Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception will not get dedicated servers, long term costs would be too high
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception has been in the news, video gaming news that is, extensively over the past few weeks, with plenty going on with the game. The latest news is that, unlike Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, the latest installment in the game is set
to be without any dedicated servers to support online play.
For those new to the world of online multiplayer gaming, or those who have heard the term dedicated server but do not know exactly what it means, Bettor.com will not mock those select readers as it an intelligent question to ask.
Dedicated servers are servers which host online multiplayer game modes for their respective titles by being a ‘neutral’ host. What this means is that there are more chances of every player having an equal connection to the host and thus reducing lag, also
known as latency, significantly. It is usually operated by the game’s developer in most circumstances.
Uncharted 3 however, will not be supporting dedicated servers and will instead resort to the alternate P2P server system. Again Bettor.com can hear the legions of readers asking what P2P servers are; the answer is quite simple.
In the P2P server system, one of the players becomes the host and the other players become the clients. This can lead to huge differences in connection speeds and can be cause for high levels of latency. However, one way to work around this is by having
a solid matchmaking system which ensures players connect to the best possible host.
While P2P server systems are nothing new to the gaming world, dedicated servers have their own benefits for gamers. On the flip side however, P2P servers mean that the game will never run out of hosts, even if the developer opts to pull the plug on its online
support of the game. This would not be the case if there were dedicated servers however.
According to Naughty Dog, the game’s developer, the reason for the move was down to the costs, which would not look too good in the financial statements of the company in the long run. In fact, the studio claimed that they had planned the move to P2P servers
a “long time ago” and that “we (Naughty Dog) built the current player host-client architecture” accordingly.
The lack of dedicated servers do not seem to bother the beta participants, who stand at over one million, as they plough through endless hours of the different multiplayer modes.
The beta is set to close at the end of the week and Bettor.com urges gamers, who have not tried the beta, to give it a go. After all it is for free.
Tags: