Over the past few weeks, things have been quieter around Beyond Enemy Lines – Vietnam, and we want to give you a transparent update on what is happening behind the scenes.
A few weeks ago, we started the certification process for PlayStation 5 and Xbox. We knew from the beginning that this would take time. Beyond Enemy Lines – Vietnam has a lot of interconnected systems - Singleplayer, Co-op, PvP and User Generated Content - so we planned a fairly large amount of time for certification.
Unfortunately, even that wasn't enough.
Current Certification Status
PlayStation 5
Singleplayer - Certified
Co-op - Certified
PvP - Blocked / Resubmitted
UGC - Blocked / Resubmitted
Xbox
Singleplayer - Certified
Co-op - In Certification
PvP - In Certification
UGC - Certified
The biggest challenge right now is PlayStation certification.
We are repeatedly receiving changing or contradictory requirements regarding how certain platform-specific features need to be implemented, while the available documentation often doesn't give us enough information to anticipate those requirements.
One example is the user-blocking system for UGC.
During the first two submissions, our implementation was considered insufficient and we were asked to make changes. We made those changes - only for a later submission to consider an implementation much closer to our original version acceptable again.
You can probably imagine how frustrating this is.
It means we sometimes spend development time changing a system specifically for certification, only to later undo or restructure those changes again. As a very small team, we simply can't absorb that kind of additional work without it affecting our schedule.
Why this also affects the Early Access version
Getting the UGC system approved on consoles is extremely important before we release it publicly in Early Access.
The certification process can still require changes to the underlying data structures, file handling or backend communication. We want those systems finalized before you start spending hours creating your own missions.
Otherwise, we risk a certification-required change making existing community missions incompatible.
We don't want that.
We would rather delay the public release of the UGC tools until the underlying structure is stable than risk wasting the work you put into your missions.
Development continues
Certification doesn't mean development has stopped.
We are actively working on the next major content update, including:
Additional PvP modes
New weapons
Improvements to existing systems
General gameplay and quality-of-life improvements
There is a lot happening behind the scenes even if there haven't been many visible updates recently.
We know that silence during Early Access can be frustrating, so we wanted to openly share where things currently stand and why development has slowed down in some areas.
Thank you for sticking with us, testing the game, reporting issues and giving us feedback.
We'll keep pushing through certification and continue building Beyond Enemy Lines – Vietnam.