Civ 6 stuck on retrieving host information glitch: How to fix it if you encounter this error

It’s been four years since the original release of Civilisation VI on PC, and in 2020 there’s still a huge audience who are playing the game and its subsequent expansions.

With four expansions and a ‘New Frontier’ season pass promising content packs until March next year, there’s plenty to keep you busy in Civilisation VI.

However, there has been an issue which has been ongoing for the majority of 2020, where someone attempts to join a multiplayer game and are shown the message ‘Retrieving host information’.

With that, here’s how to fix the issue for now until 2K Games releases an official patch.

What is the Glitch?

Civilisation VI is a game that’s been making waves with its multiplayer mode. Thanks to it being on so many devices, from PC to iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch, multiplayer has been a fun time regardless of where you’ve been playing it.

However, having a ‘retrieving host information’ message that hangs, regardless of which system you were playing, could frustrate you to the point that you would simply switch off and play something else.

Even if the issue has been going since May of this year, there’s still tweets to the team of some having the same issue as recent as this week, as this tweet shows.

But it looks like there could be a temporary fix for now, until 2K Games finds the issue for all systems that have Civilisation VI available.

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How to Fix

If you have the game on the ‘Epic Games Store’, right click on the game, and select ‘Verify’. This first point of call should rejig the files installed on your PC, and then help it connect to available multiplayer servers.

Another method will be to check the ‘Windows Firewall’ settings; this isn’t the best in dealing with incoming and outgoing connections for multiplayer games, and the wrong settings can confuse an online game. Make sure to go to ‘Windows Firewall’ in ‘Control Panel’ to allow ‘Epic Games Store’ and ‘Civilisation VI’.

It looks like multiplayer games are only seeing this specific issue on PC, as Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One devices are connecting with no issues.

As 2K Games have been saying on their official twitter to customers; submit a help ticket if the issue is ongoing if the above solutions still don’t solve it.

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