We are able to make running live updates to certain aspects of Uncharted 3 multiplayer and have made the follow tweaks active today. You should see your version number read as 1.03.019 now.  -          The FAL-SS weapon power has been changed. It now takes five bullets to the body to kill an opponent. It previously took four bullets. It will still take three bullets to the head to take down an enemy using the FAL-SS.  -          Death planes on certain maps have been changed so that map exploits are no longer functional. In other words, we’ve removed hidden tricks that were allowing players to hide and take out opponents without the possibility of return fire. We will continue to monitor our play tests and your feedback and adjust what we can with the end goal of making your gameplay experience more enjoyable. Let us know your thoughts and Read more...

Happy 2012! We’re starting the year off with a fresh batch of Uncharted 3 DLC content and more in the pipeline that prophecies forbid us from fully portending quite yet. Hope you’ve all gotten 2012 off to a rocking start even with all the 2012 phenomenon chatter. If not, we’re about to make your end of days talk and your UNCHARTED gaming life much more awesome.  First off, today we’ll be releasing four maps we teased a couple of weeks after the Uncharted 3 launch.  You’ll be getting the Cave, Fort, Lost City, and Sanctuary maps in this download pack. Dynamic lighting effects, new particle effects and a slew of technical changes have been made to these maps. The lighting was reworked from scratch. New textures and weather effects are apparent and freshly decorate all maps. We poured hours of development time into these maps to make them be really fun in the Uncharted 3 multiplayer ecosystem. This map pack is a taste of how far we can Read more...

There are 26 long guns that can be unlocked in Uncharted 3 multiplayer. We talked about some of the very cool pistols you can unlock in Uncharted 3 multiplayer already and now we’d like to show you more of the unique weapons in Uncharted 3 multiplayer armory. This group of weapons is for those of you that prefer to attack enemies from a distance via long-range gunplay or sniping. There are 26 long guns that can be unlocked in Uncharted 3 multiplayer. The AK47, M9, G-MAL, Dragon, KAL-7 and FAL-SS long guns are represented here. All guns have distinctive textures and mods that make them some of the coolest and more powerful weapons in the game. Here’s a rundown of what you can unlock, how you can unlock it, and what it’ll do for your multiplayer game. Long Guns Click on the image of the gun below to see it full size.   M9 guns Jade M9 How to obtain: level up to Rank 75. What it does:  Clip Size and Reload Speed mods increase the bullets in Read more...

There are 14 different unique pistols that can be unlocked as you play multiplayer. The summer multiplayer beta and Subway Taste for Adventure complete multiplayer experience have passed and now we're a few days into the official launch of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. We want to tell you about some very unique and very cool unlockable weapons that will help elevate your multiplayer game.  The first group of weapons is for those of you that prefer short-range, close-quarters gunplay. There are 14 different unique pistols that can be unlocked as you play multiplayer. The Para 9, Arm Micro, and Raffica, and Tau all make an appearance and come fully loaded and stylized with unique textures and mods. Here’s a rundown of what you can unlock, how you can unlock it, and what it’ll do for your multiplayer game. Unique Pistols click on any thumbnail to see the gun full size. Jade Para 9 How to obtain: level up to 56 What it does: Reload Speed and Blindfire Read more...

Judging from a few threads we've seen popping up on various forums, including our own fourms on NaughtyDog.com, there's a good debate brewing on what's different or changed with our gun combat mechanics in both single-player and multiplayer. Since we've got access to all the underlying bits for those mechanics, we wanted to share some of those details for you. Single-playerJustin Richmond, our Game Director, came over to discuss the debate about our single-player guns, which centers mostly around aiming and accuracy. We want explain exactly what changed with the aiming/shooting between Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3. Guns fire in a completely different way in Uncharted 2 compared to what you're experiencing now in Uncharted 3. First off, the guns fire in a completely different way in Uncharted 2 compared to what you're experiencing now in Uncharted 3. Keep that in mind, as it affects your perception of gun combat as a whole since it's very easy to want to compare Read more...

As the rest of the team has been working incredibly hard on the remaining tasks to complete Uncharted 3, other folks at the studio - namely Jason, our in-house web developer - have been working really hard to allow you to view some of your Beta stats. We’re glad to let you know that you can now view a LIMITED set of BASIC player profile stats and a summary of your game history, right here on NaughtyDog.com. To check your stats, make sure you’re logged into PSN on NaughtyDog.com and hit the “Uncharted 3: Beta Stats” navigation item in our menu above or click on this link! We wanted to be sure that everyone who is looking forward to the Uncharted 3 Beta rewards (details at the end of this post) have an opportunity to check up on their progress. This will allow you to do that – the Uncharted 3 Beta stats allows you to check your level and go through your game history to figure out how many games of each gametype you’ve played. We’ve Read more...

Earlier today, July 12, we started getting reports that some users were logging back into the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta and finding that their progress in the game has been reset. Many players have had to re-accept the online agreement when logging in to the Beta and their profile shows they are at level 1, with no XP accumulated or Cash remaining in their profile. We’re actively looking into what caused the issue so we can prevent it from happening in the future. We know this is particularly worrying for those of you who have been working towards to the Uncharted 3 Beta rewards – we’ve reposted the details on the Beta rewards at the end of this post. IF you were one of the players affected by this profile reset, here’s the scoop: The GOOD news is that your progress towards those rewards has NOT been lost – we still have all of your detailed play history by game stored safely and ALL games you have played in the past and are playing right Read more...

Today, Sunday, July 10, marks the beginning of the final week of the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta! You've only got just over 4 days left to get your fill of this preview of Uncharted 3 multiplayer and to achieve the requirements to get your rewards for the full version when Uncharted 3 is released in November.  The Beta recently hit 1 MILLION unique players and our player count was growing steadily over the weekend. I'd love it if we could hit 1.5 million players - that's absolutely within reach, so be sure to let any of your friends who haven't checked out the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta to grab their free download from the PlayStation Store and jump in for a match or two, or twenty. As we head into the final week of the Beta, we made a decision to make sure that everyone was able to try out all of the gametypes and maps! As of today, when you head into matchmaking, you'll notice that ALL of the gametypes are available to choose from. Be sure to try them Read more...

The Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta 1.02 patch was released this morning in Europe and Asia, and will continue to roll out across all regions participating in the Beta. The full patch notes to update 1.04 are listed below. Available: June 8, 2011 Technical Fixed an issue with the Facebook friends list where it would display duplicate and/or incorrect PSN IDs for some players Fixed an issue where some players would gain cash/XP during the playback of some Cinema files Read more...

Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta 1.03 patch was just released and will be rolling out across all regions participating in the Beta. Available: July 6, 2011 Technical Fixed an issue that prevented some SCEE (European) region players from finding a match       Read more...

Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta 1.02 patch was made available at 10:30 PM PDT for the North America PlayStation Store and will roll out across all the regions participating in the Beta over the next few hours. The full patch notes to update 1.02 are listed below. In addition, we have updated the available gametypes to bring back Plunder! As a result, Free for All has been removed from this week’s available gametypes. Available: July 5, 2011 General Last place team in Three Team Deathmatch now gets placed into Observer Mode in Sudden Death Gameplay Disabled the accumulation of medals to stack Medal Kickback activations. Now, if your Medal Kickback is waiting to be activated, you cannot earn more medals that count towards your Medal Kickback counter until you have activated your current Medal Kickback. Players will still be awarded medals Disabled the activation of a Power Play after 40 kills have been reached in Team Deathmatch Increase the minimum time between Power Read more...

We’re just one day away from the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta going public tomorrow, Tuesday, July 5 – if you haven’t been able to find a voucher code from the multitude of sources to play the Beta, it won’t matter tomorrow as anyone and everyone who can access the PlayStation Store will be able to join in.  You’ll find the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta as a regular download on the PS Store sometime tomorrow! Today also marks the beginning of the second week of the Beta and that means our scheduled updates to the available gametypes have been pushed – we’ve added in Team Objective and Co-op Hunters to the mix for this week. Once you’ve logged in, the version number on the top right should read 1.00.647. On tap for this week are the following gametypes and modes: July 4 to July 9 Gametypes: Team Deathmatch, Free For All, Team Objective, Hardcore, Co-op Hunter Maps: Airstrip, Chateau In addition, the video playlist Read more...

The first weekend during the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta also happens to be a long holiday weekend. We’re expecting a higher number of players than during the week – as is typical in our experience – so we wanted to make sure that everyone knows where to leave us feedback. We can’t stress this point enough – we want to hear from you about anything and everything you like, dislike or any issues you encounter while playing the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta. The best place to do that, and make sure that we get it, it to post it on the Multiplayer Beta discussion forum on NaughtyDog.com here. Many of us have been playing in the Beta with you during the week and we’ll be on this weekend as well – see you online! Read more...

Much, much earlier today, Wednesday, June 29, we pushed out the 1.01 update to the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta. Full patch notes to the update are listed below. Available: June 29, 2011 Relevant minor updates prior to 1.01 Temporarily removed Plunder gametype from matchmaking Added in Free For All to replace Plunder Temporarily disabled Facebook integration Gameplay Removed Yemen from map rotation in Free For All. Yemen will return during its regularly scheduled week. Temporarily removed Cursed from Power Play rotation Technical Fixed issue where a crash would occur when backing out of multiplayer Fixed frequent slowing of framerate that could lead to the Beta freezing Fixed a crash involving Emblems   Read more...

With the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta right around the corner, I’m sure you all want to know exactly what we’re putting into the Beta and what you can expect over the three weeks it is active. A few weeks ago, just before E3, IGN posted a thorough first sneak peek at the details of our upcoming Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta. Now, we can give you the FULL rundown of the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta for things that weren’t necessarily covered in the IGN reveal. We put together a handy little FAQ below with ALL the details. When can I start playing?Tuesday, June 28, for all Infamous 2 and current PlayStation Plus members, who all get early access to the Beta.Unfortuantely, PS Plus Members under the Welcome Back program won't be able to get early access in the following countries: Germany, Portugal, Spain and New Zealand. Sorry! If you’re not an owner of Infamous 2 or a current PlayStation Plus member, we’re opening the floodgates to the Uncharted Read more...

Due to the continuing PlayStation Network outage, we will be postponing this weekend’s combined “The Lab” and Triple Cash event in UNCHARTED 2 Multiplayer until next weekend – Friday, April 29, through Monday, May 2. We’ll provide another regularly scheduled update on NaughtyDog.com on the Thursday prior to “The Lab” start. We will run both “The Lab” and Triple Cash as we had scheduled for this weekend. As always, be sure to check the PlayStation.Blog US, PlayStation.Blog EU and the @PlayStation Twitter accounts for up to date information on the PSN Outage.   Read more...

Welcome back to final “The Lab” weekend in April! I’m sure everyone has been carefully reviewing all the UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception multiplayer details we revealed earlier this week and – I hope – you are all looking forward to getting some hands on when the beta hits on June 28, 2011. However, that’s still a couple of months away – and our episode of “The Lab” this weekend can take care of that online multiplayer itch. “The Lab” is a special, limited-time playlist for UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves multiplayer that is active every other weekend. “The Lab” playlist features one or more custom-tuned gametype variations chosen by our game designers to test potential new settings, try out alternate gametypes in a real-world setting or just mix things up for the sake of variety. “The Lab” is open from Friday, April 22, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, Read more...

We're extremely proud and excited to finally start revealing our plans for the multiplayer modes in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. There's a massive post that just went up on the PlayStation.Blog that just gives you an idea of how much information there is to share, and really, we've just scratched the surface. We wanted to have the opportunity to give you the definitive guide to all of the information we've shared with the media since our Multiplayer press event last week. Before we get started, make sure to check out our Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Trailer below or directly on our YouTube page. It is your crash course into all of our reveals -- and there's even more if you watch closely. There's so many features and ideas for multiplayer we packed into this trailer, that repeat viewings will shed light on things you may have missed the first few times around. The music selection for this is a custom Naughty Dog remix of "Kill Everybody" by Skrillex. Cinematic Production Read more...

We're looking forward to "The Lab" in April - we've got a new gametype that hasn't been seen outside of Custom Games and we're capping off the month with a one of our favorite past episodes of "The Lab." We hope you'll join us! If you’re new to “The Lab,” welcome! “The Lab” is a special playlist we will be running for a limited time on designated weekends, roughly every other weekend. You can access “The Lab” playlist within the set of playlists found in Matchmaking in UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer. During each weekend “The Lab” is active, we’ll be running a specialized playlist featuring one or more custom-tuned gametype variations from the tons of variables we can tweak in our multiplayer gameplay settings. Your April 2011 schedule for “The Lab” is: April 8 - 11 Deathmatch – CrushingThis gametype variation hasn't actually been seen in "The Lab" yet - t's only been available as an Read more...

Welcome back to “The Lab.” Our final episode of “The Lab” in March features the return of Snipers & Pistole, a popular gametype variation we removed from the All Competitive Types playlist a month ago. “The Lab” is a special, limited-time playlist for UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves multiplayer that is active every other weekend. “The Lab” playlist features one or more custom-tuned gametype variations chosen by our game designers to test potential new settings, try out alternate gametypes in a real-world setting or just mix things up for the sake of variety. “The Lab” is open from Friday, March 25, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, March 28, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). The removal of Snipers & Pistole from the All Competitive Modes playlist was our way to try to mix things up a little bit outside of running our “The Lab” weekends. We removed a Read more...

Okay, okay, so we missed posting the March 2011 schedule for “The Lab” earlier this month like we should have. We blame the dangerous proximity of GDC and PAX East for our delay. We hope you didn’t miss our tweet notifying you of our first “The Lab” weekend in March last week – if you missed the update, you may want to also follow our Twitter stream. Along with the “The Lab” you have to look forward to next weekend, we’ve recapped the description and information for the first “The Lab” weekend in March in the schedule below. If you’re new to “The Lab,” welcome! “The Lab” is a special playlist we will be running for a limited time on designated weekends, roughly every other weekend. You can access “The Lab” playlist within the set of playlists found in Matchmaking in UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer. During each weekend “The Lab” is active, we’ll be running a Read more...

If you've spent any time in the "All Competitive Modes" playlist, or selected this variation in Custom Games, there's a chance you may recognize this weekend's episode of "The Lab" - RPG - 7s Only - from the "All Competitive Modes" playlist as RPG's. Why would we put RPG - 7s Only, which you can already find in an existing playlist, into "The Lab" you ask? Because we have updated some of the gametype modes within the "All Competitive Modes" playlist. The update to "All Competitive Modes" removed the RPG - 7s Only and Snipers & Pistole gametypes entirely from rotation. In their place, we've added two gametype modes from "The Lab" - No Power Weapons and Desert 5 - Shootout. The current "All Competitive Modes" playlist now includes: Chain Reaction Plunder Turf War King of the Hill Pistol & Grenades No Power Weapons Desert - 5 Shootout We'll be keeping an eye on how the playlist changes shake out - we're thinking of making a couple more updates to the playlists Read more...

This weekend is a long weekend for many of us in the United States, as we celebrate the Federal Holiday that is known as Presidents Day on Monday, February 21. It’s also been about a month since our last Double or multiple Cash weekend and I’ve been hearing more than a few people ask when the next such weekend will happen. That weekend is now. We’ll be running Triple (3x) Cash in ALL playlists from Friday, February 18, at 10:00 AM PST (what time is that in my city?) through Tuesday, February 22, at 10:00 AM PST (what time is that in my city?). When we ran the last Triple Cash weekend in early January, a few people here and there were wondering why we chose to do 3x cash instead of the usual Double Cash. After running some mega cash multiplayer events in December, it felt to some of us that we set a little bit of a new expectation with multiple cash weekends and that it was a downer to take you all the way back down to “just” Double Cash. Feel Read more...

Welcome back to “The Lab.” For our first episode of “The Lab” in February, we’re bringing back the most popular gametype variation from the original three episodes of “The Lab” from way back in June 2010 – Shotguns Only. Here’s some trivia, Shotguns Only was the favorite gametype of nearly 45% of the over 2,400 players who voted in our front page poll, handily beating out Sniper Extermination and 2 vs 2 Team Deathmatch, both tied at about 27% of the total votes. “The Lab” is a special, limited-time playlist for UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves multiplayer that is active every other weekend. “The Lab” playlist features one or more custom-tuned gametype variations chosen by our game designers to test potential new settings, try out alternate gametypes in a real-world setting or just mix things up for the sake of variety. “The Lab” is open from Thursday, February 10, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time Read more...

We’ve into the second month of 2011, and we’re only EIGHT months away from the release of UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception. I know everyone is also looking forward to seeing what we’ve got in store for UNCHARTED 3 multiplayer and we’ll be scratching the surface of what I think is an incredibly deep multiplayer offering in due time – I mean it can’t be too long now right, since we’re running out of months before release. In the meantime, our focus is still with UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer and our “The Lab” series. For February we’re mixing things up a little – one of the very first “The Lab” gametype variations, Shotguns Only, returns for a standalone weekend. For the second “The Lab” weekend, we’ve pulled out an existing All Competitive Modes gametype variation. If you’re new to “The Lab,” welcome! “The Lab” is a special playlist we will be running Read more...

Welcome to our second episode of "The Lab" in 2011! As the studio continues to work hard on UNCHARTED 3: Drake's Deception, "The Lab" will spend the next months revisiting some of the best and most popular episodes from 2010.  "The Lab" is open from Friday, January 28, at 10:00 AM PST (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, January 31, at 10:00 AM PST (what time is that in my city?).  For this episode of "The Lab" we're bringing back a community favorite gametype variation from a very long time ago - June 2010 to be exact - with Sniper Extermination. All players will be equipped with only Dragon Sniper rifles - NO sidearms - as you play through this variation of the Elimination gametype. You've 99 bullets but only one life each round, and the first team to completely exterminate all players on the other team wins the round. Best of five rounds wins the match. Stick behind cover as much as possible, and take your shots carefully, as the range and power of Read more...

Welcome back to "The Lab" - we've got a full schedule ahead of us in 2011, not to mention that game we're working on that you may have heard of, UNCHARTED 3. The Lab is open from Friday, January 14, at 10:00 AM PST (what time is that in my city?) through Tuesday, January 18, at 10:00 AM PST (what time is that in my city?). This episode of "The Lab" is No Power Weapons - that is, the standard Team Deathmatch rules, but without power weapons available on the map. In the maps listed below, we've removed all trace of the Desert - 5, Dragon Sniper, Moss - 12, SAS - 12, Pistole, RPG - 7, GAU - 19, and the M32 - Hammer. As a result, the only tools left in your arsenal are the AK47, M4, FAL, 92FS - 9MM, Micro - 9MM and the Mk-NDI grenades. The active maps for this weekend of The Lab are: The Lost City The Plaza The Sanctuary The Temple We'll be opening a brand new No Power Weapons discussion thread on the Naughty Dog community forums at about the same time The Lab Read more...

Welcome everyone to 2011 and a brand new of year of “The Lab” in UNCHARTED 2 Multiplayer! If you’ve been playing UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer for the past six or so months, you may recognize episodes of “The Lab” we’ve listed below for January. As the studio continues to work feverishly on our next game, UNCHARTED 3, we’ll be easing up on the workload of our game designers so they can kick ass at making UNCHARTED 3 multiplayer awesome. We will help them out by focusing “The Lab” more on gametype variations we have already tested and deployed successfully. While this means we won’t be able to explore some of the hundreds of gametype and playlist suggestions you’ve given us, we’ve been able to map out our schedule for “The Lab,” Double (or greater) Cash Weekends and even some updates to the Playlists for the forseeable future. We’re still dedicated to making an effort to keep things Read more...

The year is winding down and many of us are headed off to spend time with our families, friends and loved ones for the holidays. We’ve had an incredible year and we’re looking forward to working super hard in 2011 to release UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception. Before we take off, we have one final episode of “The Lab” for 2010. We’re running “The Lab” for an entire twelve days over the holiday, starting tomorrow, December 22, and ending just after the 2011 starts on January 3. “The Lab” will be running a rotating list of playlists culled from past favorites, similar to the “Best of…” playlist from our anniversary event – but with a built-in holiday treat: 4x Cash for the entire twelve days. “The Lab” is a special, limited-time playlist for UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves multiplayer that is active every other weekend. “The Lab” playlist features one or more custom-tuned gametype variations chosen by our game designers to test potential new Read more...

I hope everyone has recovered from the progressive cash multiplier from our Hanukkah event and from the UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception announcement. I sure haven’t quite recovered yet! No matter… since before we close out 2010, we have one more episode of “The Lab” to host to go along with the holidays at the end of December – Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year’s celebrations, and maybe others we’re not aware of. Since this is a Holiday Event and we set the bar pretty high for ourselves with a progressive cash multiplier recently, we’re announcing 4x Cash during the entire TWELVE days “The Lab” will run! That should make for some very Happy Holidays indeed. If you’re new to “The Lab,” welcome! “The Lab” is a special playlist we will be running for a limited time on designated weekends, roughly every other weekend. You can access “The Lab” playlist within the set of playlists found in Matchmaking in UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer. During Read more...

The great thing about December is that is has a ton of holidays and if there’s anything we love at Naughty Dog, it’s holidays – because they give us reason to do cool things for our UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer community. Hanukkah just started yesterday and will run through sundown on Thursday, December 9, this year. We were talking about running Double Cash during the full eight days, but one of our game designers did us one better. He suggested we run a progressive multiplier for each day of Hanukkah. We’ve started observing the Hanukkah holiday on Wednesday, December 1, with 1x cash. At around 10:30 AM PST (what time is that in my city?) on Thursday, December 2, we will kick up the bonus to 2x. Each subsequent day the multiplier will go up by one at roughly the same time. Day one is only 1x cash, but day two (Thursday, December 2) is 2x cash, day three (Friday, December 3) is 3x cash and so on, ending with a never before seen 8x cash on the last day of Read more...

In just one day our Thanksgiving Event will kick off and hopefully provide our community with five days of awesome within all our UNCHARTED 2 mutiplayer modes. We’ve made sure our Thanksgiving Event is packed with goodies—read on below to get all the details. If this is your first time playing “The Lab”—“The Lab” is a special, limited-time playlist for UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves multiplayer that is active every other weekend. “The Lab” playlist features one or more custom-tuned gametype variations chosen by our game designers to test potential new settings, try out alternate gametypes in a real-world setting or just mix things up for the sake of variety. “The Lab” is open from Wednesday , November 24, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, November 29, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). This episode of “The Lab” features is Plunder – Snipers Only. All players are only equipped with the Read more...

Don’t like the cash cap?  I know there’s a good segment of our community who doesn’t like it and doesn’t think it’s necessary. After carefully going through game data from our one-day Anniversary Event with a fine tooth comb, we agree – the cash cap appears that it’s not necessary! Starting with our Thanksgiving Event next week, we’ll be removing the per game cash cap on all matches PERMANENTLY. As in forever. We’re going to be keeping a close eye to make sure this isn’t going to bring a new round of exploits and abuses. We want this to be a reward to our loyal community who have requested and demanded for the removal of the cash cap and not open season for those players who exploit our game, making matches fun for everyone. Speaking of our Thanksgiving Event – we updated the start date on our November schedule to be one day earlier. The Thanksgiving Event will start on Wednesday, November 24.  Stay tuned to the NaughtyDog.com blog Read more...

Just a quick note – don’t forget that today is Remembrance Day in many countries around the world. If you’re in one of the countries that observes this holiday today, don’t forget to take a moment to commemorate the fallen members of the armed forces of your nation. And now, on to info on “The Lab"… We kick off November with a blast – literally – as our first episode of “The Lab” this month is M – 32 Hammers Only. “The Lab” is a special, limited-time playlist for UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves multiplayer that is active every other weekend. “The Lab” playlist features one or more custom-tuned gametype variations chosen by our game designers to test potential new settings, try out alternate gametypes in a real-world setting or just mix things up for the sake of variety. “The Lab” is open from Friday, November 12, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, November 15, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in Read more...

“The Lab” starts up again later this week with a weekend of M32 - Hammers Only—we’ll post full details, including variation parameters and maps on Thursday, November 11—and then we’ll be closing out the month with a Thanksgiving themed event. If you’re new to “The Lab,” welcome! “The Lab” is a special playlist we will be running for a limited time on designated weekends, roughly every other weekend. You can access “The Lab” playlist within the set of playlists found in Matchmaking in UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer. During each weekend “The Lab” is active, we’ll be running a specialized playlist featuring one or more custom-tuned gametype variations from the tons of variables we can tweak in our multiplayer gameplay settings. We’ll also be hosting a new thread for every event on the Naughty Dog community forums to get your feedback and thoughts on each one of our “The Lab” events. “The Lab” episodes for November Read more...

We love holidays like Halloween! I’m sure you do too – because it almost always means we’ve got something more special than the same-old, same-old planned in UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer for such weekends. Don’t forget that there tend to be plenty of holidays towards the end of the calendar – and we’re heading into the last couple of months of 2010. As always, to recap: “The Lab” is a special, limited-time playlist for UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves multiplayer that is active every other weekend. “The Lab” playlist features one or more custom-tuned gametype variations chosen by our game designers to test potential new settings, try out alternate gametypes in a real-world setting or just mix things up for the sake of variety. “The Lab” is open from Friday, October 29, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, November 1, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). The Halloween weekend episode of “The Lab” features 2 vs 2 Read more...

In partnership with our good friends at the PlayStation.Blog, we’ve combined forces (and blog posts) to reveal some stats from our recent Anniversary event and Last weekend, we held our first Anniversary Event to celebrate one year since the release of UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves, and I think we’d be understating things to say it was anything but a rousing success! All of us at Naughty Dog wanted to thank everyone (again) who went online to participate in our Anniversary Event – getting the Anniversary Drake skin, along with mega-cash, in return – and made it such a special day for the Dogs to spend with our fan community. We pulled a few amazing stats from the Anniversary Event we thought you’d like to know: We recorded over 2.5 man years of game time in a period of just 24 hours (1 game that lasts 20 minutes = 20 minutes, regardless of how many players in the game) Those 2.5 years came from 1,079,850 player games (10 players in a game = 10 player Read more...

As we mentioned last week, everyone in our community who played during our UNCHARTED 2 Anniversary Event on Saturday, October 16, will be receiving exclusive access to the special Anniversary Drake multiplayer skin. We’ve JUST completed making the necessary updates and the next time you log into UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer—it should show version 1.09.033 or higher in the upper right—everyone who participated will be able to select the Anniversary Drake skin in the Hero Character selection within their online profile in multiplayer. If you have ANY issues whatsoever—did you play but you don’t have the skin? Are you missing skins you should have in your multiplayer profile?—please head to this thread in our community forums and let us know! We’ll be keeping a close eye in the thread and will work with all of your to correct any valid issues we hear about. Thanks to all of our wonderful fan community for an awesome year and, from all Read more...

The UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves One Year Anniversary Event will run a FULL 24 HOURS from Saturday, October 16, 2010, at 12:01 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Saturday, October 16, 2010, at 11:59 PM PDT (what time is that in my city?). We will be running a special, one-day only episode of “The Lab” on October 16, featuring a compilation of the most popular previous episodes of “The Lab” based on your votes. The “Best of… The Lab” playlist will rotate through the following gametype variations: Shotguns Only Plunder Pistols Only No Power Weapons Desert-5 Shootout Deathmatch – No Boosters All of the gametypes will be played on the following maps: The Plaza The Sanctuary The Temple The Train Wreck Looking to hit level 60? Or level 80? This is absolutely your day to get a massive leg up on your run to the highest levels of the game. We’ve lifted the cash cap in ALL playlists – that’s right, NO CASH CAP. Period. But Read more...

We’re just over one week away from our special one-day only anniversary event to celebrate 1 year since the release of UNCHARTED 2. (Can you believe it’s nearly been a year ALREADY?) We’ve got a bunch of things planned to make our one-year anniversary not only an awesome special event, but to also show how much we do appreciate our fans and our community – from those of you who have been around since last year’s beta to everyone joining us with the release of the Game of the Year Edition. We’ll post more details on NaughtyDog.com next week, but for now, we wanted to reveal the special playlist available for one day only, on October 16—“The Best of… The Lab.” The “Best of… The Lab” playlist compiles the most popular episodes of “The Lab” as voted on by YOU on our NaughtyDog.com home page polls. We’re also including a more standard gametype into the mix to make sure there’s plenty of variety when you’re at the Read more...

October is shaping up to be a great month – we’ve got the UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Game of the Year Edition coming out on October 12 (in North America), we were able to schedule three episodes of “The Lab” and we figured out what we wanted to do for the one-year anniversary of the release of UNCHARTED 2. We’re looking forward to every single one of those things! In case you’re new to “The Lab” weekends, “The Lab” is a special, limited-time playlist for UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves multiplayer that is active every other weekend. “The Lab” playlist features one or more custom-tuned gametype variations chosen by our game designers to test potential new settings, try out alternate gametypes in a real-world setting or just mix things up for the sake of variety. “The Lab” is open from Friday, October 1, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, October 4, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). The first of three Read more...

October has a lot of meaning for us – it is the first month in a while to have three “The Lab” weekends AND the one year anniversary of the release of UNCHARTED 2. We’re looking forward to taking full advantage of what the month has to offer… If you’re new to “The Lab,” welcome! “The Lab” is a special playlist we will be running for a limited time on designated weekends, roughly every other weekend. You can access “The Lab” playlist within the set of playlists found in Matchmaking in UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer. During each weekend “The Lab” is active, we’ll be running a specialized playlist featuring one or more custom-tuned gametype variations from the tons of variables we can tweak in our multiplayer gameplay settings. We’ll also be hosting a new thread for every event on the Naughty Dog community forums to get your feedback and thoughts on each one of our “The Lab” events. “The Lab” episodes for October are: October 1 - 4 3 Read more...

News of this announcement shouldn’t come as a surprise as it is all over the internets this morning. To commemorate UNCHARTED 2 as the definitive Game of the Year in 2009 – we won over 50 of these awards, by the way – we’re proud to reveal the UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Game of the Year Edition. Due at retailers all over North America starting on October 12, 2010, the UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Game of the Year Edition has a suggested retail price of $49.99, which includes the regular retail Blu-ray of UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves along with a “super voucher” for the PlayStation Network Store that lets you download over $35.00 of DLC content—some of which were pre-order items only available for launch and they are still NOT available for purchase on the PlayStation Network Store. It’s been a dream to see the game so well received and continue to sell—we’re at over 3.8 million units worldwide to date—and we wanted to give anyone Read more...

Welcome back to another episode of “The Lab” in September. “The Lab” is a special, limited-time playlist for UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves multiplayer that is active every other weekend. “The Lab” playlist features one or more custom-tuned gametype variations chosen by our game designers to test potential new settings, try out alternate gametypes in a real-world setting or just mix things up for the sake of variety. “The Lab” is open from Friday, September 17, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, September 20, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). This episode of “The Lab” features a Desert – 5 Shootout. All players spawn with only the powerful Desert – 5 pistol and one Mk-NDI grenade. You’ll find some Desert – 5 weapon pickups littered among the maps to replenish your ammo supply. On the other hand, use your sole Mk-NDI grenade wisely – you’ve only got one of these and there aren’t any more Read more...

“The Lab” starts up again in the first weekend of September – that’s next week, along with Labor Day and PAX Prime – and we hope you’ll join us. If you’re new to “The Lab,” welcome! “The Lab” is a special playlist we will be running for a limited time on designated weekends, roughly every other weekend. You can access “The Lab” playlist within the set of playlists found in Matchmaking in UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer. During each weekend “The Lab” is active, we’ll be running a specialized playlist featuring one or more custom-tuned gametype variations from the tons of variables we can tweak in our multiplayer gameplay settings. We’ll also be hosting a new thread for every event on the Naughty Dog community forums to get your feedback and thoughts on each one of our “The Lab” events. “The Lab” episodes for September are: September 3 - 7 3 vs 3 Deathmatch We’ve dropped two of everything for all matches in this Deathmatch Read more...

Welcome back to our second of “The Lab” in August! “The Lab” is open from Friday, August 20, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, August 23, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). This episode of “The Lab” features Team Deathmatch games, but with all power weapons removed from the selected maps. That means there is no more rushing for the M-32 Hammer at the beginning of the match, no waiting for the tank to come rumbling through The Village to grab the RPG. In the three maps listed below, we’ve removed all trace of the Desert – 5, M4, Dragon Sniper, Moss – 12, SAS – 12, Pistole, RPG – 7, GAU – 19, and the M32 – Hammer. Yeah, that means the only tools left in your arsenal are the AK47, FAL, 92FS – 9MM, Micro – 9MM and the Mk-NDI grenades. The active maps for this weekend of “The Lab” are: The Plaza The Train Wreck The Village We’ll be opening the No Power Weapons discussion thread on the Read more...

Over on the PlayStation.Blog, we revealed that there’s some more UNCHARTED 2 downloadable content to be released on the PlayStation Network Store next week – a multiplayer skin pack with eight new skins and a PS3 Dynamic Theme. If you’ve been reading our community forums, you probably found out about the multiplayer skins a few weeks ago, but now it’s official and we’ve got a release date for you—Tuesday, August 17, 2010. There’s been a ton of requests for all kinds of UNCHARTED 2 DLC up on our community forums (feel free to add more!), so that’s exactly where we headed when we were looking for ideas for our next set of multiplayer skins. After a little group decision making, we settled on these eight skins for the UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Sidekick Skins Pack: Heist Chloe Borneo Chloe Borneo Sullivan UDF Sullivan Winter Sullivan Wetsuit Elena Dillon Mac You can check out a selection of screenshots featuring these multiplayer skins in our Flickr Read more...

Welcome to a very special episode of “The Lab” as we present Co-Op Crushing! “The Lab” is open from Friday, August 6, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, August 9, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). Co-op Crushing takes the Co-op Arena matches you’ve gotten used to and makes them much harder by giving you and your teammates Crushing level health. That means at about 80% your normal health, you’re a much softer target for the wave after wave of enemies trying to dispatch you in Survival or stop you from capturing the treasure in Gold Rush. We suggest that you find one or two more-than-capable teammates to get the most out of this “The Lab” variation of Co-op Arena! The active maps for this weekend of “The Lab” are: The Plaza – Gold Rush The Village – Gold Rush The Lost City – Survival Please note, our original schedule stated that this episode of “The Lab” would have both Co-op Objective and Read more...

We hope the last two months of “The Lab” have been fun for all of you – from 2 vs. 2 Team Deathmatch to Plunder with pistols only to the explosive chaos of Grenades Only. We’ve been having a blast ourselves – no pun intended. If you’re new to “The Lab,” welcome! “The Lab” is a special playlist we will be running for a limited time on designated weekends, roughly every other weekend. You can access “The Lab” playlist within the set of playlists found in Matchmaking in UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer. During each weekend “The Lab” is active, we’ll be running a specialized playlist featuring one or more custom-tuned gametype variations from the tons of variables we can tweak in our multiplayer gameplay settings. We’ll also be hosting a new thread for every event on the Naughty Dog community forums to get your feedback and thoughts on each one of our “The Lab” events. August has only two weekends of “The Lab” in store for all of us. They Read more...

Title Update 1.09 will be released in all regions on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at about 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). Title Update 1.09 includes the following: Changes made to multiplayer character skin system to allow for voices to be included with future skins Made changes to character game mechanics to prevent players from using exploits Fixed ability for players to “super throw” the treasure in Plunder matches Cash awarded per kill in Elimination has been increased to $750 per kill Enabled the ability for Naughty Dog to easily alter the amount of cash earned for individual Medals on a playlist or gametype basis and per-kill Thanks to some of the changes above, we’ll be issuing a LiveData update that will rescale Medal cash awards in Objective games ONLY. For matches which fall under the Objective modes, cash for individual and kill-based medals have been decreased in value, while cash for Objective based medals have been increased as Read more...

Welcome back to the second episode of “The Lab” in July! I have no doubt a bunch of you will be heading down to San Diego this weekend to attend Comic-Con, but in case you’re not able to attend Comic-Con, consider joining us in “The Lab.” “The Lab” is open from Friday, July 23, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, July 26, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). This episode of “The Lab” promises to be quite explosive with the Grenades Only variation of our standard Deathmatch mode. When we say Grenades Only, we mean grenades ONLY. Every player spawns with 99 grenades – that’s virtually an unlimited supply – to blow up everything in sight. Well, actually make an attempt and try not to kill your teammates. We’ve also disabled boosters for “The Lab” this weekend – it wouldn’t be much fun if just about everybody used Sure Foot, right? End result? It’s pretty much what I said in our blog post Read more...

Last week, Google posted the effects of the World Cup on search engine queries to Google.com by country. They showed how much of an impact certain games, and the tournament overall, had on search activity – basically showing that, in general, significant amounts of people were focused solely on the World Cup during the fixture. Not surprising considering that soccer (or football) is considered the world’s most popular sport. We figured we would take a look and see if we saw something similar with UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer. Before even looking, we expected to see the number of concurrent online players to drop during World Cup fixtures. We weren’t disappointed. The graph below shows the typical curve of our concurrent online player population on an average day. As you can see, we typically get our peak player population around the middle of the day, U.S. Pacific time. Now let’s see what happened during the World Cup Third Place fixture, which was played on Read more...

Welcome back to another episode of “The Lab”—kicking off the first of two “The Lab” weekends in July! “The Lab” is open from TODAY, Friday, July 9, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, July 12, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). This episode of “The Lab” is Plunder Pistols Only. This the the Plunder you know and love, or hate (or get farm killed on) but with one, significant, difference—everyone spawns with ONLY a 92FS - 9mm pistol. Oh, and a grenade. All the maps in this Plunder variant for “The Lab” only have 92FS pistols and grenades as available weapon pickups. This puts the treasure bearer and his assailants on equal ground as far as firepower, which is just the recipe needed for some intense, competitive Plunder matches. The active maps for this weekend of “The Lab” are: The Plaza The Sanctuary Train Wreck Lost City We’ll be opening the Plunder Pistols Only Read more...

First of all, thank you to everyone who have logged into UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer and played “The Lab” for the past three sessions so far. Because we’re on a bi-weekly schedule, July loses out and only gets two sessions of “The Lab” which will continue until October, when we have three weekends that fall within our scheduling plan. Here’s a quick refresher on what “The Lab” series is if you’re new (or have forgotten)… We’ll also be hosting a new thread for every event on the Naughty Dog community forums to get your feedback and thoughts on each one of our “The Lab” events. And now the schedule for July: July 9 – 12 Plunder Pistols Only Plunder. But with Pistols only, no rifles, no power weapons. This should even the odds between the treasure bearer and his assailants as all will be equipped with the relative high-rate of fire and excellent accuracy of the 92FS pistol. This will be a good playlist to hit up if you are still looking Read more...

This weekend marks yet another Double Cash Weekend in UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer! For the next 5 days, the per-match limit on earned cash will be $150,000. That’s not a typo—we’re running the Double Cash weekend a day longer than typical for a holiday weekend. Make the most of it! It goes without saying that this is probably a good time to get a leg up on your run to hit level 80. I know I’ll be checking into multiplayer to get a jump on gaining levels. Double Cash Weekend Starts: Friday, July 2, 2010 at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) Ends: Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) Read more...

The next time you log in to UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer you’ll notice that your character selection choices in your multiplayer profile have changed significantly – but only for a limited time… more on that later.  You have a smaller pool of characters skins to choose from, but you’ll have 16 different versions of Drake and Flynn to choose from in the Heroes and Villians selections. Those 16 versions represent the countries whose soccer teams have made it to the second round in South Africa as of today. Since we’ve been seeing so many displays of team support across the Internet and on forums, we thought it would be cool to extend that show of fan support within UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer. So for a limited time – for two weeks or until about Monday, July 12, 2010 – you’ll be able to choose Heroes and Villians skins with the following country uniforms: Uruguay Mexico Argentina South Korea United Read more...

Along with launching “The Lab” for the weekend this morning, many of you noticed that the level cap has been increased beyond 60 (X). This now makes the maximum level attainable currently in UNCHARTED 2 is now 80 and is designated by an in-game badge which uses the roman numerals XXX. You can check out the full set of level badges on our Flickr photostream. Each level beyond 60 requires accumulating $15,000,000 in cash to level up and that stays consistent throughout 61 to 80. That means you will need to accumulate a total of $362,965,500 to hit level 80. If you had already hit level 60 (and hopefully kept playing) – there is some good news for you. With the level cap raise, you’ll automatically be brought up to the level that is appropriate to the total cash you’ve accumulated up to that point. That means you could come back to your profile to a higher level in recognition of all the hard work you’ve been putting in playing UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer, even Read more...

Welcome back to another episode of “The Lab” and the episode which concludes our first month of this very special playlist. If you’re looking forward to what’s coming up after this weekend in “The Lab” – and we don’t blame you one bit – we’ll be posting the July schedule early next week. “The Lab” is open from TODAY, Friday, June 25, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, June 28, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). This episode of “The Lab” is Sniper Extermination, which features a snipers-only race to see which team can exterminate all the other players first. Get exterminated by an opponent and you’re out for the remainder of that round. Exterminate out all your opponents and your team wins the round. Best of five rounds wins the match. Find some key sniping spots, make sure to watch your six and be very, very careful peeking out from behind cover, lest you be exterminated with one well-placed Read more...

Welcome back to “The Lab.” “The Lab” is open Friday, June 11, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, June 14, at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). This pre-E3 installment of the “The Lab” weekend is a short range fest with only the Shotgun and Pistole available on a select set of maps. There are no grenades and no power weapons available for pickup on the map - in fact, there are no other weapons available on the map at all. On the other hand, riot shields and propane tanks are available on the maps. The maps available during this weekend of “The Lab” are: Temple Village Train Wreck Ice Cave As with last time, we would love to get your comments and criticism on the Shotgun and Pistole matches throughout “The Lab” weekend. Be sure to visit the Shotgun and Pistole comments thread on the Naughty Dog community forums after you’ve played a few matches to tell us what Read more...

Title Update 1.08 for UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves was released in Europe (region 2) on Saturday, May 29, 2010, and in the remaining regions worldwide on Tuesday, June 1, 2010. Title Update 1.08 includes the following: Addressed exploit where players were able to use three Boosters simultaneously Additional changes made to address players exploiting within matches by leaving normal map boundaries Players who have reached Level 60 will have their level displayed in-game with an icon next to their PSN ID Players with DLC and the DLC Matchmaking option selected in their online profile will find games in those maps more consistently Improvements made to team balancing calculations Removed Twitter update functionality from in-game menu Let us know about any comments or issues with Title Update 1.08 in our community forums. Read more...

We just wanted to remind everyone that our inaugural weekend of “The Lab” starts TOMORROW, Friday, May 28 at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city) and will turn until Tuesday, June 1 at 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?). Of course, over the same time, all matchmaking playlists will be under Double Cash Weekend during the same start and end times above, with an increased maximum cash per match limit of $150,000. This weekend’s installment of “The Lab” Playlist series is 2 vs. 2 Team Deathmatch. Parties are limited to two people only, obviously. We’ve set the match conditions to a 15 minute time limit and 25 kills. We also made sure to limit the active maps in “The Lab” Playlist this weekend to maps that are best suited for the small team size. The maps active within “The Lab” Playlist are: Temple Ice Cave Plaza Village We would love to get your thoughts about 2 vs. 2 Team Deathmatch after you’ve had a chance to play it Read more...

Next weekend – May 28 to June 1 – we’re introducing a new playlist that will mix things up and maybe, possibly lead to updates or additions to the existing playlists in competitive Matchmaking. We’re calling this playlist “The Lab.” We’ll be running “The Lab” Playlist roughly every other weekend for the foreseeable future. During each weekend “The Lab” is active, we’ll be running a playlist featuring one or more custom-tuned gametype variations from the tons of variables we can tweak in our multiplayer gameplay settings. We’ll also be hosting a new thread for every event on our Naughty Dog community forums to get your feedback and thoughts on each one of our “The Lab” events. Here’s the current schedule and descriptions for the first three events in our “The Lab” Playlist series: May 28 – June 1 2 vs. 2 Team Deathmatch Grab a partner for this small- to medium-size map mow-down. You’ve got 15 minutes to rack up 25 kills, Read more...

We just pushed updates to many of the multiplayer maps in UNCHARTED 2. The updates include steps to prevent the use of exploits, such as glitching out of a map, which prevent unfair situations in matchmaking. The next time you connect to multiplayer, the updates will be synced during the connection process—this is not a Title Update to UNCHARTED 2. We’re working on another similar update for more maps that we hope to launch in the near future. Read more...

After seeing some questions come in from our community as to the availability of the Siege Expansion Pack on the Asia region PlayStation Network Stores. After we’ve heard from a few people, we heard from SCE that due to some unforeseen technical issues, the publish date of the Siege Expansion Pack on the Asia region PSN Stores has been delayed to May 7, 2010. This applies for the Hong Kong and Singapore PSN Stores—I understand that the Japan PSN Store already has the Siege Expansion Pack available for purchase. We mentioned this delay in the past couple of days on our Twitter feed and our community forums, but wanted to make sure that everybody who may be in those regions gets the news. We hope you’ll join us online with the DLC then! Read more...

REMINDER to all: this weekend is Double Cash Weekend! Starts: Friday, April 23, 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) Ends: Monday, April 26, 10:00 AM PDT (what time is that in my city?) The per match cash limit has also been raised to $150,000 maximum per match. Enjoy! Read more...

With the announcement on the PlayStation.Blog that the PlayStation Store has been updated in North America we can now say that all regions can now purchase the newest downloadable content for UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves—the Siege Expansion Pack. The Siege Expansion Pack is available on the PlayStation Network store for $5.99 / £4.79 / €5.99. Fans in other regions—you’ll have to check your local store for your local pricing. As we announced just two weeks ago, the Siege Expansion Pack is our biggest DLC release to date: two new maps, six new multiplayer skins, one new co-op game type and 11 new online-only Trophies. UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Expansion Pack $5.99 / £4.79 / €5.99 Siege cooperative game type An arena co-op game type where two to three players defend a marked territory within a map against waves of NPC opponents. At the end of every round, the territory will change locations within the map and the NPC opponents will increase in Read more...

Title Update 1.07 will be released worldwide today, April 21, 2010, at about 11:00 AM PDT / 6:00 PM GMT (what time is that in my city?). Some regions may receive the update slightly earlier or later than this time, but every region will receive Title Update 1.07 today. Title Update 1.07 includes the following: Players can now select a Hero skin through their online profile for Co-op Arena matches only Additional spawn system changes to enhance spawn point update effectiveness Gameplay changes to prevent “airwalk” exploit by players Updates to map geometry collision detection to improve prevention of players attempting to leave normal multiplayer map boundaries Let us know about any comments or issues with Title Update 1.07 in our community forums. Read more...

We’ve just released updates to UNCHARTED 2 player spawn points across ALL maps and in all multiplayer game types except Plunder. All Plunder game types—in both the Plunder and Objectives playlists—won’t receive this update. We felt we still needed to do some work to improve the spawning in this mode since the way the games play out is pretty different to other game types. We needed some more time to focus and try to do the job right with Plunder, but didn’t want to hold up the release of spawn point updates on all the other maps and game types. We’ve spent the last several weeks since the previous spawn updates working on and testing a comprehensive new spawning system that we hope will make a marked improvement in preventing unfair spawns—or surprisingly opportunistic spawns, depending on which side you’re on.  We’re eagerly waiting to see how the system works when thoroughly strained by real-world match Read more...

Mark your calendars for Thursday, April 22. That’s when our latest DLC release for UNCHARTED 2, the Siege Expansion Pack, goes up for sale on the PlayStation Network Store. Full details on what’s inside the Siege Expansion Pack below. Siege cooperative game type An arena co-op game type where two to three players defend a marked territory within a map against waves of NPC opponents. At the end of every round, the territory will change locations within the map and the NPC opponents will increase in difficultly. The only way you can score co-op points is to have all your players within the captured territory, all while being assaulted by NPC opponents. 2 maps The Highrise Towering over the streets of Nepal, The Highrise is a map with plenty of opportunities for players to get the high ground on their opponents. Set on a series of destroyed and under-construction buildings, players need to be on their toes as there are many different jump locations and Read more...

Just wanted to remind everyone that the UNCHARTED: Eye of Indra motion comic bundle is now up on the PlayStation Network Stores for Canada, Mexico and the United States. Purchasing the bundle includes the bonus Rika Raja and Daniel Pinkerton skins for multiplayer. You’ll also notice that the individual episodes of UNCHARTED: Eye of Indra are currently not available on the PSN Store. This is all part of the process to offer up both the motion comic bundle AND the bonus multiplayer skins to our fans in North America, who haven’t been able to get either despite seeing many of their friends in Europe with this downloadable content. We’ve explained everything in detail in a PlayStation.Blog post from a few weeks ago. Remember—If you’ve already purchased all of the individual UNCHARTED: Eye of Indra episodes prior to April 1, 2010, you should be receiving an e-mail within the next week with a voucher code to download the full bundle and the Read more...

Last week we mentioned we were rolling out updates to player spawning in some of our multiplayer maps and we were asking for your feedback on how they felt. As of this post, we have locked down our current updates to the spawns on a handful of maps. Since I’ve seen some comments as recent as today on the original post from last week, we wanted to let you know what maps had spawning tweaked and how they were tweaked—that way we can keep getting your feedback. Maps affected: The Fort The Facility The Ice Cave To alleviate the spawn point issues, we changed how spawn points closest to players on your team were weighted in the spawn point selection calculation. Please try to keep this post on topic relating to spawning and spawn points only as that would help us the most. You can also leave comments and feedback in this forum thread. Read more...

Over the last few weeks we’ve heard about, and witnessed, an increase of players spawning too close to their opponents or in positions on the map which would place them or their opponents at a significant advantage and result in unfair kills. Of course the flip-side is that you would feel like many deaths were ill-gotten and too easy. We’ve been testing changes to the way players spawn after being killed in multiplayer to alleviate these occurrences. Throughout this week we’ve been rolling out updates—three maps so far—and we’re testing changes to spawns on other maps daily. We will roll out additional updates to maps on an ongoing basis as soon as they’re ready. What maps have been updated? We’re not telling yet. We’re not trying to keep you in the dark—we want to get your thoughts on the spawns as they occur naturally as you play, rather than have all of you focus on some particular maps only. We’re Read more...

We’re totally not pulling an April Fool’s on you for this one—on April 1, the UNCHARTED: Eye of Indra Bundle is going to be launched on the PlayStation Network store in the US, Canada and Mexico. Along with it also come the oft-requested Rika Raja and Daniel Pinkerton multiplayer skins! We’ve been working a long time to bring these over from Europe and we’ve worked closely with SCEA to make sure that we will also make sure all all our fans who have already purchased all three episodes also get the Rika and Pinkerton skins. FULL details on the release of the Bundle and how this will all work are on the PlayStation.Blog. Read more...

Just one more quick reminder—if you’re local to Los Angeles, drop by the “Unleashed: The Art of Naughty Dog” opening reception on Saturday, March 6, at the Gnomon Gallery. I’ll definitely be there and I have it on good authority that a good number of other Dogs will be there. Feel free to come by and mingle—it’s open to the public and (I believe) it’s free. Full details, including the address can be found on our first reminder post from earlier this week. (Yes, the bee-like creature makes yet another appearance!) Read more...

Title Update 1.06 will be released on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 10:00 AM PST (what time is that in my city?). After that time, you will be prompted to download and install Title Update 1.06 when you connect online to UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer. Title Update 1.06 includes a couple under-the-hood fixes we needed to make that don’t affect gameplay. Beyond that, we’ve also made the following updates: Removed automatic shoulder selection when players click the L1 shoulder button to aim Delayed the appearance of the scoreboard to allow time for players to view any medals received simultaneously with player death At the same time the Title Update is released, we’ll also be pushing live updates to other aspects of our multiplayer. These updates include: Adjusted hitbox attributes so that players will take less damage to the character’s legs Decreased kill radius of grenades by 1 meter Decreased accuracy of Down the Irons by 15% Reduced rate of fire of the FAL by Read more...

About a month ago we let you know that a bunch of artists at Naughty Dog will be showing their art at the Gnomon Gallery as part of a group show. The date for the opening reception is drawing near and we just wanted to remind you in case you live nearby or will happen to be visiting the Los Angeles area. So, if you happen to be near the Los Angeles area for any reason on Saturday, March 6, 2010, feel free to drop by the Gnomon Gallery from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM to attend the opening reception of “Unleashed: The Art of Naughty Dog.” You can find out more about our gallery show and other events at the Gnomon Gallery on their website www.gnomongallery.com. The Gnomon Gallery is located at 1015 N. Caheunga Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90038. We’ve included a handy Google map too: View Larger Map Read more...

Earlier this week, we blogged about how we are listening to the conversations in our player community about our recent Title Update 1.05. To close out the week we wanted to share some of the things we’ve been looking at and testing internally within UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer—all based on feedback from our community. Just to be clear – these are some of the adjustments and refinements we’ve been talking about and we’ve been testing internally to date. By no means does this mean any of this is guaranteed to happen. And now the list… Auto-shoulder switching We’re thinking about removing this entirely and/or adding a toggle to your online profile. Medals being obscured when you have been killed If you happen to get medals right as you’re killed, the scoreboard comes up and you can’t see the medal and cash award. I think it’s safe to assume we’ll address this. Limb damage We’ve been testing out changing the hitboxes so that shots to Read more...

Our latest downloadable content for UNCHARTED 2 – the “Drake’s Fortune Multiplayer Pack” – is now available on our local PlayStation Network Store for purchase. The PlayStation.Blog post we put up today has full details on what’s included and pricing for the United States PSN Store.  They also posted a few high-resolution character renders that we’ve got in a convenient set for you to view or download on our Flickr page. The “Drake’s Fortune Multiplayer Pack” bundle includes the six new character skins for competitive multiplayer and two new maps, all based on characters and environments from UNCHARTED: Drake’s Fortune, at the awesome price of $5.99. You’ll notice this bundle saves you some cash over purchasing everything separately. The six character skins are: UDF Drake, UDF Elena, Gabriel Roman, Atoq Navarro, Eddy Raja and Javier – who was the mercenary chopper pilot. The skins are also available separately for $2.99. We’re Read more...

We’re right on the doorstep of releasing the “Drake’s Fortune Multiplayer Pack” – our latest set of downloadable content which includes six character skins and two new maps available separately or as a bundle for use with UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves. A common question we’ve seen from our players is how we will add these maps to our matchmaking system. Purchasing either the maps or the bundle unlocks an option in your online profile, which is accessible by pushing the square button on your controller. As you can see in this set of screenshots, the new option is called “Matchmaking.” The option has two available options: “Default” and “DLC.” Leaving the option at “Default” essentially tells our matchmaking system that you want to get into matches as quickly as possible. The matchmaking system will then prioritize your matchmaking based on the installed content. The matchmaking system will first attempt to place you in matches where all Read more...

It’s been a week since we released Title Update 1.05 to our multiplayer community. Without a doubt, this has been our most talked about update to multiplayer to date and for good reason – there were a lot of additions and adjustments we made and not all of them were received well by everyone. This is something we’ve seen from your comments on our blog, on Facebook, in various forums, and via Twitter. Our game designers have been discussing some further adjustments to what we introduced with Title Update 1.05; some of those we’ve been trying out during our daily playtesting sessions. We don’t have anything we can share yet, however we’ll be forthcoming as to the “what” and “when” regarding any future adjustments so you know what to expect. We value our multiplayer community and your feedback quite a bit. As Richard mentioned during his session at the D.I.C.E. Summit last week, collaboration and iteration is an integral part of our development Read more...

Normally, we’d shed some more light on Title Update 1.05, but what we would be revealing is covered in today’s exclusive reveal by IGN about our upcoming Drake’s Fortune Multiplayer Pack DLC releases. Head over there to read about new maps, new skins, new Trophies and new Medals. I bet now the blurry portion from yesterday’s multiplayer menu screenshots now make sense! Hint: it’s the Trophy menu item. All 13 of the new Medals will be added for everyone when Title Update 1.05 is released on Monday, February 15, 2010. Have a great holiday weekend for many of you around the world! As a bonus, we’ve embedded from IGN the Drake’s Fortune Multiplayer Pack trailer we made expressly for this announcement. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves PlayStation 3 Trailer - DLC Trailer Read more...

Yesterday’s blog post about our Experimental Weekend results sparked quite a bit of debate in the comments and on the PlayStation.com forums. That was not unexpected, especially when we have such a great, vocal multiplayer community. Changing some aspects of gameplay is never an easy consideration for us, nor is it something easy for the players to adapt to. I’m sure once Title Update 1.05 goes up, it will renew the debate. As always – we’ll be reading closely and seeing how the multiplayer matches are playing out. There’s quite a bit more in store for everyone with Title Update 1.05 and it’s all really good stuff. In our very first Title Update we introduced a penalty system to deter players who were spuriously quitting from matches (also to quite a bit of debate).The deterrent actually worked really well – we saw in-match departures drop significantly almost immediately. That didn’t mean that the system we worked out was the best implementation, so we Read more...

About two months ago, in early December, we ran a little experiment over a weekend – we would lower the health for all players, in all playlists and game types, to be roughly the equivalent of activating the Crushing variation in a Custom game. We wanted to see what you – our player population – thought about this change. We also invited everyone to take a poll on NaughtyDog.com to let us know what you thought. After a couple of months had passed, we took the poll down and looked at the data we got from running the poll. The results are in the graph below. What did we learn? Overwhelmingly, to the tune of 39% of everyone who replied, you let us know that you enjoyed the lowered health during the Experimental Weekend. Coming in at a close second, 33% of you felt that it was a good thing as well, but that we should keep it within its own playlist, rather than have the lowered health active across all playlists and game types. By contrast, only 20% of Read more...

As we were putting the finishing touches on the PlayStation Heroes Skin Pack DLC content, we started working on creating some videos we could put together into a trailer to show off the new characters you could buy in the pack. We finished up the trailer last week and GameSpot posted it on Monday as an exclusive. Now it’s our turn to post it and share it with everyone. The video is posted below and you can also check it out on our YouTube Channel. Thanks go out to CHRP718, HighLuxury, I-Owe-you-Pain, W0Wbaggr, Yeef, Fizarf, Gyrian, RyanardoDaVinci, womfalcs3, and BrokenOath from NeoGAF for a little help with this one. Over on our Flickr page, we put up a brand new set of high-resolution renders of all the character skins. We got more than a few requests to put these on a plain background to make it easier to knock them out of the background and use them on fan sites, stats cards, signatures and so on. We listened—feel free to head over to our Flickr and Read more...

Today, January 28, is a great day for us at Naughty Dog as the first downloadable content for UNCHARTED 2 is available on the PlayStation Network Store for anyone and everyone around the world to purchase. Announced last week on the US PlayStation.Blog and EU PlayStation.Blog, the PlayStation Heroes features seven key characters from your favorite first-party PS3 games from the last fourteen months—inFAMOUS, Killzone 2, and Resistance 2. By downloading the PlayStation Heroes Skin Pack, you’ll get a chance to use Cole, Evil Cole, Zeke, Sev, a Helghast soldier, Nathan Hale or a Chimera out into the competitive multiplayer modes of UNCHARTED 2 (and hopefully surprise a few people you’re playing against). The Pack is priced in the US at $4.99. If you’re reading from outside the United States, check your local PlayStation Network Store for your local pricing. Since this was our first attempt at importing characters from other games and engines into Read more...

We’re extremely proud to let you know that nineteen artists from Naughty Dog will have their own group art show! They’ll be displaying a broad variety of their own art, nicely printed and displayed, at the Gnomon Gallery—which is affiliated with the Gnomon School of Visual Effects. The show starts with an opening reception on Saturday, March 6, 2010, from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM. Full information on the Gnomon Gallery, including location and hours, and the artists included in the show can be found here. Drop by if you’re in the area and check it out and I’m sure there’ll be more than a few Naughty Dogs who will also drop by—I’m planning on it. If you can’t make it, I hear the show will run into April sometime. We’ll keep you posted as we get more details. Read more...

Recently, we’ve been monitoring an issue in the “Ranked” playlist where players are seeing their playlist-specific skill rank being reset to level 1 throughout the course of play. In order to resolve this issue, we’ll be resetting the skill ranks for all players within the “Ranked” playlist on Friday, January 15, 2010 at 12:00 PM PST (what time is that in my city?). We will also be letting everyone know through an update of the multiplayer Message of the Day at that time. Now don’t panic! We’re NOT resetting your overall progress or any other part of your accumulated stats. Your skill rank ONLY exists in the Ranked playlist and it is the number displayed between your level and your PSN ID – your level and the cash you’ve accumulated to date won’t change at all. After the skill rank reset, all players should start seeing their skill rank increase (or decrease) normally. We’ll be keeping an eye on things to make sure all is working as expected. Read more...

It’s been a while in the works—we recently made a major update to NaughtyDog.com to add a ton more detail to everyone’s multiplayer stats and we think you’ll really like this website update. There’s still a few things here and there that need tweaking and updating, but this update brings us quite close to our original vision of displaying multiplayer stats from UNCHARTED 2. Once we get back to the studio in 2010 we’ll be looking at how we can potentially expand our stats display further. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the new stats display and the types of things you’d like to see, so please let us know in the comments or in this thread on the PlayStation.com forums. Below is a brief overview of what’s new and updated with multiplayer stats. Career We’re now displaying expanded details of competitive and cooperative stats separately Many personal stats can compared to global averages You can now view Read more...

The holidays are all about the giving spirit and we’re in a giving mood! As we revealed on the PlayStation.blog, we’re holding another Double Cash weekend from Thursday, December 24, 2009, at 10:00 AM PST (what time is it in my city?) through Sunday, December 27, 2009, at 11:00 AM PST (what time is it in my city?) you would earn double for all kills and medals. Yes, you read that right, you’ll be getting Double Cash for medals as well! Oh, and our characters have gotten into the spirit of the season to celebrate the occasion! Read more...

We just pushed a live update to everyone that fixed a few known glitches on the “The Fort” multiplayer map that we’ve monitored being exploited. That’s all for now, but we have been actively working on a bunch of things big and small to support our multiplayer fans. We wanted to take this opportunity to give you an idea of what is still to come. Just like what our update to “The Fort” today, we’ll be addressing exploitable glitches in other multiplayer maps in the very near future. After those go through, we will be keeping a very close eye on multiplayer games to see if any new exploits arise that need to be addressed. Speaking of “The Fort,” we’ve got more than that currently in our downloadable content pipeline. Many of us at the studio have been feverishly working on more DLC for multiplayer since UNCHARTED 2 went gold. You’ll be hearing more about our plans in the future. Our past two Double Cash weekends were great successes, however Read more...

Hey everybody – a little while ago, we posted a poll here on NaughtyDog.com asking what playlists you would be interested in. The top two results were a “Plunder Only” playlist and two variations on a “Crushing” playlist. Well, we have some good news! Based on this poll and other collected community input we have decided to try a couple things out. This weekend we are instituting a “Plunder Only” playlist based on the overwhelming feedback and we’re making one other (temporary) change as well. Rather than add two new playlists at once we are going to try an experiment. For this Experimental Weekend only, player health in ALL game types will be lowered to 65% of the current player health. This is exactly the same as the Crushing settings, only Boosters will still be allowed. The experimental weekend will run from Friday, December 4 at 10:00 AM PST (what time is that in my city?) through Monday, December 7 at 11:00 AM PST Read more...

I’m sure you could have guessed, but we’re doing something special for Thanksgiving weekend! Of course, those of you outside of the United States may not celebrate Thanksgiving or may celebrate it on a different weekend – but that doesn’t matter, everyone is welcome! When you join a competitive Multiplayer match on Thanksgiving weekend, you’ll be greeted with a slightly different look to our Heroes and Villians. It looks like Drake and Lazarevic had a few too many helpings of turkey (or Tofurkey), green bean casserole and, most definitely, sweet potato casserole. We also flipped a few switches and bits here and there and not only is Double Cash weekend back, but you’ll be getting 2x the cash from any and all medals you are awarded during the course of a competitive or cooperative match. The per-match limits of $50,000 are still in effect, so if you’re just that good, you’ll be maxing out just about all the time. Oh, and don’t forget to check out the Read more...

The Thanksgiving holiday is nearly upon us and we’ve cooked up a little something at Naughty Dog to give thanks to all our fans. We’re pleased to reveal that, as part of an update to UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves later this week, a new Multiplayer map will be available for all players at no cost. That’s right, the first downloadable game content we have made available will be FREE as a gesture of appreciation to all our fans! The new map is called “The Fort” and is a throwback map – it’s based on the “Fortress” chapter of UNCHARTED: Drake’s Fortune. The Fort is a long rectangular map with wide open spaces and excellent flank routes. Can’t take on the enemy head on? Take the tunnels into the basement to get behind the opposing team. There is a shotgun in the center of the map, but look out for people climbing up from below to pull you to your doom. Pay attention to the side room in the crypt, there is an RPG that is ripe for the taking. “The Fort” Read more...

Reading over forums, blog comments and Tweets, we wanted to talk a bit about Skill level and the Ranked playlist. Skill is only counted for games played in the specific Ranked playlist. Your performance in the other playlists has no effect whatsoever on your Skill level. Another thing to be aware of – the only thing that the Skill level takes into account is wins and losses. The number of headshots you got, or even kill to death ratio doesn’t affect the Skill level. The game tries to create balanced teams based on the Skills of the players placed in the game. The game also tries to keep parties together, so it will not split up players that are in a party together no matter what their Skill levels are. It isn’t fun to play in games that are complete blow outs, both for the winners and the losers, thus the Skill system is designed such that it moves excellent players out of the lower Skill levels quickly in order to get them into more interesting games against Read more...

Halloween is only one day away and we decided we wanted to do something special for our fans over the weekend. We’re happy to say that this weekend is also our first ever Double Cash weekend in UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves. The Double Cash weekend starts now (Friday, October 30, 2009) and continues until Monday, November 2, 2009, at 11:00 AM PST. In every match during Double Cash Weekend, you’ll be getting twice the Cash award you normally would for completing typical game actions – not medal-related currency awards – giving everyone a leg up in increasing their Rank for a limited time. That means this weekend is the perfect time to hop on to our Competitive and Co-op Multiplayer modes – whether you’re just a few levels away from the vaunted ‘X’ or this is just your first time online. A bunch of Naughty Dogs will also be playing this weekend, so be on the lookout for the red Naughty Dog paw next to our PSN ID in the game and feel free to say hi, ask Read more...

We put up a new poll on the front page today inviting you to give us feedback on what you’d like to see for a future playlist within the Multiplayer mode of UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves. To help with that, I got Justin Richmond, our multiplayer designer, to give us some more information on the different modes in the poll. Here is what he sent over: We have been playing multiplayer furiously here in the office and it’s great to see you all online racking up the Cash and Skill Levels. Now we are looking to the future. To that end we are putting up a poll to see the possible directions you as players would be interested in seeing for our future playlists. We are listing five options in the poll, and below is a short breakdown about each one. Plunder Only All Plunder, all the time. No variations, nothing but capping treasure and shooting enemies. Crushing: All Game Types The Crushing variation on all maps with all game types. Crushing is a more hardcore version Read more...

Hope you are all having fun playing UNCHARTED 2! We are constantly evaluating our multiplayer and plan updating it on a regular basis. Earlier today, we updated our multiplayer matchmaking playlists. Justin, our multiplayer designer, passed along the following update notes to us. New playlists have been added, and the Deathmatch playlist has been modified. Below is the full list of playlist selections in multiplayer matchmaking: Deathmatch: Now contains ONLY straight Deathmatch matches (no variations) Elimination: Elimination matches only Objectives: All Objective based game types Ranked: Objective and Deathmatch game types, Skill Level tracked All Competitive Modes: Every Competative and Obective game type, including Deathmatch variations Co-op Objective: You and your friends take the world Co-op Arena: Survive the onslaught! Read more...

This is a pretty big week for us here at Naughty Dog—not only did we break news on the PlayStation.blog about our first review (5 out of 5 from PlayStation: The Official Magazine, if you’re lazy), we’re thrilled to see the Multiplayer Demo for UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves launch for those of you who have early access thanks to pre-order bonuses AND we’ve been in the midst of making some big changes here at NaughtyDog.com. I’m sure you may have noticed that things have been looking a little different in the past week as we launched a brand new look to NaughtyDog.com, which came with it our very own blog and updated job opportunities (we’re hiring!) among other things. This is just the beginning. We’re going to start rolling out a bunch of new community features over time, such as displaying all your UNCHARTED 2 Multiplayer stats right here on the site. We’ve never done something with this kind of scale before at Naughty Dog, Read more...