Treyarch answers Black Ops PS3 mob

Yesterday, PS3 owners complained vociferously of a second-rate online Call of Duty: Black Ops experience. Today, Treyarch admits there's a problem and pledges to do something about it.

"We are aware that many online players have been experiencing connectivity issues since Tuesday's patch," wrote Black Ops community manager Josh Olin on the official forum.

"We have been working hard to track down the cause and fix them as quickly as we can. We've already updated the game with one hot fix since Tuesday's release that has improved many of those connectivity problems, and we've got more coming, so stay tuned.

"Forum feedback has been tremendously helpful," he added. "In fact, we've been on the forums, monitoring feedback and in a number of cases, working with community members directly, so please keep the feedback coming.

"In the meantime, know that we're committed to doing everything we can to support the best online experience, and we're working quickly to resolve this issue.

Olin then addressed rumours about deleting saved games to improve network connectivity. Codswallop, he said. "Please do not delete your save data" - it will not help. The only reason gamers thought it did help, he explained, was because a hot-fix crept out at the same time.

Patch 1.04, released earlier this week, promised fixes for plenty of problems - NAT issues and spawn worries among them. The unwelcome reality, however, was the exacerbation of connectivity issues in PS3 online multiplayer.

"I've said it once, and I'll say it again," Eurogamer reader Fab4 commented yesterday, "if developers actually spent time on improving their net code instead of re-skinning broken, previous games, perhaps they wouldn't run into the routine cries of 'online is 'f***ed' from the get-go, never mind after patching it."

"Can we not get trading standards involved?" asked PixelPirate, another Eurogamer reader. "It's becoming false advertising."

"The game should work as advertised if it clearly is broken on release, then the user should get their money back, not store 'credit' at the very least."

Whether Treyarch will offer some form of compensation as an apology remains to be seen.

Call of Duty: Black Ops was released at the start of November.