14 DAY TRIAL // iOS gamers challenging their friends on Game Center are reporting an issue with the status mechanism which displays “never played” for the people with whom they go multiplayer on a regular basis.
One of our loyal readers gave us the heads up earlier today regarding a potential backend issue with Game Center.
Apparently, Apple’s servers will fail to recognize some people’s friends as active players after updating to iOS 5.1.1, and Game Center is telling him he’s never had a run with any of his buds.
Two separate forum threads already exist on the topic, with one person writing over at MacRumors:
“After upgrading my 4s iphone to 5.5.1, I noticed that all my friends are there, but the status doesnt update for them. It always shows them as ‘Never played’ And I know they play those games daily. Does anybody know how to fix that?”
Apple Support Communities users are reporting the exact same problem:
“I restored my iphone today, and after that, recent game activity line of all of my friends on my game center friends list shows ‘Never Played’ and has not been updated,” writes a sad customer. Apparently he too is running iOS 5.1.1.
It is unclear whether this is a local issue (iOS 5.1.1 and the device itself), or a problem with Apple’s servers. It could well be both, since only users with iOS 5.1.1 installed seem to be experiencing it.
“It may be the apple servers having issues,” another person wrote on Apple’s forums.
“I logged in another account on my iPhone, it does work fine, but I logged in my ordinary account on my friends' iPhone, it doesn't work,” he said.
And one user even claims to have submitted this as a bug report to Apple over a week ago. No cigar, apparently.
Has anyone here had a similar experience? If you have, please leave your device model and iOS version in your comment. This way we might be able to assess what’s determining this misbehavior.