DriveClub PS4 PlayStation 4

If a publisher wanted to know how to scupper the success of one of their big Christmas games, we reckon that Sony’s ripped up and re-written the rulebook with DriveClub. Not content with delaying the game for a year, pledging a tepid pre-release marketing plan, and making typos on the title's case – it’s now also postponed the hotly anticipated PlayStation Plus release, which many were planning to download in order to gauge their interest in the game.

It was clear that something was amiss last night, when the free release wasn’t mentioned in the platform holder’s North American PlayStation Store update – but we assumed (or, perhaps, blindly hoped) that all would be resolved this morning. In fact, things are much worse than we ever imagined, as the company has delayed the rollout of the complimentary copy while it battles some server issues. Oh dear, oh dear.

With no real communication from the platform holder, creative director Paul ‘Rushy’ Rustchynsky finally explained the move in a blog post this morning. “In order to help all DriveClub players who have the game already, we're temporarily holding back the PlayStation Plus Edition and the My DriveClub app to ease the load and traffic to the servers. This should give players a better chance of connecting to the game servers,” he wrote.

Exactly when the PlayStation Plus version will release is unclear, but the lack of a timeframe has us concerned that it won’t be this week. “We're sorry that you're having to wait longer to play, but we want to ensure that when you come on board, you get the best experience possible,” he continued. “Rest assured, if you've pre-ordered the full game upgrade from the PlayStation Plus Edition, you will still get the full version of DriveClub digitally.”

The likeable developer also stressed that those who own the game and can’t connect to the servers can always play offline, because that’s what this racer was designed for, huh? Look, we understand that these hiccups happen, and we’re sure that Evolution Studios and Sony are working as hard as possible to get this sorted, but this title has been a catalogue of disasters right from the start. In fact, we still feel like we’re going to pinch ourselves any moment and realise that we wrote this article during a particularly nasty nightmare.

[source facebook.com, via vg247.com, eurogamer.net]