'Titanfall 2' Northstar mod appears to solve game's server problems

For some reason, Respawn Entertainment has become a bit infamous among gamers for rampant server issues across all its titles. DDoS attacks and hackers have plagued Titanfall 1 and Titanfall 2. And Respawn’s battle royale shooter Apex Legends is no stranger to crashing servers, either. Apex players have struggled with unplayable servers at the start of new seasons as well as suffered from DDoS attacks in high-ranked games.

As TF1 and TF2 players begged Respawn for help, some maliciously chose to attack Apex out of spite. Others began troubleshooting TF2’s server problems — and one “Northstar” mod appears to offer a solution to the game’s persistent pain points in the form of custom, player-hosted servers.

In recent weeks, the Northstar mod for Titanfall 2 was released for PC players, promising an end to TF2 DDoS attacks and matchmaking lag. The mod works by hosting custom servers that are not connected to Respawn’s official servers, so DDoS attackers can’t find them (easily).

As gamer Save_Titanfall explains on Twitter, “Private games not on the master server will be impossible to track down & crash” with the Northstar mod. DDoS attackers could still theoretically find the new servers, but they would have to track down players’ IP addresses first.

Player-hosted servers, also referred to as “dedicated servers,” can be hosted by players themselves or be rented out by players as a safer alternative to corrupted main servers. There appears to be a substantial demand for dedicated servers, as a quick Google search will show you numerous vendors offering server hosting — for a fee.

It’s unclear whether the Northstar mod will “save Titanfall,” but it could certainly provide some relief to frustrated PC players.