Driveclub developer Evolution has said they are “just as frustrated as you about the server performance issues.”
If you get connected you should be able to play without hindrance as the servers are running, it is getting a place on a server that is the problem.
“In case you don’t already know, the servers are up and running but they are hitting their performance limits,” explained Evolution in a Facebook post. “They won’t accept new connections until one of the current online players frees up their space (allowing another to join in their place, which happens automatically and player selection is random).”
“When you finish and disconnect, you’ll free up a space for someone else. This is obviously not ideal, especially given that there are a lot of players waiting to connect, but that’s how it’s working right now. ”
It does sound like they have massively underestimated the server capacity that would be required, which itself is rather odd. Besides those who purchased they game the must have surely planned for the thousands of PlayStation Plus gamers who would be playing the free version and factored this in to the number of servers connection required.
As it stands, the servers that were meant to host everyone cannot even host those who bought the full game. Perhaps Driveclub has massively exceeded its sales expectations?
Source: Facebook
TheDeathAvenger
I would have thought that by now the best option would be to rent server time from a big provider (that has a number of large datacenters worldwide) which would allow the initial demand to be balanced over their massive number of servers. But I guess it all comes down to cost and since it would be stupid to buy enough servers to handle the initial load at game release time at a significant cost if they then expect to have a lot of it go unused after a fairly short time. Though to be fair the poor server performance at launch could be a sizeable reason why the demand then drops off soon after launch!
I’d also imagine that bandwidth costs are probably the largest part when compared with other costs like the actual server hardware.
Broonba
As others have said, Evolution should really have been ready for this. Hopefully Project Cars has a much better launch than this.
Bornindafire
Make tuning / customization standard in racing games!
TSBonyman
What a disaster, let’s hope they can get things fixed soon.
bladesew
So, on launch day myself and others who bought either the full edition or the upgrade have received the plus edition instead.
http://community.eu.playstation.com/t5/PS4-Support/Driveclub-wrong-version-And-problems-with-DLC/td-p/22383921/highlight/false