Posting on the official forums (via PCGamesN ), Ubisoft community manager Henrik "Vextor" Johansson revealed Far Cry 3's multiplayer "does not support dedicated servers."
"Of course, we aren't trying to kill the PC community," Johansson added to the rapidly ballooning thread. "We've simply decided on a different way of handling multiplayer. We weighed the different options against each other to see what worked best, and what we came up with worked very well even without dedicated servers."
Far Cry 3's multiplayer employs a matchmaking system akin to Call of Duty's peer-hosted sessions. While the debate between dedicated hosting and player-driven matchmaking remains firmly embedded in subjective interpretation, clear differences exist—a server, for example, eliminates tricky latency issues by being hosted at fixed locations for local players to enjoy stronger connections.
Johansson also stated piracy didn't prompt the decision because both methods run the risk of pirate intrusion, saying, "A dedicated server could be hacked to run without the help of the 'master servers.' A matchmaking system could be emulated, and then the clients would have to be patched in order to contact the pirated servers instead of the original ones. Each one of those presents their own challenges."
Far Cry 3 emerges from the brush on December 4 in the US and November 30 in the UK.
