Home Gaming Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s Blackout mode is broken for many, and nobody seems to know why

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s Blackout mode is broken for many, and nobody seems to know why

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blackout

[A small update to the game has gone live on PS4, and it appears to expand the lobby search to other regions. We can confirm that we’ve been able to join Blackout games, but with 300+ms of latency – so we’re not connecting to local servers. It’s better than nothing!]

For the last week or so, Call of Duty players in South Africa (and other countries, predominantly – but not limited to – the Southern Hemisphere) have been unable to play the Battle Royale mode, Blackout. Instead, players are greeted with error messages and infinite wait times. While some have surmised that it’s because of a relatively low player base, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead, it seems that Blackouts servers in many parts of the world are just broken.

Threads on Reddit and the Call of Duty support forums show a growing number of players who’ve become a little disillusioned and angered by the inability to play Blackout. The problem seems to have been introduced after the latest patch, on October 23.

Says one Redditor:

“I was unable to find a single game of Blackout this weekend. NAT is open, normal MP works fine. Blackout just stuck at searching the entire weekend. Does not even go over to an empty or international lobby. Spoke with some friends on Teamspeak and Discord and a lot of players were having similar issues. I actually know of an entire clan that have requested refunds for the game seeing that it’s been 2 weeks now and Blackout just isn’t working out in certain regions.

The players are there, it’s not a player count issue. It’s a server / matchmaking / coding issue.

I specifically bought Blops4 for Blackout, and I understand they are “busy investigating” as per official communication from them but this is getting really really frustrating.”

We’ve not been able to join games for a while either. The frustrating thing for most players has been the relative lack of communication from Activision and the usually transparent Treyarch. We’ve asked Activision and the local distributor of the game for comment. They are aware of the issues and have suggested that feedback will be coming soon. We’ll update when we hear anything.

In the meantime, servers for the regular multiplayer modes continue to work. That’s small comfort for those who bought the game specifically for its battle royale mode though.

Last Updated: October 30, 2018

33 Comments

  1. Allykhat

    October 30, 2018 at 13:17

    Thanks for reporting on this Geoff. A lot of locals have been trying to get anything out of officials about why we cant play.

    Reply

    • Admiral Chief

      October 30, 2018 at 13:19

      I’ve rolled out a global patch to prevent people from playing. I’m doing them a favour

      You are welcome, I will accept my Nobel peace prize now

      Reply

      • Kromas

        October 30, 2018 at 13:21

        Roll back the Patch. CoD kiddies will jump ship and maybe play a game I enjoy and ruin it for me!

        Reply

      • Allykhat

        October 30, 2018 at 13:24

        Dude, I never thought I would say it again, but this CoD is actually good…. I haven’t been this excited to play a cod in a very long time, and the fact I can’t play the mode I bought the game for is frustrating af…

        Reply

        • Kromas

          October 30, 2018 at 13:39

          CoD sucks I prefer Tuna.

          Reply

    • Geoffrey Tim

      October 30, 2018 at 13:28

      Yeah look. Everybody involved is aware of the situation; we’re just waiting on reasons, and a timeframe for a fix. Its a genuine pity that this has happened, because it’s souring people’s experiences – and honestly, it’s a damned good game.

      Reply

      • Allykhat

        October 30, 2018 at 13:43

        As I’ve said in other comments here, this CoD really is something special. But it’s really unfortunate that one of the biggest draws of the game from launch was Blackout and we cant find a game at all.

        Either way, I don’t want to fling mud, I just would like to know whats going on and when we can play the game.

        Reply

      • Allykhat

        October 30, 2018 at 15:35

        Hey dude, got a mail from Disqus with a comment from you about my tag? Dont see it here anymore, but its PANTH15 on PSN 🙂

        Reply

        • Geoffrey Tim

          October 30, 2018 at 15:36

          Check the update to the article: A small update to the game has gone live on PS4, and it appears to expand the lobby search to other regions. We can confirm that we’ve been able to join Blackout games, but with 300+ms of latency – so we’re not connecting to local servers. It’s better than nothing!

          Reply

          • Allykhat

            October 30, 2018 at 16:02

            Ah I see so now, thanks for the heads up duder

          • Allykhat

            October 31, 2018 at 10:29

            Even after the update, still battling to find games :/

          • Geoffrey Tim

            October 31, 2018 at 11:19

            Yup, me too now. Yesterday, it took less than two minutes to find a game. Just tried now, and it’s nothing but search.

  2. Kromas

    October 30, 2018 at 13:19

    Fortnite BR is free so play that in the meantime …. then buy Fortnite:Save the World at 50% because it is the better game.

    Reply

    • Allykhat

      October 30, 2018 at 13:25

      I want to play a proper Shooter, not Building Simulator: WITH GUNS!

      Reply

      • Kromas

        October 30, 2018 at 13:26

        Oh why did you not say so.

        Overwatch!

        Also Fallout 76.

        😛

        Reply

        • Kromas

          October 30, 2018 at 15:27

          Unless you want realism then Arma 3.

          Reply

          • Allykhat

            October 30, 2018 at 15:28

            I own all of those except Fallout 76 haha

          • Kromas

            October 30, 2018 at 18:49

            Me 2 plus fallout 76. PC beta 11pm tonight yay!

  3. Darren Peach

    October 30, 2018 at 17:54

    Yeah, I’ve noticed this. Have not found a game since last week Monday. It’s terrible.

    Reply

  4. CrAiGiSh

    October 30, 2018 at 13:36

    Really hope it gets resolved soon.

    Bought the game for the BR mainly and have been playing MP none stop but still … its not the same 😛

    Reply

  5. Gavin Mannion

    October 30, 2018 at 13:52

    Overwatch has released a limited Team Deathmatch Competitive mode.. come join me there

    Reply

  6. PestControl

    October 31, 2018 at 09:38

    Called it! This was very apparent from my beta impressions… it’s simply not feasible to have a dedicated service running for our Saffas… as sad as it is to say it…there simply aren’t enough people playing it locally.

    Reply

    • b1nd3r

      October 31, 2018 at 10:29

      got nothing to do with player base. south america and people in canada are having similar issues. during beta i found local and eu servers and there was no issues, now if you find a game its a server in NA with 300+- ping. something else is very broken

      Reply

      • PestControl

        October 31, 2018 at 12:50

        I have to disagree with you… It’s most definitely a server issue (which in all likelihood is caused by the fact that it’s not feasible to host enough servers due to the smaller playerbase).

        Despite what you may think Canada also doesn’t have the largest number of people playing and even then if you look at it from an economic perspective it’s simply easier to have them play on US servers as it’s so close (relatively speaking of course).

        Not sure what you expect your ping to be to USA however on fibre my ping to servers on the East coast of USA is anything between 230 and 280 and going to the West it goes as high as 310-315. If you’re not on fibre you can easily add around 40ms to those numbers…

        Reply

        • Sebastian Niederhumer

          November 2, 2018 at 10:13

          No offence but ive been playing on servers with Robohobo on his stream and we never get more than 200 ms. Normally around – 160 to 200 and im on ADSL ?

          Reply

          • PestControl

            November 2, 2018 at 10:48

            Well it certainly depends on where you are in the country and then your routing to the server of course…

            Never heard of “Robohobo” before, however a quick Google suggest he’s South African… so no offence but that doesn’t indicate to which country’s servers you are connecting at all… if both of you are South African then typically EU servers will be used if it’s international seeing as ping to EU servers are generally better than US servers, and even then I’m not saying it’s not possible to get lower than 200ms to US, it’s just highly unlikely…. especially on ADSL.

  7. SpoonSpatula

    November 2, 2018 at 03:51

    Blackout matchmaking still appears to be completely broken, at least on the PC side of things. And it’s not because we don’t have a decent player population either (relatively speaking). Before the Oct 23 patch, it was easy to find Quad games. Now nothing.

    Reply

  8. SpoonSpatula

    November 2, 2018 at 03:51

    Blackout matchmaking still appears to be completely broken, at least on the PC side of things. And it’s not because we don’t have a decent player population either (relatively speaking). Before the Oct 23 patch, it was easy to find Quad games. Now nothing.

    Reply

    • Sebastian Niederhumer

      November 2, 2018 at 10:13

      Hey, Was playing black out last nite, found some Local servers with about 70 people on it. Was around about 9pm. Played 3-4 games, then went for an infinite load again and went to bed.

      Reply

  9. SpoonSpatula

    November 3, 2018 at 16:43

    In the most recent update changelog, they specifically mentioned us:

    “Finally, a note to our players experiencing low server populations in certain areas of the world, particularly South America and South Africa. Earlier this week, we rolled out an update to ensure Blackout matches always start up in these regions despite server population, and we’re constantly working to improve the online experience. We’ve also been rolling out network updates over the past two weeks to improve server performance around the globe. If you’re still experiencing problems with getting into a Blackout match in your region, let us know in the comments below. We’re always listening and working behind the scenes to make sure everyone in the Black Ops 4 community can have the best experience possible, regardless of where they live.”

    Unfortunately, other than the mention of a ‘fix’, it seems as if nothing has actually changed with regards to finding local matches (at least on PC and Xbox). I still haven’t been able to find any local games (and if you look at the complaints on twitter or reddit, there are a whole bunch of SA people still having the same issue).

    Reply

  10. Daniel McCormick

    April 15, 2019 at 01:54

    The date is April 15th, 2019. Blackout went free-to-play for this month.

    I waited 20 minutes and got an error saying that “oh mate there’s no servers at this time” which is BS, because a friend- who lives right next door to me, might I add- was in a match while i was waiting. Either the Australian side never gets any attention (despite us having a rather large player base nowadays) or Treyarch doesn’t give a flying f about it’s players, I’m not sure. But this is more proof that Treyarch and Activision are some of the worst game developers and publishers.

    Reply

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