Gears of War 4 patched to resolve multiplayer ‘hitching’

Gears of War 4 developer The Coalition patched the game today in an effort to eliminate the issue of “hitching” in its multiplayer mode, the studio said in a forum post.

Xbox One players of Gears 4 have been dealing with stuttering at the beginning of multiplayer matches, and during long continuous sessions. Earlier this week, The Coalition updated its list of known issues with a strange but simple workaround for the hitching problem: “Open four other games (allow them to load past the initial splash screen) and then load Gears of War 4.”

Players shouldn’t have to deal with the issue or that odd solution anymore. Today’s patch — which was released only on Xbox One, since the hitching problem didn’t affect the Windows PC version of the game — weighs in at about 218 MB.

“This will help iron out any user still experiencing this that has not done any of the workarounds we posted about the other day,” said Adam Fletcher, director of community for the Gears of War series.

As for remaining issues like long matchmaking times and the game not saving changes to audio settings, The Coalition said it’s still working on fixing them.

For more on Gears of War 4, which launched this week, read our review.