The online mode for Ubisoft’s open-world action-adventure hacking title, Watch Dogs: Legion, will no longer be launching on March 9 for PC gamers. Ubisoft confirmed the delay in a message posted to the franchise’s official Twitter account today, which noted that the development team had discovered an issue in the PC version that could lead to crashes with certain graphics cards. Select features in the console versions have also been delayed to March 23.
“We’ve identified an issue in the PC version that can cause the game to crash for players with certain GPUs,” Ubisoft wrote. “The dev team is working on fixing the issue as quickly as possible and in the meantime, we’ve made the decision to wait to launch the PC version until this is fixed. We will communicate the new launch date as soon as possible.”
“We have also identified an issue that can cause the game to crash during the Tactical Op, therefore we made the decision to launch the first Tactical Op on Xbox, Playstation and Stadia on March 23rd. PlayStation 4/5 will have limited in-game text chat at launch, and we are working on a fix for this, which will be coming on March 23 as well.”
As explained by live producer Lathieeshe Thillainathan in Ubisoft’s original announcement article, Watch Dogs: Legion’s online mode will allow players to take on the role of a new Operative and team up with their friends on the streets of London for a variety of new gameplay types, such as a PVP mode and special cooperative missions dubbed Tactical Ops. Tactical Ops comprise five-stage challenges that are designed to test the skills of even the most experienced players.
“[…] we didn’t want to create an experience that was so elite that only one percent of players could ever get to it, so we made sure that most people can build up to Tactical Ops as they play regular online content,” Thillainathan noted. “We also felt that in order to create a need for other players, we needed to create exotic moments — like playing in stealth as a four-player squad — that you normally wouldn’t do in other parts of the game. We made moments where one player’s entire gameplay experience is very different, and they’re controlling something very different.”
A message from the Watch Dogs: Legion team about the Online Mode: pic.twitter.com/VVeaZ7v7yb
— Watch Dogs: Legion (@watchdogsgame) March 5, 2021