According to Electronic Arts, Army of Two won't allow players in North America to team up with U.K or Asian gamers.
We wanted to get to the bottom of this issue, so we called Army of Two Senior Producer Reed Schneider.
"The game works on a deterministic or peer-to-peer network setting," Reed explained. "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."
Before you start flaming, console fans, Schneider told us it has nothing to do with PS3 or 360's capabilities.
"The platform doesn't make a difference. It's platform agnostic," Schneider said.
Another reason for the region lock: Content. "Asia has different rules for what you can do in shooters than North America or Europe. For example You can't shoot dead bodies in Asia," Schneider said. "You can't have a peer-to-peer model where one person can shoot bodies and the other can't because ultimately the game's simulations diverge."
As for the future, Reed said, "We're looking at potentially going away from a region locked setting, but it's research right now."
We get it, but we're still very unhappy we can't play Army of Two with G4tv.co.uk correspondent Malcolm Ballyweather.
