The PC version of Dead or Alive 5: Last Round was released in March of this year, with an appended ‘IOU’ note relating to the online portion of the game. An online mode would be coming, it was promised, within three months of launch.
In May, an online beta patch appeared, giving some credence to the suggestion that Dead or Alive 5: Last Round would indeed have an official PC online mode within that three month period. The beta patch had various issues, but it was a beta. No need to panic, surely?
Alas, in June, the release of the online mode was officially delayed. The beta remained active and received additional patches that, by most accounts, broke it even more than before.
But here we are in October, a mere eight months after the game’s Steam launch, and Dead or Alive 5: Last Round has, at last, been patched up with a non-beta online multiplayer mode. It’s not exactly sunshine and smiles though, because PC players are only able to play ranked matches (no lobbies here, unlike the console versions), and there’s no NAT indicator in the PC version. Even though there was one during the beta testing.
Predictably, threads on the Steam forums suggest that players are having a few problems getting the online multiplayer to function.
The online release was apparently accompanied by no Steam community announcements whatsoever, and I only really learned about it because Tim was laughing about the hilarious $460 USD collection of DLC now available for the game (and noticed people talking about online mode now being available).
Quite a shambolic sequence of events, really.
