Pumping Irony

I considered simply titling this “PunkBuster Sucks!” but…

First off, no I have not been banned due to PunkBuster. What I am is unable to play the game I’ve purchased. Out of curiosity a few weeks ago I bought Kaos Studios new shooter, Frontlines: Fuel of War over Steam. I’ve enjoyed the handful of games I’ve been in so far, although the nerve — nay, the stupidity — of anyone releasing a shooter without dedicated server support in the 21st century was beyond disappointing. Kaos’ 1.0.2 patch rectified this but it seems the damage had been done. Even last week Frontlines’ server browser was showing zero dedicated servers for the game.

June 5, Kaos pushed out the much-anticipated 1.1.0 patch, which among other things, adds PunkBuster anti-cheat support. I wasn’t 100% positive if I can use a “normal” patch for a Steam-enabled game, so I waited until Steam auto-updated the game the following day. Great, right? Not so much…

As you can see on the lower left, I do have PunkBuster enabled. Yet, for the past three days, I’ve gotten this error and have been unable to join any PB-enabled servers, which is the majority now. The other problem would be player count. Zero players on any servers? I’d love to think it’s because everyone else’s PB is broken and they can’t play, but I’ve seen a fair share of activity on PB-enabled servers the past few days. So it’s just me.

I recall having similar problems with both BF2142 and CoD4 — PunkBuster has been nothing but a pain in my ass — so I went to my old standby fix: run the official PunkBuster update software. I ran the PB updater, let it update itself then checked for updates for my PB-enabled games. Turns out both BF2142 and CoD4 were in need of PB updates. I could have sworn that PB was supposed to check for updates when I’m playing PB-enabled games? Anyway… I try to add Frontlines to my PB games list but hit another snag:

Ok, so let me get this straight: Kaos gets the green light from Even Balance to put PunkBuster in their game. But Even Balance doesn’t bother to put out an update that the game is officially enabled?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 5:19 pm and is filed under FPS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.