints. Most of the complaints seem to be centered on the fact that EA took this step without consulting local gamers and many feel it’s a slap in the face to them. Even if the game does suffer performance issues due to lag, many feel that EA should release the game anyway and let gamers deal with any performance issues. After all, a less than optimal gaming experience is better than no game at all.
It’s hard to take a side in this because both sides have valid points. EA wants to make sure the game works flawlessly for South African gamers and its own performance tests say that’s impossible. The gamers who took part in the beta should know about the performance better than any internal test, however, and they’re reporting that the game works fine thanks to Titanfall’s latency tolerance algorithms.
South African gamers have also created a petition demanding the game be released in the region. It currently has 440 signatures and is looking for 60 more to reach its first threshold.
At this point, EA should probably just release the game and see what happens. If not, South African gamers are just going to pirate it. Selling a game that doesn’t work isn’t exactly new to EA anyway.
Image via Change.org