Driveclub will only be available as an offline experience

Apr 7, 2015 11:26 GMT  ·  By

Driveclub developer Evolution Studios confirms that it's taking down the multiplayer portion of the PS4 exclusive racing game in order to implement some major updates to the online services. As such, today, April 7, for around eight hours, the game will be playable only offline.

Driveclub was initially intended to appear for the PS4 way back at its launch in November of 2013, but developer Evolution needed extra to ensure that the racing experience would deliver its social take on the genre.

As such, after almost a one-year delay, the title launched for the PS4 in October of 2014. Unfortunately for early adopters, the game's multiplayer mode buckled under the pressure, and for quite a few weeks people were unable to connect to the online servers or were kicked out by the game.

Driveclub is going offline today

After many updates, things are working as intended right now, but Evolution confirms that a new set of server updates are going live today, April 7. As such, the multiplayer mode is going to be unavailable for about eight hours.

The offline period already started at 11am GMT and should continue until about 7pm GMT. It's unclear just exactly what updates are being deployed for Driveclub's servers, as Evolution's statement on Facebook is ambiguous.

"We are rolling out major updates to the Driveclub servers today to improve performance and stability for all aspects of online play. The servers will be unavailable from 11am BST while this happens and the work is expected to take up to 8hrs. You can still play the game offline during this time. Apologies for any inconvenience this causes and thank you for your patience while we continue working to improve the game," the developer says.

It's also unclear if the long-awaited Driveclub PS Plus Edition is going to appear once the new updates are released for the game's servers. For a very long time, Evolution has said that the online mode needs to be improved before the free PS Plus version arrives.