Bad Company 2 Dedicated Servers Not Exactly Free
January 16, 2010 – DICE, the company developing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 sought to explain their server policy, which requires that players rent the server from an authorized host.
Bad Company 2 knows it’s going up against Modern Warfare 2 and its hordes of online shooter fans. One of the major selling points pushed by DICE and EA was that Bad Company 2 would feature dedicated servers, which Modern Warfare 2 did not, creating a major backlash among PC gamers. However, recently DICE announced that there would be a rental service for gamers interested in using the dedicated servers to host online games.
Clarifying the situation today, Producer Gordon Van Dyke told Eurogamer that DICE and EA make no profit on the rental servers and they were in place to maintain “the game’s integrity on the PC.” In order to host a private dedicated server, gamers will have to rent from one of DICE’s authorized hosts, which, Van Dyke says, have already been selected.
Bad Company 2 is highly anticipated and will be released on March 5 for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. A PC beta will take place from January 28 to February 25.
Source: Eurogamer
This is not unusual for the Battlefield series. Every other PC release of a BF game had select authorized server providers. This is really not news if you’ve ever played a BF game for PC.
They want their ranked servers to be uniform in settings and they want clean reports from ranked servers, and the only way to do so is to restrict access to the server code, since ranked and unranked servers use the same server application.
It’s also one method of anti-piracy, since you would need a hacked server to play multiplayer with many pirated games. No accessible server code, no hacked servers to allow unauthorized copies online.
It’s only an issue for those coming to the BF series from CoD, since previous iterations of Call of Duty had publicly accessible server side code.
I agree, it’s not unusual to have authorized server providers. What is unusual is forcing players who want to host a game to pay to do so.
I don’t understand. Why not just let people host the servers. If they are worried the servers will suck, then just entrust only some hosts to actually get the dedicated server hosting privileges. That way they can rest assured that people aren’t hosting crappy servers while still letting the community mod and fight for the best price. they create their own monopoly.
i work at http://www.hostedgameservers.com and we definitely offer servers that would be stable enough for any gamer. I think its a moot point!
I can understand the status of rank servers but not enough gsp’s in the uk hosting the game just a small number, Also what about the gaming clans that have their own ded boxes and want to host a server on it? .
I for one would pay for the dedi files just like the game to play with, But ill be holding back to see the path this will take looks like MW2 all over again , were fans and hosters lose out
As a member of a large EU clan, we have our own dedicated server which hosts several games (COD4, Left4Dead, Left4Dead2 co op) our forums, our TS server and an FPS server, along with a multiplay server for Left4Dead2 Vs. We have no problem renting another server from one of Dice’s authorised hosts for BC2. When BF came out we rented one from Multiplay purely due to pricing against other providers.
Renting from Dice’s authorised hosts or another provider is 6 of one and a half dozen of another, in other words pretty much the same.
I agree with Torinor, it should help keep the hackers and stat padders down.
But you should realise that we could have easily ended up with another MW2 type direct port to PC, unbalanced, P2P network beta, self hosted, small map game.
IMHO Dice saying who we can rent of and who we can’t is a very small price to pay so we can get back to the full blown multiplayer large map goodness we all have been missing.
It’s good to see that DICE will be offering people to run their own dedicated servers. I think the backlash over MW2 certainly said something (regardless of how successful it still was). People want control — it’s good that they’ll get it, regardless what providers are satisfying it.
Why can others have their own dedicated ranked server ?
Im from Argentina, we cant play because DICE don’t alow others dedicated server ISP?
Cmon.
@Torinir:
Wrong. Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 had “RANKED” servers which were available via authorized rentals only. Public Dedicated server files were available but these files were locked form being made Ranked servers.