Army of Two region locking explained

G4TV has got to the bottom of why the latest Co-op shooter, Army of Two, is locked to specific regions. Asking Senior Producer, Reed Schneider, it was explained that “The game works on a deterministic or peer-to-peer network setting. Because we have all these synchronized animations and the players are always doing things together, the only way to support that kind of model right now is to use a deterministic model for networking.”

"If you're playing with someone in co-op, generally you're playing with a friend, so it's not so much of a problem to have a non-region locked game, but the problem comes when you go into vs. mode. Unlike client server, in a peer-to-peer or deterministic model, the person with the worst connection brings everyone else down to their level. So you could have three people playing with a good connection and one person with a bad connection in another continent, and everyone is brought down to his level."

Reed also explains that it’s not because of the platform, but simply because of the way the networking portion of the game was designed. In addition, the rules for shooters differ between EU, The US and Asia: Reed explained that one example was that you can’t shoot dead bodies in Asia, so the peer-to-peer model doesn’t support this.

As frustrating as it is not to be able to play with friends outside of your local region, we can’t quite understand what the big fuss is about given the huge latency you have when connecting to someone the other side of the world. For a shooter, this makes it particularly difficult to get a good gaming experience.

Are you seeing red over region locking? Let us know your thoughts, in the forums.