Xbox and Windows players cannot currently use ranked mode
Those attempting to go back and play some good ol’ Killer Instinct the past few days have run into an unexpected situation — they can’t play the main online mode at all.
The Killer Instinct community is currently reporting a hacker has allegedly broken the game’s online ranked modes, rendering them completely unusable.
If you try queuing up for a match right now on Xbox or the Windows version of KI, the game will simply hang trying to sync ladder information with the server before failing, and there’s no way around it.
This does not currently affect the Steam version of the game, which has a separate leaderboard, but the majority of active players use Xbox Live.
PAR|NickyFGC was among the first to sound the alarm that something is seriously wrong in a video to help spread awareness, and he’s understandably worried about the community he’s been a part of since KI launched in 2013.
“This is a huge problem for our community because ranking is a big reason why people play the game,” NickyFGC told EventHubs. “Despite what people think, we have a VERY active community with weekly tournaments and prize pools, and ranked was a great way to warm up for those events. Players can’t just hop on and find matches anymore.”
The alleged hacker(s) in this situation has reportedly been causing issues for years in KI by adding a multitude of fake users to the top of the ranked leaderboards while impersonating another player.
It appears the leaderboards have likely reached their breaking point, however, and now no one can play.
“This person has singlehandedly not only removed our main reason to grind ranked, but has taken the entire mode away,” said NickyFGC.
Whether the individual(s) involved were trying to actively take down the online service or not, we don’t know, but this is the present result either way.
Luckily, other online modes like Exhibition and lobbies are still functional, so players can fight each other using those although some are reporting their player ranks have been reset and connection times to servers can be longer.
This is still a big problem for the game because even though Killer Instinct first released almost a decade ago, there continues to be an active and dedicated playerbase who are directly impacted by this hack.
Killer Instinct fans are also justifiably worried that this may not get fixed, and ranked mode will remain permanently broken.
The game hasn’t received an update (aside from adding Xbox backwards compatibility) since March of 2018, and KI’s previous developer Iron Galaxy is no longer working on the series.
After 5 and a half years of being a legacy title, Microsoft may not see the KI hack as a large enough priority to fix (since they didn’t before), and that’s even if they’d know how to fix it at this point too.
There is at least one big glimmer of hope that Xbox will get around to it because unlike other older hacked games like Call of Duty or Titanfall, there is no newer entry for players to go to.
This Killer Instinct is the newest, and it’s currently broken on its main platforms.
Xbox’s Phil Spencer has also spoken multiple times in the past about wanting to make another Killer Instinct, and there are rumors of something being in the works.
It wouldn’t exactly be the greatest look for Microsoft if they’re going to market a new KI in the near-ish future when the last one was left in a broken state.
If all else fails, the community will likely be forced to switch to the Steam version of Killer Instinct, but that’s also not a happy solution for players either who’d lose years of work and progress.
Fans and players can help make Microsoft aware of the issue and show there’s demand for it to be fixed by messaging Xbox Support on Twitter and submitting reports to the Xbox Support website.
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