Saying that the launch of the Call of Duty: Elite service has been less than ideal is like saying that the economy is in a bit of a slump. The opening week for the service has been rough, partly because the things just hasn’t worked. At all. A few lucky users have managed to register their information, but stat tracking is still limited, the founder status promised hasn’t reached everyone and outages are common.
Thankfully, the problems are specific to the Call of Duty: Elite service and not Modern Warfare 3. Having issues with an optional service is one thing, but failing to deliver on a game that one man threatened to blow up a Best Buy over after they sold his copy, is another.
But to Beachhead’s credit, they are not skirting, as a certain company that rhymes with Pony did during its now infamous outages. Instead the developer has issued a full statement explaining what happened, as well as offering compensation for those that purchased a year of the Elite premium service.
In a statement on the Elite website, the developer issued the following statement:
At launch, our registration and login systems were crushed by gamers trying to enter the Elite site at the same time. We have now fixed the registration and login systems, but we have found that the greater than expected demand is crashing servers. We’re immediately deploying multiple additional servers to beef up the system. We are also going to temporarily limit access to Elite services on both the console applications and website while we build additional capacity and scale. We’ll look to increase access to greater numbers of users as soon as possible.
As more users log into the Elite system, you may find that the wait to get into Elite is longer than you expect. We know how frustrating that is and we appreciate your patience. Many of you are now able to see your player card and stats, but if you don’t see all your recent matches or career summary, don’t worry — your gameplay data for your entire careers in both Black Ops and MW3 is safely stored, and it will all be available to you once these issues are resolved.
While the outages may be frustrating, it is good to see a company come clean and give the consumers an actual reason, rather than a series of escalating excuses. The developer has also promised to extend the service of premium members by one month:
And for our premium members who are Founders, know that granting your status and delivering your in-game benefits in MW3 is a priority. Also, to ensure that every premium member receives their full money’s worth, we are immediately and automatically extending your membership to Call of Duty Elite by 30 days at no additional cost. If you’re still considering becoming a premium member, we’re going to extend Founder eligibility until the end of the month, and you will also receive the additional 30 days of access.
The service is not necessary to play, and the extra month of service should more than make up for a few days of problems—or “challenges” as they say in corporate-speak– but it does put into question the timetable of some of the planned Call of Duty: Elite events, including the Friday Night Lights premier, which was scheduled for this Friday.
