Gears of War 2 patch released

Fixes long waits in multiplayer matchmaking

28 November 2008 10:43 GMT / By Verity Burns

The bug in Gears of War 2 that was causing some players to experience long waits in multiplayer matchmaking has been fixed with an update.

Epic has announced a patch for the 360 favourite that should completely cut out the problem from the game.

It is thought that the skill-based public matchmaking system was simply struggling to cope with the demand, and in particular for one-player and four-player parties.

The news of the patch was posted on the official Gears of War 2 forum by senior producer Rod Fergusson, who detailed all the steps Epic had taken to speed things up.

The biggest factor in this it seems is reducing the number of matchmaking servers to increase the number of possible matches. Apparently the effect of some adjustments will be felt immediately, but Fergusson has warned players that some may take a few days to "play out".

Other bug fixes in the update include one to stop the loss of some stats data on the Gears of War website, and a solution to the problem that caused some players to be unable to start the game's campaign if Xbox Live was unavailable.

The update is available now.