A couple months ago, Evil Imp wrote an article for us about bugs that he had run into while playing video games, with a specific reference to DeathSpank's "Rudolph Bug". After some time working with Hothead Games, he wrote up a follow up for us. Here it is.
As some of you may remember, I wrote an article about issues in addressing bugs within games. Specifically, I made reference to the Rudolph bug in DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue. The issue has been on it’s course and has met it’s ultimate resolution through the developer, HotHead Games. First off, I would like to thank HotHead’s Hamish for being so available even while manually repairing the PS3 players broken saved game files. I feel he and HotHead had been as transpearent on what was going on as could be reasonably expected. Unfortunately for the Xbox 360 owners impacted by the bug, there will be no fix. This is due to the developer/publisher/XBL relationship and all the red tape that exists between them.
The bug is caused by a random long number generator in use for spawns where Rudolph’s number is assigned to something else that spawned in the game, and manifests itself as Rudolph pulling a no-show. After many emails between Hamish and myself, and more exposure than he probably ever wanted to my bipolar personality, HotHead Games is trying to make this right with the gamer community. There are understandably some string attached to this. First you have to be able to prove you purchased the game. This was done with me adding a friend on Xbox Live who could see I owned the game, by checking the achievements. Next, you need to show you were impacted by the bug. In my case I was missing only the 3 achievements after the Rudolph bug (A Tale of Two Endings, Mystic Transport, and Ruin Christmas). Lastly, the dates on the achievements stopping had to be before the announced date of no patch, 12/08/2010 due to common knowledge of the bug being made available on the web.
Obviously, the fact a fixable bug exists in a game but is not fixed for all due to the contracts in use within the industry does say something about the way business is run; the solution offered by HotHead is about the best one can really hope for. I can vouch for the time invested and frustration expressed by HotHead over this glitch. If you are like me and impacted by the bug, and bound by the console you play’s rules about modding a saved game file, HotHead really wants the chance to redeem themselves in your eyes. If you as a gamer impacted as I was and in the same situation I was and wish to contact HotHead, please contact hmillar at hotheadgames.com. Thank you HotHead Games for not just letting this one slip below the radar, and the PS3 resolution that will take up lots of your time (emailing in your saved game file to be manually repaired), and for the time trying to get a patch available. Thank you even more for not treating your player base as numbers and trying to make it right with all of us.
