BioShock 2 Abandons LAN and Dedicated Servers in Favor of “Solid Game Foundation”

Posted 01/28/2010 at 1:13am | by Nathan Grayson

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There’s always a catch. Rapture was an underwater utopia, created as a permanent getaway for the world’s brightest minds… but, the place quickly degenerated into a brainpower-bolstered battleground. Which is good for us, as it means BioShock 2’s packing a fairly robust multiplayer mode. But, again, there’s a catch: no LAN or dedicated servers.

“There is always a finite amount of time for the development of a game. Bringing Multiplayer to BioShock was a daunting task between the tech (there was no multiplayer support in the codebase from the first game) and the expectations of the community. Either you try to do everything and so nothing feels finished or you focus your efforts to do a smaller number of things really well like an accessible online experience. We chose to spend the time we had creating a solid game foundation and unfortunately that did not include LAN play or dedicated servers,” says an FAQ on BioShock 2’s official site.

Instead, a matchmaking system’s been put in place to decide who stuffs whom in Davy Jones’ locker. Of course, private matches and parties will be an option for those who’d rather not entrust their fates to the whims of a jumble of ones and zeroes.

Still though, with Modern Warfare 2, RAGE, and now BioShock 2, things aren’t really looking up for dedicated servers. But screw those guys. We’re going to make our own underwater utopia where every game supports dedicated servers and LAN. And also, we’ll install about 50 vending machines that sell guns for a nominal fee throughout the compound. There’s no conceivable way that this plan could possibly go wrong!