Preface: I'm aware of this forum post, but that is totally different issue to mine.
 
I'm stuck valued GiantBomb users. I received Split/Second last Thursday but have not really had chance to play it much over the past week. Having pulled the game out on Sunday, I decided to go straight online for my first taste of the action. Hit Public Match, Race and the "Please Wait" screen started. Then it crashed -- the floating glass effect just froze and I couldn't access XMB. I rinsed and repeated several times but - nada. Crashed everytime.
 
I hit up Google. No one was having the same issue. I hit up Twitter. No one was having the same issue. Hmm. Ok.
 
So today I tried again. Same thing. I deleted the Game Data and reinstalled that. I then downloaded the 1.01 patch and tried again. Same thing! The single-player works absolutely fine - no crashing anywhere. It only crashes when I try to join a multiplayer game.
 
I don't really know what to do. This is the first time I've ever known something like this to happen. Usually when multiplayer is borked, it's borked for everyone and a patch fixes it. My issue seems totally isolated however. The disc is not scratched, though I've tried to clean it. Same problem.
 
How can it just not work for me? I don't really understand. A disc's a disc - it has the same code on it. I'm stuck, I bought it off Amazon. Should I send it back and get a replacement or what? Even then, I'm not sure it would resolve my issue with a new disc. I'm stuck!

No idea, already tried everything I can think of. Maybe just send it back, amazon have amazing customer surface,

Get a replacement disc.
 
And check to see if other PS3 games have similar issues occur when you try to play them. I had something like this occur to me and that was due to my replacement PS3 being broken.

Any news sammyb? Still no joy over here. 
Its an interesting theory that Hamz says to get a replacement disc. It was after split/second installed the game data that my old ps3's disc driver corrupted itself, now the same disc wont work on multiplayer on a new ps3 that runs single player fine. Or it could just be paranoia, either way, it seems me and split/second are in a love/hate relationship :\