Crash Bandicoot 4's launch was dogged by server issues
Because it requires an online connection, even though the game is mostly singleplayer
While Crash Bandicoot 4 is mostly singleplayer with some local multiplayer, the game does require on online connection on PC. That's always bad, and especially when server issues stop people from playing a game on its launch day. Crash 4 arrived on Battle.net on Friday, then Blizzard's authentication servers burst soon after, rendering the game unplayable for many until the issue was fixed. Cool.
First released on consoles in October 2020, Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time is the first sequel in well over a decade for the platformer series which started on PlayStation was back in 1996, . Crash Bandicoot is bad, and always has been, but the PC release of Crash 4 is even worse for the always-online requirement. While the game only has singleplayer and local multiplayer, it refuses to launch without an active connection to Blizzard's servers. Which is a problem when the authentication servers go down, as they did for several hours on Friday soon after launch.
Two hours later, they announced it was fixed. This is far from the first time the servers have stumbled this month either. Server issues may be near-inevitable, because computers, but non-multiplayer games shouldn't be vulnerable to this. Welp.
Ars Technica report that on Saturday, a cracking group announced they'd broken the Bnet and online requirements. Legally, that's a no-no in many places. But it's hard not to feel bitter that digital bucaneers would get a version of the game that's better in ways.
While Battle.net does have an offline mode, not every game supports it. You might hope they'd enable this for Crash 4, though I wouldn't count on it. Still wild that Diablo 3 never added an offline mode.
