Gears of War: E-Day is preparing to roll into its second beta testing weekend and, ahead of its kickoff, the team has announced a list of improvements and changes that have already been made in response to the early access beta feedback.
Gears of War: E-Day Open Beta Updates
Gears of War: E-Day doesn’t release until October, but players are getting a chance to check out the multiplayer component of the game early and provide The Coalition with some valuable feedback.
Last weekend offered an Early Access beta for gamers who have pre-ordered the title or who have select tiers of the Xbox Game Pass subscription, but this weekend kicks off the full open beta for all gamers who want to participate.
During the few days between the two beta periods, the development team has quickly responded to feedback and made a long list of tweaks to optimize the experience for this round of testing.
Here is the full list of updates that have been made between the first and second beta weekends:
- Prototype Lancer – Increased base damage and reduced perfect reload damage
- Hit Detection Delays – Improved hit detection delays players were experiencing in Horde Siege
- Anti-cheat protection – Improved anti-cheat protection and took enforcement action against verified cheaters
- Drone-Snub Error Code – Implemented mitigations for the drone-snub error code. As part of this change, we have updated our port requirement from UDP 443 to UDP 3074. If you continue to experience this issue, please ensure the required ports are open on your network. For more information, visit Xbox Live Network Ports
- Stability – Improved stability and reduced frequency of crashes across all platforms
- Connection Timeouts – Implemented mitigations to address connection timeout errors
- Matchmaking Improvements– Made further improvements to our Matchmaking system in Versus (Social & Ranked)
- Third-Party Controller Support – Improved an issue where some third-party controllers were not recognized upon game launch on Steam
- Account Linking – Improved issue where players were not able to link their Microsoft accounts
- Xbox Series S – Made further improvements to reduce hitching on Xbox Series S
As the open beta weekend plays out, it will be very interesting to see what additional feedback is gathered from this wider audience and what additional tweaks and updates the team will decide to make before the game officially releases early this fall.
Be sure to check back soon for lots more Gears of War: E-Day updates as the game’s launch window approaches.
Gears of War: E-Day releases on October 6, 2026 for PC and Xbox Series consoles.
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