Updates

Updates to Need for Speed: Unbound include both client-side and server-side alterations.

9.0.3

Update 9.0.3 was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on December 12, 2024.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where transmission parts were not swapped out after changing the equipped gearbox to an option with a lower amount of gears, so vehicles no longer have a higher amount of gears than intended.
• Fixed an issue where players could get stuck on 'Found Session' after attempting to find a game of Lockdown.
• Fixed an issue where players could get stuck in the backfilling sequence of Lockdown matchmaking while other members of their party enter into the game and play.
• Fixed an issue where players could receive a 'Matchmaking Failed' error message after attempting to find a game of Lockdown.
• Fixed a crash related to Lockdown matchmaking. Additional changes were made to improve the matchmaking experience.
• Fixed an issue where players could fail to enter Free Roam or Story Mode with the error 'Your inventory could not be loaded'.
• Fixed an issue where players could receive a 'Matchmaking Failed' error message after attempting to find a game of Lockdown with the Private Crew option selected.
• Fixed an issue where players could fail to load into Lockdown after receiving a 'No Contract Selected' error despite having Contracts selected.

9.0.2

Update 9.0.2 was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on December 3, 2024.

Highlighted Improvements and Fixes

Contract Usability and Display Improvements

• Automatically expand Contracts tab at the start of a round
• Ensure that local player is always at the bottom of the Squad List to improve display and updates for Contracts
• Enabled Contract notification updates in the HUD to allow for better tracking of Contract progress
• Fixed and improved multiple Contracts where descriptions were misleading and some notifications were not updating correctly
• Fixed Contracts Pop Up to differentiate progress between local player and contributed progress from Crew members, like Linkups
• Made Contract complete progress clearer in the Contracts selection menu
• Fixed multiple Racer X Challenges not tracking correctly

Map and Mini Map Improvements

• Fixed Lockup icon on mini map to ensure it has a backing
• Fixed Truck icon on mini map to stop it being semi transparent
• Made sure that rival players in Hot Rides are docked to the mini map and show with correct icon
• Made sure that server messages are using the correct iconography for rivals
• Fixed sizing of icons on Mini map to improve consistency and clarity. Rivals are no longer massive
• Most Wanted overlay is now highlighted for rival players on the mini map
• Improved look of the Lockdown zone on main map and mini map. Making it clearer when in the zone and imminent zone areas
• Rivals in Hot Rides are now discoverable and highlighted on the main map

Fixes and Improvements to In Session Routing and Notifications

• Fixed issues when routing to Truck would not update correctly from phone widget and would not display route to truck
• Fixed routing to players on bikes or Hot Rides not updating with live position
• Fixed routing to Truck from the map not updating with live position
• Fixed Truck Extraction notification not showing on the HUD when players exit from the map
• Fixed incorrect distances being displayed for party members routing to Extraction Truck
• Fixed a bug where the Critical Health state was skipped when being Wrecked or Busted, meaning players should now have more of a chance to get to a gas station before being eliminated
• Critical Health phone and routing to gas station messages and now displayed in Green to differentiate them from Truck notifications

Matchmaking Improvements

• Added kick for players who take too long to load into Lockdown sessions, keeping others queuing
• Handle backfilled party members becoming the new host correctly so they can continue on the backfill flow, which leads to stuck lobbies
• Extraction Session Lobby Improvements to allow more players into games and improve wait times loading into gameplay
• Stopped party members from being able to quit after party leader starts matchmaking, leading to bad things in matchmaking and players hanging in zombie lobbies

Other Notable Improvements and Fixes

• Ensure that the last player on a Crew now drops all their loot before being downed
• Ensure that loot items remain in the world during overtime period
• Improved loot dropping from downed players so it remains near their vehicle and not lost down the road
• Implemented VO cool down on Racer X at Lockups to stop that Ding Dong going chap chap chap, all the time!
• Added the Jacked and Impounded details to the Lockdown Garage to highlight and make the current status of vehicle clearer
• Fixed an issue where extracting the same Blacklist vehicle would keep the vehicle and not convert to cash. Causing bloat in vehicle inventory
• Added rewards message after races so players can see how much cash they earned
• Fixed Heat level 5 UI getting stuck after leaving the zone and escaping
• Fixed inconsistencies with Jacked vehicle tiers being displayed as Tier B late onto the round when they are in fact S and S+
• ESF has been updated to provide immunity against roadblock spike strips
• Fixed vehicle repaired messages when passing through gas stations
• Increased the rate of Extraction Truck spawns late into the session
• Fixed an issue in the Squad List that highlighted Crew members collecting cash and not the local player
• Increased cap on owned vehicles from 200 to 250 to help those players with issues because they don’t know their inventory is full. May result in slightly increased load times for players with very high inventory values.
• Added a fix to help recover inventory issues and not being able to play the game. Note this is one use case we finally were able to reproduce in the dev environment. We are truly sorry for players still getting errors, and we will keep trying to find solutions.
• Multiple crash fixes for clients and server

9.0.1

Volume 9, also referred to as update 9.0.1 and "Lockdown", is the ninth content update.

It was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on November 26, 2024 at 08:00 UTC / 01:00 PT / 09:00 CET.

8.0.1.1

Update 8.0.1.1 is a stability hotfix made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on September 3, 2024.

8.0.1

Volume 8, also referred to as update 8.0.1 and "Cops vs. Racers", is the eighth content update.

It was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on August 22, 2024 at 08:00 UTC / 01:00 PT / 09:00 CET.

7.1.0

Update 7.1.0 was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on June 13, 2024.

New Content

• Added HKS and KUMHO decals to the wrap editor
• Added "NFS Council" decals to the wrap editor

Quality of Life

Playlist Improvements

• Reduced the required players in a lobby to start a playlist from 2 to 1.
• Adding back removed playlists.

Drift Pro Improvements

• Fixed a bug in which Chaining bonuses were applied incorrectly and reduced the score awarded per chain
• Twin Drift now depends on BOTH players drifting, instead of just the scoring player

Drag Improvements

• Don't allow players who are on the starting grid of a drag race to manually reset on track so that they do not end up respawned in unideal positions
• Teleport players back to the starting grid after tire warmup if they have slid forward in some vehicles in Drag

League Improvements

• Fixed an issue with no progress shown in Frontend Garage
• Fixed an issue with the in-game HUD League-Progress showing 1st completed Racer instead of latest when next Rival is locked
• Fixed Drag-event rounds listings shown on Playlist card

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the Player Rank display in the banner and some other places for Ranks 201+
• The 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse is missing the additional default Criterion body kit, it will now be unlocked when purchasing the vehicle
• Fixed corruption on animated LED wheel LODs
• Origin Trail added - Original smoke with light trails
• Fixed incorrect perfect start values in regular street races
• Fixed the PS5 haptics issue
  • We had noticed some issues with PS5 haptics not being as powerful or working at all in some circumstances. Fixed now
• Skip track - Fixed skip track not functioning in events (D-Pad Right/Page-Up)
• PVP Drag - Half & Quarter mile playlist cards show only the reverse rounds (2,4,6)
• Fixed issue with objectives not appearing as completed when viewing the League tab from the lobby screen
• Fixed an issue with League 1v1 playlist only showing rounds 1 and 3 in the playlist card
• Fixed league banner showing car reward icon for racers that do not reward cars
• Fixed - Melissa's Custom Eclipse GSX '99 is missing Air Trails
• Fixed - Ford Mustang Dark Horse's spoiler is missing one Air Trail when the user equips one of the Big Country Labs Spoiler
• Fixed Speed Pass XP bar overflows when levelling up in return to garage Speed pass XP gained Screen
• Fixed - The Banner title "Hashiriya" and "Drift-Zoku" appear duplicated in the Banner titles menu, one locked and one unlocked after completing the required one shot challenges
• Fixed the camera position in Speed pass carousel being kept in the same place for the next previewed reward
• Fixed - User cannot scroll through playlist list in meetup after own invite expires and there is another active invite
• Fixed - Drift Pro & Drag Playlists - Finish line countdown timer SFX missing in drag events
• Fixed - Vol7 Playlist invite sticker appears and disappears for ongoing invite while scrolling through playlists in meetup
• Fixed - The underglows unlocked through Speed Pass are not visible to other players on the server
• Fixed - Available for playlist widget overlaps the Community Goal within the Leagues menu when opened via the Deploy/In-game Map
• Fixed - Challenges - "Hit 200mph/321kph in a Drag event" is displaying 0/0 before and after completion
• A number of additional stability, bug and quality issues

Known Issues

• PVP Doors not always taking you to the correct playlist

7.0.2

Update 7.0.2 was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on May 28, 2024.

Fixes

• Fixed some stability issues
• Fixed a bug where the player was sent to the wrong game mode lobby when selecting the Drift Pro Endurance tile in PVP.
• Fixed a bug where the map and other UI elements were missing after Vol. 7 Update.

7.0.1

Volume 7, also referred to as update 7.0.1 and "Drift and Drag", is the seventh content update.

It was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on May 21, 2024 at 08:00 UTC / 01:00 PT / 09:00 CET.

6.1.0

Update 6.1.0 was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on March 18, 2024.

“

Patch 6.1.0 is a small, “quality of life” update that addresses a few issues and improvements based on the feedback you’ve given us so far. Before we get into the details, we’ve also already deployed some changes to Dedicated PVP and Free Roam.

We received a lot of great feedback on our new dedicated PVP mode. We are thrilled that everyone is enjoying it so much, but we know it can always be better. We heard that the most dedicated of you want some adjustments and changes. While we aren't able to deploy a major update right now, we have introduced some changes in line with that feedback. So from now, you will notice that the playlist rotation will update daily. The featured playlists will still stay for a week so that everyone can get the chance to enjoy them, but the Tier playlists will now change daily between Tiers B, A, A+, S and S+. We also haven't forgotten about Free Roam, and we heard that the time between Linkups was still too long. So we have halved that time for you all.

With those changes made, we are now following up with this last update for Vol. 6 before we fully turn our focus to delivering Vol. 7 for you all.

”

— Team Kaizen, Criterion Games

Key Fixes

• Allow players to go directly to MP Garage after leaving PVP
  • When leaving PVP, players will now be put straight back to the Multiplayer garage. So less steps and straight to where you want to be. We debated taking you straight back to the PVP screen, but we don’t know what you want to do. Maybe you want to work on your setup, or drop into Free Roam. We leave that choice up to you, but we removed the extra steps.
• All Nitrous auxiliary items stop working if the player changes vehicles during playlists or if they leave the server and rejoin
  • Fixed!
• Users are reporting extreme flickering present in-game
  • We've made some changes that should address this issue. Specifically, moved TileLighting and NFS-SSR passes to the cached depth buffer usage since all those passes are on the GPU async queue and there is a chance of inter-referencing. This also fixes a known problem on AMD Vega GPUs.
• Improve the Idle Kick for players not progressing - PVP specific change
  • Okay, so on the level... players finding loopholes in XP earning is all part of the game, but players hanging idle in PVP lobbies means fewer people competing and more roadblocks at the start/finish line. Players will now be warned if their mean velocity is under 1mph, and get an idle kick after 60 seconds if they don’t take action. Essentially if you ain’t racing in PVP, then you are outta here.

Other Fixes

• Fixed an issue where players could use their own vehicles in a playlist that should be loaner vehicles only
• Fixed an issue in Story Mode, where attempting to back away from the Speed Pass menu would send the user to the pause menu instead of the garage
• Fixed an issue where underglows unlocked through Speed Pass were not visible to other players on the server
• Fixed an issue where PVP lobby playlist tier would show as tier B instead of correct playlist tier
• Fixed an issue where users could navigate around menus when in Find Game menu
• Fixed a camera issue that would cause changes to the player’s camera when another car was close behind

6.0.1 (Volume 6: Head to Head)

Volume 6, also referred to as update 6.0.1 and "Head to Head", is the sixth content update.

It was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on February 27, 2024 at 08:00 UTC / 01:00 PT / 09:00 CET.

5.1.0

Update 5.1.0 was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on December 7, 2023 at 02:00 PT / 09:00 UTC / 10:00 CET.

“

Yo! So, I know we said the Volume 5 update was our final one for the year, and honestly, it is in terms of full updates. What’s this then you ask?! Merely a few much asked-for additions from the NFS Unbound community.

We're working in a slightly different way now, looking at improving Unbound by adding new features and enhancing existing ones. Going forward, we want to try out some things with you all and see what you think.

Want to help us? Then please give us feedback! Let us know what you think, what you want to see added,more of, or less of? and we will let you know what we are doing. You can expect to hear more from us in the new year. So for now, check out the updates below; see you on the streets!

”

— John Stanley, Creative Director

Added realistic driving effects tag - “Original”

“

‘Original’ driving effect, has now been added to the tags menu, bringing a more authentic and realistic feel to tire smoke.

We know that many people have requested this feature, but this version of smoke couldn’t possibly work like other tags whilst remaining realistic. Ultimately this is about you expressing what you want, realistic or stylistic. We feel it’s important you now have that choice!

Please note that equipping ‘Original’ smoke can impact the game experience. For example, you won’t get visual feedback on the vehicle for perfect starts or for signature boost earning as you will with other tags.

”

Added sorting for All My Rides

“

We have now added sort orders to the All My Rides screen in the garage for those of you committed to larger car collections. We salute all car collectors, and we hope this small improvement helps you to organize your collections.

We have further ideas on ways to make it clear which vehicles you already own on other screens, but we aren’t quite ready yet and really wanted to give you the ability to sort your vehicles first.

”

Added Open Playlists

“

Open Playlists have now been added to Freedrive. These are playlists that don’t come from other players. In the downtime between other freedrive events (linkups, boosted events), the server will send out invites to playlists.

Our hope is that you all find the action keeps rolling and playlists become fuller. We have more thoughts around this too, and hope to share soon.

”

5.0.2

Update 5.0.2 was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on October 25, 2023 at 02:00 PT / 09:00 UTC / 10:00 CET.

General Fixes & Improvements

• Fixed an issue where the user was not able to select the headlights in order to edit when using a keyboard on the BMW i8 Coupe
• Fixed an issue where the Porsche 911 Legendary Custom and SRT Viper (2014) vehicles were present in the campaign after completing the Prologue.
• Fixed an issue where Sprint and Circuit playlist scorecards are showing the wrong car tiers.
• Fixed an issue where the game freezes on PC during gameplay or various menus.
• The One Shot challenge "Escape a Heat 5 cop chase in a Porsche Taycan" can be now progressed in Campaign and Multiplayer.
• The One Shot challenge "Accumulate 200MI/322KM when being chased by cops" can now be progressed in Campaign and Multiplayer.
• The One Shot challenge "Get to 88mph in the DeLorean" can be now progressed in Campaign and Multiplayer.
• The One Shot challenge "Accumulate a 1-hour drift in the BMW M2" can be now progressed in Campaign and Multiplayer.
• The BMW M2 (2023) can be now unlocked in Campaign and Multiplayer.
• Fixed an issue where the new Boosted Events and Linkups rotation was not appearing as intended.

5.0 (Volume 5)

Volume 5, also referred to as update 5.0, is the fifth content update.

It was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on October 12, 2023 at 09:00 UTC / 02:00 PT / 10:00 CET.

4.0 (Volume 4)

Volume 4, also referred to as update 4.0, is the fourth content update.

It was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on August 16, 2023 at 09:00 UTC / 02:00 PT / 10:00 CET.

3.0 (Volume 3)

Volume 3, also referred to as update 3.0, is the third content update.

It was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on June 20, 2023 at 09:00 UTC / 02:00 PT / 10:00 CET.

2.0 (Volume 2)

Volume 2, also referred to as update 2.0, is the second content update.

It was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on March 21, 2023 at 09:00 UTC / 02:00 PT / 10:00 CET.

1.1.4

Update 1.1.4 was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on January 24, 2023 at 02:00 PT / 09:00 UTC / 10:00 CET.

Balancing

Golf GTI (1976)

• Rebalanced the Volkswagen Golf GTI (1976) to reduce its acceleration in high gears.
• Fixed an issue with the Volkswagen Golf GTI (1976) that caused its gearbox options to not affect its top speed, as expected.

Koenigsegg Regera

• Reduced the top-end acceleration of the Koenigsegg Regera and adjusted its cornering ability.

VOIP

• Improved the quality of VOIP for our PS5 players.

Save Game Error/Progress Reset

• Added a warning message when the game fails to autosave correctly to reduce potential of lost progress.

PC Min Specs Warning

• Added a warning message when the game detects a below min spec configuration.

Stability Improvements

• Multiple stability improvements to reduce the potential for game crashes

1.1.3

Update 1.1.3 was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on December 12, 2022 at 09:00 UTC / 02:00 PT / 10:00 CET.

Fixes

• A small update to address stability issues regarding crashing across all platforms and to resolve some bugs with entitlements.

1.1.2 (Volume 1)

Volume 1, also referred to as update 1.1.2, is the first content update.

It was made available for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S releases on November 29, 2022 at 09:00 UTC / 02:00 PT / 10:00 CET.