Things Still Aren't Looking Good For Watch Dogs: Legion

While Ubisoft's third entry in its open-world hacking series, Watch Dogs: Legion, was generally well-received by critics, it has stumbled post-launch with critical stability issues. Though Ubisoft seems to be putting its best foot forward when it comes to finding these issues and fixing them, it looks like it will come at the cost of the promised multiplayer mode, now pushed to 2021.

When Watch Dogs: Legion launched on Oct. 29, it looked like the series might have finally overcome the deceptive advertising accusations and instability issues that had tainted the franchise since its start. However, soon after, user reviews on Metacritic began to tank as fans discovered critical problems, such as save game corruption, impacting their experience.

Throughout November, bugs causing player audio errors, control inconsistencies, and crashes became more commonly reported, indicating real problems in the final product. Ubisoft immediately began deploying patches for these issues, delivering its first fix within a week of launch day.

These early efforts were not enough, however. On Nov. 25, Ubisoft published a blog post for Watch Dogs: Legion announcing that the game's online component was being put on hold to focus on fixing single player. The announcement included a link to the upcoming 2.20 patch notes planned for release before the end of November and a commitment to further improving the game's performance on PC.

The most critical issue on Ubisoft's agenda for Watch Dogs: Legion appears to be fixing the save game corruption problems, which received the most space in a recent State of the Game update. These issues seem to have been most prevalent in the game's PC version, where gamers have reported multiple game ruining errors. The first of these errors involves Watch Dogs: Legion taking well over five minutes to complete a save operation and appearing to have crashed during that time. Even worse is the possibility of corrupted save files effectively deleting progress in the game. The 2.20 patch includes a new manual save option for PC users to try and alleviate these issues.

While it won't be available until next year, fans still have high hopes for Watch Dogs: Legion's multiplayer mode, which will introduce co-op tactical operations. These co-op experiences will support up to four players, and the multiplayer will also feature competitive modes such as Spiderbot battles. Watch Dogs: Legion's multiplayer mode, initially scheduled to launch on Dec. 3, will now arrive sometime in early 2021, although it is unclear how these delays might affect other Season Pass content.