In the fast-paced world of gaming, titles often burst onto the scene, seeking glory and acclaim. Some rise to the occasion, while others fade into obscurity, overshadowed by bigger releases. One such game that experienced a rollercoaster journey is Titanfall 2, which has finally emerged from the shadows years after its initial release.
Titanfall 2 made its debut on the gaming scene on October 28, 2016, amid a sea of competition that included heavyweights like Overwatch, Uncharted 4, Battlefield, and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. Despite the fierce competition, Titanfall 2 brought with it what no other game at the time had: unique movement. From tap strafing to B-Hopping to even frag grenade boosting, the modified version of the source engine that Titanfall 2 ran on left infinite possibilities in terms of movement.
On top of all the combinations of movement, the campaign was brilliantly designed from both a story and technical perspective. The level “Effect and Cause” is still regarded today as one of the best campaign missions from any game due to its dual map design and temporal interaction mechanic. Everyone who has played the campaign still remembers BT-7274, the Titan that you pilot throughout the story. Without any spoilers, this campaign aims at your heartstrings and hits a bullseye.
Unfortunately, despite its innovative movement mechanics and heartfelt campaign, the game went largely unnoticed by the gaming community. Titanfall 2 being released the weekend between Battlefield and Call Of Duty set the game’s opening sales up for failure. The game’s misfortune didn’t end there.
In late 2018, a hacker entity that went by the alias of “Jeanue” started distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacking the Titanfall 2 servers. Using an incredibly complex botnet that could only have been built by someone who had access to the game’s source code, Jeanue would populate Titanfall 2’s servers with bots that would manually crash every attempt of public matchmaking in Titanfall 2. It was clear that whoever the person or group Jeanue was had a lot of access to the game’s internal systems which should not have been possible by any average player. These relentless server shutdowns disrupted the gaming experience of players, causing people to leave the game in mass.
Instead of trying to save their beloved IP, Respawn Entertainment and EA, the companies that created the Titanfall franchise, opted to shift their focus to new projects. The successor to Titanfall 2, Apex Legends, was released on February 4, 2019. The release of Apex Legends was thought of as Respawn and EA waving a white flag to the hackers. For the next two years, Titanfall 2 was left behind to wither away.
In these two years, players took it upon themselves to try and create solutions to play multiplayer games. The Northstar Client, a modded client that introduced private servers ran by an independent company, was a testament to the community’s dedication to the game.
While these independent servers were playable, they were far from perfect. The server’s hosting locations caused there to be ping issues with players and the outdated anti-cheat system in place did not catch all of the speed hackers and aimbotters. While playable, the environment was lackluster and the servers being locked behind hard-to-install mods shrunk the player base considerably. Most who played on the Northstar servers only wished for the game to be restored and for Respawn to finally fix their game.
Fast forward to July 4, 2021, Apex Legends itself was targeted by a DDOS attack preventing players from enjoying matchmaking games. Unlike the Titanfall 2 DDOS attacks, the Apex Legends hack was by another group of hackers. This group was the ‘SaveTitanfall’ group. Apart from disabling matchmaking in Apex Legends, the ‘SaveTitanfall’ group also changed all the banners and links in the game’s lobby to redirect players to the website savetitanfall.com—a website that has now been deleted. This hack not only brought major attention to Titanfall 2’s condition but also the amount of profit Respawn had lost in the process.
Instead of letting their new IP Apex Legends suffer the same fate as Titanfall 2, the Respawn developers quickly patched the DDOS exploit in Apex in only three hours. This led to a lot of fan backlash as Respawn had so quickly patched Apex yet had left Titanfall 2 on its last legs for years.
This outcry for justice for Titanfall 2 was silenced by Respawn on June 10, 2021, when the companies stated that they had never stopped working on the Titanfall 2 DDOS attacks, but that the attacks used in the Titanfall 2 servers were more potent than any DDOS attack on a video game ever seen in history. With faith restored that Respawn was working on Titanfall 2’s matchmaking, the community went about their business, storing the hidden masterpiece Titanfall 2 in the back of their minds.
After another 2 years of silence, many people were skeptical about Respawn’s promise to bring Titanfall 2’s multiplayer back but on September 5 this year, everything changed. Respawn had done it. They had rolled out a new patch to Titanfall 2 that fixed the exploit that allowed Jeanue to terrorize the servers for all these years. With the threat eliminated, fans of the franchise came running back to the game.
The numbers tell the story best. In August of 2023, Titanfall 2’s peak player count was 3,248, but come September, the game experienced an explosive renaissance, with its peak player count soaring to 22,733 players. The once-forgotten gem was shining brightly once more. These numbers continued with September averaging 9173.6 players a day, which was 6 times more than August’s average player count.
As the game basks in the glow of its resurgence, players old and new are once again captivated by the epic battles between Titans and Pilots. Titanfall 2 has shown that, like its towering mechanical titans, it can rise from the ashes and stand tall once more. Titanfall 2 is regularly on sale in the Steam store for $10 so if you’re ever looking for a rush of excitement, give Titanfall 2 a try with its revamped multiplayer.
