Re: (PC) Unable to load game since yesterday, or maybe Tuesday
@i0nviz That's good, Have you tried using a VPN to see if you would be able to connect to the game ?
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- @GlobalShock apparently this helps, but playing with a high ping is disgusting
- @AverageApexEnjug I agree, try to find the nearest server to your country on the VPN you are using to get the lowest ping possible.
I have tried different DNS, and even tethering to my cell phone with a different provider than my internet but the issue persists.
@i0nviz wrote:I have tried different DNS, and even tethering to my cell phone with a different provider than my internet but the issue persists.
Switching to a different DNS or using a mobile connection is unlikely to resolve the issue, as many countries have internet and phone internet services provided by the same provider with the same IP pool.
You can try using Windscribe VPN to see if it helps. It's free, all you need to do is create an account, verify it, then log in, connect to the nearest server close to your country, and load Apex.
Let me know if this resolves the issue for you, as it has been a solution for a few people experiencing similar issues.
Why Windscribe VPN? Because it offers IKEv2/Wireguard Protocol, which can be very helpful in diagnosing internet problems like these.
My ISP and my cell phone provider are 2 very different companies. They connect to other carriers through different backbone providers (Telia and Cogent in this case). The network path is very different.
Different DNS might change some results if some data is cached for a long time. I usually use my own DNS but I have a filter on it for some hosts, so I tried my ISP's my cell's company, Google's and Cloudflare's DNS servers which seem to all resolve hosts to the same IPs so caching was not the issue.
I won't be using the VPN but thanks for the suggestion.
Well well well !! I was finally able to "solve" (sort of) the issue !!! I am unsure if it is on my end, or on EA's end though. But I have a very very interesting lead. I've done a Wireshark trace and noticed some funny TLS handshake errors (many many tls handshake warning close notify).
The issue is (I think) tied to an expired TLS certificate somewhere in between EA and my computer (and other computers in the household, and other people online as well). My computer has the latest Windows updates (Win11), as well as my daughter's (Win10) but we are both unable to play with the exact same symptom.
To test my theory, I've set the date back 1 month (March 3rd) on my computer. Loaded t he game, bam. it worked !! Then I've set the date back to today (April 3rd) and restarted the game ... it won't load : infinite spinning circle again. I've tried setting my date back one day at a time, and the first date that the game fails to load is March 25. If I set my computer back to March 24, the game loads and I can play online.Once the game is loaded, I can set the date back to today, and I can play just fine. It is only a check during inital loading.So. EA, can you please fix your certificate issue, or please tell us which certificates are required on our computers to make the game load properly?
TLDR: the issue is most likely an expired/revoked TLS certificate issue. Set your PC date back to a date BEFORE March 25 2024 and it will connect.
Here are 2 Wireshark screenshots showing what I have found.
I have masked a part of the data.ea.com FQDN as I am unsure if this is user specific or not. I am only highlighting a single server, but the behavior is the same for other EA servers that the game tries to contact when it fails.
Hopefully this finds the right person at EA in order to really fix the issue.
This one here shows the game failing to contact the EA server properly. You can see the Alert Close Notify on the TLS handshake
And here is how the traffic is smoothly flowing between my computer and EA's server when the date is rolled back to March 4. See how there is "Application Data" packets. These packets are not there when the date is today.
Great so i am officially not alone !
this solution only worked for a short term i tried changing the date again but it is not solved. What seems weird about this issue is that I'm having a similar issue in PUBG as well as it doesn't let me get into a game saying connection timeout. Im not sure if these 2 issues are related though..
Yeah I've found out yesterday that you need yo keep the old date during the whole gaming session, or else it will break randomly during a game (or after a game).
I was able to play for 5 hours straight yesterday without any issue using a rolled back date.
Update: I was going through yt trying to find a solution, there were tutorials for the fix on ps5 by changing the language to uk eng, so I changed my pc language to uk eng and it seems to be working, I was able to get into the game I tested if the error appears again but it hasn't yet for me
This doesn’t work for me. my game still crashes without an error log not to long after i opened the game
@EA_Barryis the information in this post useful to the EA team ? I mean, The problem has been going on for 17 days. It would be great if someone from EA acknowledged something.
I have not been able to complete the Maggie challenges because my game has been broken for most part of her challenges being available so I won't be able to get the reward skin for completing all 6 character unlocks ...
Thanks
