Fans looking to enjoy Star Wars Battlefront II after grabbing it for free on Epic Games Store are experiencing crashes due to the suddenly high server traffic. EA’s Star Wars-themed multiplayer shooter is just the latest in a series of free titles being offered up by Epic over the past few years, much to the delight of players stuck at home and strapped for cash amid a global pandemic.
Though it was initially met with sheer derision when it first launched back in 2017 due to its balance around microtransactions, Star Wars Battlefront II has since evolved into a popular and worthwhile experience set in cinema’s fabled Galaxy Far, Far Away thanks to a multitude of patches, updates, and even fan mods fleshing out the already promising gameplay. Accordingly, there was much excitement when Epic announced that fans would be able to acquire Star Wars Battlefront II completely free of charge late last week, to the extent that it’s now causing problems for the game’s online servers.
According to PCGamesN, players logging into EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II servers have been getting error messages throughout the Epic Games Store's weeklong free giveaway. Bizarrely enough, some of these messages claim that the players in question have been banned from online play, but the real culprit is the high level of traffic brought on by the free offer. The good news is that EA’s server team is working diligently to remedy the issue, with EA Help assuring fans on Twitter that its networkers are “scaling up new servers to welcome you all to the Battlefront.”
This isn’t the first time that one of Epic Games’ free giveaways has accidentally caused online games' servers to crash from high traffic. Last May, Epic’s unexpected offering of Grand Theft Auto V took its servers offline mere minutes after it started, with the result being a whopping 245% increase in players for Rockstar Games’ open-world crime sandbox. Meanwhile, a troubling bug has been causing some CPUs to overheat while running the Epic Games Store program itself, but thankfully Epic was able to mitigate this with a patch shortly after it was discovered.
This recent wave of Star Wars Battlefront II server crashes is annoying for players looking to log on and challenge their friends in one of the most successful Star Wars games in recent memory, but it appears that EA has the situation well under control and will get everything back online soon. Hopefully, fans won't have to wait too much longer to enjoy Star Wars Battlefront II on their PCs, especially after the Epic Games Store’s recent giveaway has built interest back up for the once reviled but now reveled multiplayer Star Wars extravaganza.