Gears of War: E-Day Day-One Patch Squashes the Bilefrog-Kalona Error

The Coalition has released the first patch for Gears of War: E-Day, timed for the game's worldwide launch on PC and Xbox Series X|S today, October 6. The update follows feedback from early access players and mostly targets stability and performance across the campaign, Versus and Horde Siege.

The headline fix has the best name. The "Bilefrog-Kalona" error is a nod to the giant subterranean Locust frogs that spit stomach acid at you throughout the game. In practice, it hits split-screen multiplayer. If the console or PC is suspended, a split-screen player can be signed out of online services automatically. Trying to rejoin through Quick Resume then triggers the error. The patch addresses it. The Coalition has given several of its network errors Gears-themed names.

Online play gets other fixes too. Some Versus Social matches were stuck on the "Waiting for players" screen, and that is now addressed. Xbox authentication handling has been improved for cases where a system clock is far from the correct time. The update also tightens online-session stability when accessing session information.

The campaign gets a long list of tweaks. Players who joined an existing campaign could receive War Journal progress and Forge rewards earned before they arrived. Some join-in-progress players were also missing expected Forge Discovery progress. Players could stay stuck to turrets when a cinematic or gameplay moment began. Several Act 2 and Act 4 objectives are fixed as well. Examples include an objective failing to update in Allfather's Plaza, a Heavy Gear appearing without a Vulcan in the Black Raven Down side objective, and the Power Station defense not completing after all visible enemies were defeated.

In Horde Siege, certain Siege Blitz Secure objectives could not be completed, and the extraction helicopter could fail to show up during a Downtown West Blitz mission. Both are patched. In Versus, a Demolition bomb could get stuck in a defusing state if a player was eliminated as they began to defuse. That is fixed. In the UI, the Online Diagnostic text has been resized, and one cause of repeated attempts to claim the same Challenge Mail reward has been dealt with.

The timing matters because a wave of Game Pass subscribers is expected to arrive on Kalona today. GameSpot's campaign review was lukewarm on the story and the fairly dull open areas. Richard Wakeling called it "a good game, propped up by combat that hasn't changed all that much over the past 20 years," and said he wished the series would dig deeper. Still, the game is a gorgeous, loud, cover-based shooter on PC and Xbox Series X|S for anyone who wants exactly that.