Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Stateside, we have had our fair share of problems with Hellgate: London. It started with a really ugly looking EULA. Then we had the rather confusing, non-ending demo and the compatibility issues with virtual drives. Finally we had some middle of the road reviews to compound the issue further. So when you figure you have pretty much had all the bad news you can take, you figure it can’t get any worse. Of course that is when it gets much worse.

And so Asian players basically got the shaft from Hellgate: London this weekend. Apparently, there is a patch that has been created for the Asian version of the game. And it is suppose to make the game so much more stable. Just one minor problem. The patch will not apply to the game if there is player data located on the game servers. So anyone can deduce what that means…a data wipe. Yep, after investing a few weeks into the game, you get to lose your character and start all over again.

via Kotaku

The biggest thing that irritates me with this is that the company that is distributing the game thinks that an extra month of subscription service for free will make up for the fact that I have to re-level my character again. Something that you would think would have been caught earlier in the release cycle. Is QA testing getting that bad at some of these companies. I get the fact that a game can’t be perfect, but you think someone would have realized within a few days that the data would have to be wiped to get this patch right.

Oh well, just another game that is in need of major patching right after release. I guess it could of pulled a stunt like The Witcher which decided to have a huge patch waiting the day the game was released. Couldn’t just take it back to the drawing board again for a few more weeks to add the last bug fixes. Instead, use my bandwidth to fix the game.

Anyway, I hope that Flagship finds a better way to compensate these players for their lost time that they have invested into their characters and the game as a whole. They definitely deserve more than an extra free month to a subscription service. Especially if they have no intention of keeping the service.