The employee chose to remain anonymous for obvious reasons while sharing what he thinks went wrong on a Swedish games site, but here’s what he had to say, courtesy PCGMedia:

When a code that’s not “thread-safe” executes on multiple sources, it’s a coincidence if it works or if it crashes. All the codes become “timing dependent” and different hardware combined with different background processes and OS’s, have different timing.

We are working hard on solving all the remaining problems within the game, and apparently many of the problems have been fixed in the last patch.  But since the game is so timing-dependent, it’s hard to say how many problems we have left to fix.

Unfortunately, if you have a certain CPU and you run a certain OS and at the same time you run a certain background process, you could get “bad timing” more often than other people, Timing that will cause the game to crash or other bugs.

My thing is DICE simply needed more time to make sure that everything in their game worked how it’s supposed to. But they didn’t and now EA’s in a whole lot of trouble. Hopefully this’ll be a lesson for the industry.

Meanwhile the latest Battlefield 4 patch for Xbox One has been delayed, and will instead be released late this week or early next, DICE has promised.

Elsewhere, Call of Duty: Ghosts, while not having smooth sailing, is way more stable that DICE’s mess of a game, and like I’ve said already, I’m sure this has affected the Battlefield brand in a lot mre ways than EA realizes. It’s no wonder the publisher is being investigated for alleged fraudulent sales claims it made about Battlefield 4, because as it stands now, the game is trending way below Battlefield 3 in sales on either PS3 or Xbox  360, and next-gen sales has been lagging heavily behind Activision’s Call of Duty: Ghosts.

Patch Notes for PS4 Battlefield 4:

• General stability fixes that should remove a large amount of the client crashes we are currently seeing on the PS4
• Fixed the audio drop outs that could occur when playing on large maps. Typical map affected was Golmud Railway in Conquest with 64 players. Ambient sound would sometimes cut out, like foley sounds from player running, vehicle engine sounds, vehicle movement sounds, and map ambient sounds
• Removed the blur effect on soldiers that appeared when Commanders were using EMP attacks
• Further reduced the probability of getting a corrupt save file by doing miscellaneous changes to the save file system. These include removing the save file saving again when quitting multiplayer
• Fixed multiple crashes that could occur when bringing up the in-game Battlelog during round transition
• Fixed a crash that could occur when using the BattleScreen
• Fixed a random crash related to destroying vehicles
• Fixed minor destruction issues in the terrain

DICE says that it’s already working on yet another PS4 patch based on player feedback.

The investigation aims to uncover possible lack of compliance of said statements with Federal Securities laws.

Holzer & Fistel didn’t give specifics, but it seems to me that the investigation is based on claims EA made about Battlefield 4 selling better than its predecessor — leading investors to invest in EA’s stock because of the confidence exuded by EA execs. The game however failed to do better than Battlefield 3 — by a huge margin, so there seems to be grounds for the inquiry.

The Feds take this matters seriously, and if proven to be true, EA could be forced to pay great amounts of money in both compensation and fees.

Thanks, DualShockers.

EA has responded to complaints from Battlefield 4 players trying to download and play Battlefield 4′s latest expansion pack China Rising, acknowledging that users “may run into an occasional hiccup, issue, glitch, or problem that could interrupt or prohibit your gameplay”.

In an update on its support site, EA said that it was aware of problems tied to users accessing China Rising servers and being disconnected shortly after joining a match.

“Some PC players of Battlefield 4 China Rising have found themselves getting kicked from servers within seconds of joining,” said the publisher. “DICE have identified the issue and is implementing a solution to the problem. This fix will take some time to be fully completed, but players should be noticing normal gameplay behavior soon.”

The problem appears to be worse on Xbox 360.

“Some Xbox 360 Battlefield 4 China Rising players have been unable to join China Risingservers after installing their downloadable content,” said EA. “We’re investigating this issue and will provide updates as quickly as possible.”

For the most part, Battlefield 4 has been a broken experience — especially its multiplayer. An unfortunate situation that I believe is impacting the game’s ability to shine as it truly should. But DICE has been working hard to rectify the situation, and tomorrow patches for the PS4 and PC versions of the game will be sent live, alongside the game’s first DLC offering: China Rising.

Notes And Release Date:

PC December 3 Game Update (Expected around 10am GMT 03/12/13)
-Removed the blur effect on soldiers that appeared when Commanders were using EMP attacks
-Fixed the audio bug where audio sometimes randomly dropped out while playing on certain multiplayer maps (typically Golmud Railway and Hainan Resort)
-Fixed the “one-hit kill bug” where occasionally damage from a single bullet was applied multiple times
-Fixed a common crash that would occur when exiting from the Single Player Campaign to Main Menu
-Tweaked the network and computer performance screen to show proper values. Players can now test their computer and network connection and get recommendations if they need to adjust something to improve their gameplay experience

PS4 December 3 Game Update (Expected in the afternoon of 03/12/13)
-Fixed the “one-hit kill” bug where bullets were sometimes applying their damage multiple times to a character. This could lead to firefights where normal rifles sometimes dealt one-shot kills, which is not as designed.
-Fixed a crash that could occur when having a very large amounts of Friends
-Enabled audio in PS4 video captures

A Xbox One patch is expected later in the week, it will focus on “stability and performance,” the developer adds, “and includes a fix for the so-called ‘one-shot kill bug’. Stay tuned for full patch notes.”

Remember that old squad system Battlefield 3 had? Yeah, it was not perfect, but it worked. Somewhat.

Well you’d think DICE would go above and beyond to improve the feature, but they haven’t. Instead they’ve taken it away all together, and now the only way to create a squad in BF4 is to first, join a game your friends are playing, hope you join the same team (because a lot of times you’re placed on the enemy’s team), and wait for your other friends to join in. A wait that sometimes lasts forever.

There’s no sitting in menus building your squad and choosing the map you want to play on. No chatter as to the strategy that should be employed, and no starting a game from the beginning. No. None of that. You must wait until other people leave the server your friends are in, and then furiously try to join.

Here’s DICE explanation for this:

We have a new feature in Battlefield where a new squad is created when a friend joins your game. You can toggle this option on or off by going into the options menu. We’re not offering the old squad join feature because we didn’t feel that the feature in Battlefield 3 was on par with the quality that we wanted to offer our players. We have no plans to add it in the future.

So the old system wasn’t up to par with the quality DICE wanted, so instead of improving the feature, they took it out altogether and added something even worse? This makes no sense.

But anyway, Battlefield 4 is broken, and until DICE fixes their mess, I’m not advising anyone to buy this game. It’s a crying shame.

Oh wait, you didn’t know? The game’s broken.

DICE has responded in a post on Battlelog: “This is probably related to crashes stopping the game reports from being sent to Battlelog,” the developer said. “We are still investigating this issue in more detail. Note that your progress sometimes can seem to be reset during server maintenance windows. In these cases, your stats will be just fine and reappear later.”

DICE added that it’s “still investigating the issue of single player save files being corrupted for some players,” and asked those affected to described describe… the steps leading up to the save file being corrupted, your platform (PC, PS3 or X360), and when the issue occurred. If you’re on PC, please also list your OS and system specs.”

The developer has been trying to keep up with the problems facing Battlefield 4, with multiple server-side updates already rolled out and more to come — which has already fixed some issues like server queues, server crashes, Missions and reloading.

“We would like to thank all players who have been reporting their issues to us,” DICE went on, “your feedback is invaluable when making sure we can deliver the Battlefield 4 experience you all deserve. In true DICE fashion, we will keep supporting Battlefield 4 for a long time, and we appreciate your feedback and patience as we work these issues out.”

Have you been experiencing problems? Share them here, we’ll pass it on to DICE.