If you find the Paradise servers are not running on Tuesday mornings, that’s because we run routine maintenance on them every 2 weeks at that time.

We usually run some diagnostics to check the servers are working well and deploy updates to address issues like disconnects or VOIP problems and generally make improvements to the service.

We try to minimise the disruption to you guys as much as possible – this normally takes a few hours, but at the latest, the servers will be back up by mid afternoon.

We’ve just finished today’s maintenance, so expect this again on 15th April and keep an eye on the site for regular updates.

I wanted to share with everyone a great story about Burnout and one that you really wouldn't expect...

Recently in episode 22 of the Crash FM Podcast I read out a letter from a member of the Burnout playing community who let us know that he met his wife whilst playing Burnout 3: Takedown. I thought that I'd share the message that I received following us broadcasting this story.

Thank you very much.
Sent at: Tue Mar 11, 2008 11:36 pm
From: Kameo_Kid

Hello, Matt. You recently read my letter on episode 22 of the crash fm podcast. I'm Mark and I shared my story with the burnout team about how I met my wife playing Takedown. That day I burned the episode on to a CD and was playing it while doing chores. Then as you were doing sort of a lead up to my letter, I got an eerie feeling that it was going to be my letter read next. When I actually heard you guys read it, I was ecstatic. I couldn't believe it. Anyhow, after I heard it read I immediately woke my wife up who was sleeping in a bit and made her listen to it. We sat together and listened and it really felt good. For 2 days I just kept saying to my wife, "Wasn't that so awesome? I can't believe they read our letter". Thanks for sharing with the listeners out there. My wife and I are very proud of our relationship. We did make a lot of sacrifices to come together and it happened thanks to your game. From America to the UK. Here's a big cheers to you! Sincerely, M

This is a wonderful story and a great illustration that having a mechanism for the developers and players to communicate not only helps us make the game better, but to also share great experiences. We wish you both all the best wishes for the future and we're thrilled that we were able to at least help in some small way in bringing you both together.

The Burnout Team

We've deployed the server updates to address the scoring for disconnected players, it's now active!!

Previously we would score you as losing to all players in every round if you disconnected. The maximum points you could lose in 5 round game against 7 players all 35 levels below you was 3500 points.

We still wanted to discourage players from pulling the net chord if they were losing so there had to be a penalty.

What we decided is that there will be a 100 point standing charge for disconnecting / quitting from a race.

This 100 point penalty is the same for a single race or a series of races.

Remember that to receive ranking points from any completed races in a series you must still be connected at the end of the last race.

This feels a lot fairer as well as being clearer to understand. We'll continue to monitor performance over the course of the next few days and, as always, we're open to feedback. Let us know what you think.

Again, this is a part of our commitment to continue building on the success of Burnout Paradise, there's more to come!

-Matt

We mentioned in a previous podcast episode that we had been flying so I thought that I would share a picture of our building!


Check out our flickr page for more. -Matt

Welcome to the very first Criterion Blog post! This is a cool new way to allow us to get more people on the Burnout team updating the website with cool news, updates and fun information. I hope that you have read the news that v1.2 is coming, from the posts that I’ve seen on the forums it’s really encouraging to see the positivity that our efforts are generating. I know that I sound like a stuck record, but we’re taking this really seriously. We want to continue to evolve Burnout Paradise and I know that there is some cool stuff in the pipeline that will blow you all away, can’t wait to share it with you!

More later,
-Matt