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A little bit of bad news about Driveclub (opens in new tab) PlayStation Plus Edition: yes, it will still be a free version of Evolution Studios’ online racer; yes, it will still let you race alongside your friends in a limited selection of tracks and cars, whether they own a full copy of the game or not; and no, it still won’t take the place of any other free PS Plus Games in the monthly rotation. It just isn’t coming out this month… and maybe not next month either. Y’know what? Since Sony Computer Entertainment World Wide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida apologized so sincerely (opens in new tab), let’s just do our best to forget about the whole thing until further notice because the game has been delayed indefinitely.
Evolution has good reason for this: it’s still struggling to keep the full game online and running smoothly. Evolution and Sony fear that inviting every PS4-owning PS Plus subscriber could shake loose all the gum and positive thoughts holding the servers together and send the whole thing crashing back to release day status (that is to say, teetering on its roof with the tires still spinning). But there’s no good reason we got here in the first place.
Diablo 3. SimCity. Battlefield 4. Server problems making hotly anticipated games unplayable for huge chunks of their oh-so-important first weeks have become a common refrain for online titles in the last few years, and SCE should have known it needed to be better prepared. I dunno, maybe shoot an email over to Sony Online Entertainment? Or just look at The Crew: Ubisoft will have conducted at least four public beta events by the time the online open-world racer launches (it even pushed the release date back from November to December so it could run another) all to to make sure the game is super-duper ready. Even if it still messes up, at least Ubisoft can say it tried.
Full game concerns aside, imagine how cool it would have been to get Driveclub PS Plus Edition out of the blue a month or so after launch when the community was established and the servers were stable. No hype, just a fun surprise for PS Plus subscribers. Instead we feel short-changed, and one of PS4’s already long-delayed flagship titles (it was announced alongside the system way back in February 2013, remember?) is fast becoming a point of ridicule.
So… let’s all try to forget about the whole thing and allow Driveclub PS Plus Edition to be a pleasant little bonus if and when it happens.
