The biggest problems plaguing Forza Horizon 5 since launch have been server issues crippling multiplayer and a general lack of stability leading to crashes (the game error kind, not car crashes) across both console and PC, but both of these issues should be shored up thanks to a new update.
While you can play Forza Horizon 5 as a singleplayer outing it’s built around many multiplayer components which have been barely functional leading to a lot of frustrating players. In our experience the worst offender was Horizon Arcade, a casual group co-op mode that’s important for the Forzathon Shop – where many desirable items can be bought with special points – as well as countless other facets of the game.
According to the patch notes the Horizon Arcade and many other systems have been fixed.
Multiplayer
- Improved stability of Horizon Life connections
- Improvements to online traffic
- Fixed issue where player’s car would get stopped when losing connection to Horizon Life
- Disabled Convoy voice chat to help track down the long load times in Online events
- Improvements to Horizon Arcade for other player visibility and joining and leaving Arcade events
- Fixed Eliminator Head to Heads not ending when players reached the finish point
On the stability side of things Forza Horizon 5 had a nasty habit of simply crashing with no rhyme or reason. In the middle of a race, roaming the open world or simply on the start screen the game would decide to die at any moment.
We also experienced this first hand with a sudden crash in free roam the other day followed by PC instability and hard crashes on startup. On PC restart later, and after waiting a few hours, things finally returned to normal.
Game Stability
- Fixed several crashes
- Fixed a potential crash that could happen if an emote was earned whilst offline
- Fixed a potential crash that can happen when starting a Horizon Arcade
- Fixed a potential crash that occurred when spawning traffic cars
- Fixed a crash when loading EventLab events
- Fixed a crash when upgrading cars
The last part of this patch that deserves some discussion is around exploits. Despite how new this game is many people have found several ways to manipulate the economy of the game.
This isn’t some nefarious hacking situation, just some smart players finding holes in how the game works. The most popular exploit was mass purchasing a certain Jeep that allowed for the risk free farming of Super Wheelspins, the highest kind of reward in the game.
This has been fixed along with several other ways to cheese the system.
Exploits
- Updated the Car Masteries for various cars to address an exploit
- Removed an exploit that could be achieved when creating Challenge Cards
- Removed an exploit when creating specific route configurations in EventLab
- Fixed an issue which allowed players to purchase cars from the Car Collection screen which weren’t available in the Autoshow
- Added checks to stop an exploit with driving assists
- Stopped players being able to download tunes before a race starts
The full patch notes, available here, outline the rest of the updates.
These multiplayer and technical issues are a stain on an otherwise amazing racing game. You can read our launch review here to see why it’s one of the best games of the year.
Forza Horizon 5 is available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC. It can be bought from the Microsoft Store and Steam, but it’s also available for no extra purchase through Xbox Game Pass.
