Batman: Arkham City Xbox 360 disappearing save files

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 14 November, 2011

Warner calls on gamers to help resolve issue.

Warner Bros. has called on Xbox 360 gamers to help it combat a disappearing save files issue with Batman: Arkham City.

A number of gamers have found their save files mysteriously absent when playing the game, and have taken the Arkham City's forum to complain.

"We greatly appreciate and value you as a customer and apologise for any inconvenience if you have encountered any technical problems which might have impacted your experience with the game," US community manager Andy Cataldo wrote.

"We would very much like to fix the 'disappearing save files' issue some consumers have been reporting with the Xbox 360 version of the game as quickly as possible. Thus far our QA department has been unable to reproduce this issue."

Publisher Warner called on affected players to provide it with detailed information. Its QA team wants to know:

  • What version of the XBOX 360 hardware are you are experiencing the "disappearing save files" issue on?
  • What storage method are you using to save your Batman: Arkham City game files to (i.e. XBOX 360 hard drive, XBOX 360 memory unit, USB drive)?
  • What version of the XBOX 360 system software do you have on your machine?
  • Are you running a Beta version of the forthcoming XBOX 360 "Holiday 2011" system update?
  • Have you experienced the "disappearing save files" issue before and/or after installing any Batman: Arkham City DLC content (If yes, please be specific as to the DLC content you have downloaded)?
  • Have you experienced the "disappearing save files" issue before and/or after installing either of Batman: Arkham City's two title updates?

If you've experienced the problem, shoot Warner QA an email - support@wbgames.com.

"Hopefully, the information you provide will result in a more specific pattern to emerge which will let us consistently reproduce the 'disappearing save files' issue and ultimately get a fix in place," Cataldo added.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (28) Latest comment 7 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • AcidSnake #1 7 months ago

    "For all you hold dear in progression here
    The drive isn't that hard and they shall disappear!"

    It's just a meta joke the Riddler's playing to introduce the Xbox cloud saves...

  • Murbal #2 7 months ago

    I'm backing up every time I play this at the mo. Much as I'm loving the game there's no way I'd want to start again if I lost everything.

  • The-Builder #3 7 months ago

    Again? Bring the cloud online already to stop save files getting lost or corrupted! Halfway through Batman:AA my savefile got corrupted, and i had to start all over. Opted to wait for the PC version and get the better experience with no save game corruption. But still... That was 6-8 hours of work gone.

  • Sodding_Gamer #4 7 months ago

    It happened to me at about 15% through. Was so gutted. But I held up and restarted it. Excellent game. However I don't think mine corrupted. It completely wiped itself from existence. I've had saves corrupt before and I've managed to uncorrupt them by sticking my HDD into my pc and using a bit of technical wizardry, but went to try it for Batman and the save was nowhere to be found!!

  • schnide #5 7 months ago

    @llaa988

    Seriously? This still exists after the relaunch?

  • telboy007 #6 7 months ago

    @schnide How else are we going to get Ugg boots for $50? :D

  • Zizou97 #7 7 months ago

    This mystery just smells of the riddler... There might be a side quest where you have to retrieve your save file somewhere in Arkham City.

  • speedjack #8 7 months ago

    This happened to me too with Arkam Asylum on the 360.

    I saved just prior to the final fight with Joker and on returning found my save was corrupted. I actually went to the bother of registerinbg at Eidos's forums only to find loads of other people had the same issue...

    http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=94218

    ...and to this day its not been fixed.

  • bad09 #9 7 months ago

    Seeing how Warner and Rocksteady whored the game it's DLC I bet, pay to get your saves back. ;)

  • whatfruit #10 7 months ago

    I was having problems but after I installed the game to the harddrive it has been fine. (touch wood)

  • jabberwocky #11 7 months ago

    @telboy007.
    That just for the one, a pair will cost $100.

    Very strange practise to be selling just the one though.

  • jabberwocky #12 7 months ago

    Also are these people who've lost save files been tampering with the internal clock to gimp the Calendar Man achievement?

  • kinky_mong #13 7 months ago

    I'd hate if this happened to my 100% save file. Doesn't really add anything to the discussion, I just wanted to show off!

  • Biker_Bob_1971 #14 7 months ago

    Post deleted at 16:59:10 06-02-2012

  • gandhimaster #15 7 months ago

    Of all the fuck ups in this console cycle, disappearing/corrupt save files is by far the worst.

    For me, thats completely inexcusable considering all the QA stuff that should be going on. Whilst i have no doubt its extremely difficult to make a game, things like this need to be sorted out as soon as possible, especially as some save files are blocked from being copied so you can't even backup some of them.

  • GamesConnoisseur #16 7 months ago

    BikerBob, I would say that none of the platform is safe from Q/A problems of letting serious bugs go by into releases of the games.

    Black Ops with PS3 and Skyrim textures also supposedly in PS3 too according to Lens of Truth, PC platform also famously riddled with drivers issues dur to great variety of hardware stuff.

    Though I do support the principle of buying the version that are affected the least be it PS3, X360 or PC, as we all deserves the right to play to full without game breaking stuff ruining the purchases.

    Batman AC among my top five game of the year and was fortunate not to encounter game save issue on X360.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #17 7 months ago

    Too many bugs in all of the AAA titles lately can't be good for the industry.

    Sadly, noone cares really. There might be a small number of gamers not buying games at launch anymore (myself included) but overall I don't think it is affecting sales all that much. The really worrying aspect is that some gamers don't care at all anymore. I remember a comment from the Skyrim thread that went a bit like this: "I don't care about graphics as long as the game plays". Somehow I feel that with certain releases gamers are already happy if the game is "basically working". Bethesda is a fantastic example because Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim etc. were all buggy as hell at release yet they still sell like crazy.

    I'm not saying people are not allowed to enjoy the game even with inferior graphics but I think that we are already past the point where bugs really matter. This is probably the reason why we see even more critical bugs these days than two years ago. At least back then bugs were only limited to DLC not working out of the box. These days not even the boxed copy works out of the box. QA is getting worse.

    Basically the industry has had serious bugs in big releases for a couple of years now and yet sales are constantly going up. If bugs did matter they would go down, especially for developers who always end up having quite serious bugs in their games.

  • Biker_Bob_1971 #18 7 months ago

    Post deleted at 16:59:10 06-02-2012

  • Der_tolle_Emil #19 7 months ago

    @Biker_Bob_1971: You are right, day 1 patches pretty much mean that the games are finalized and are getting pressed on disc while QA is still running. Patches are a good thing. As you say it rarely happens with Nintendo games but when it does (see the Metroid: Other M bug) you might need to send in a SD card with your save game on it so Nintendo can fix it. Not an ideal solution either.

    However these days developers are indeed relying way too much on being able to patch things at a later date. I wouldn't ditch patches completely, there will always be bugs that will get through QA but when you read about some of the bugs today's games have it sounds like they never even tried to play the game on a retail box. I'm sure that the Skyrim texture bug would have been caught that way, the same goes for the recent Fifa 12 patch which crashed the entire game. The worst thing is that the game crashed on both the 360 and the PS3 - this is clearly faulty code that should have never been released. You cannot even cite technical difficulties with certain hardware configurations. They missed their deadline, decided to screw the whole thing and patch it a few days later so that they can keep their initial release date.

    We will always have bugs in software, there is nothing we can do about it. It's just that in recent months the bugs in games are so obvious and widespread that they should have been caught during QA. And not just that - they are getting more and more severe as well.
    Edited by Der_tolle_Emil at 14/11/11 @ 15:49

  • space_ace #20 7 months ago

    Nasty joke. Save this, Batman! :)

  • Murton #21 7 months ago

    "We will always have bugs in software, there is nothing we can do about it. It's just that in recent months the bugs in games are so obvious and widespread that they should have been caught during QA. And not just that - they are getting more and more severe as well."

    Don't think it's fair to blame QA. As a former tester myself I can say with absolute confidence that if you've encountered a bug in a released game the QA department both found and reported it, likely multiple times. But just as when players find bugs, it's up to the devs to listen to the QA guys and then actually fix those bugs. What we're seeing here isn't a lack of QA but a lack of communication with QA from the developers.

    Though in the case of Skyrim I do believe that the texture bugs would have been spotted almost instantly if A: 360 games were tested in more detail with retail consoles rater than emulation and test kits and B: Bethesda didn't spend the time waiting for cetification approval running a silly speed run competition.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #22 7 months ago

    @Murton: I meant the entire QA process at a developer. I guess you are right that many bugs are indeed spotted but ignored. For me that's still part of QA, even if the testing staff caught the bug. It management decides not to fix them it's still bad QA if you ask me. But you are right, testers are hardly the ones to blame, I do have a bit of experience with QA myself but on the other end (doing code).

  • Darren #23 7 months ago

    I have an 8 GB stick specifically for backing up all my major Xbox 360 games onto as it is the sensible thing to do if you value your game progress. You never know when your hard drive might fail or, like here, a save game may corrupt.

  • Drygore #24 7 months ago

    @Darren
    That's the nice thing with PS Plus on the PS3. I have my PS3 set to automatically start at 4:00 am to download patches, install demos and games, upload saves to the cloud, and other stuff. Then it shuts down when it's done, or at 6:00 am. Love it.

    Would have ofc been awesome in a case like this.

  • azic #25 7 months ago

    Just incase you don't know..
    Those ugg boots for $50.00 come because some poor dog, is beaten and then skinned alive, then left to die in agony for hours!

    Really hope the makers of those boots get a nasty death inducing decease.

  • Phantom_Dynamite #26 7 months ago

    "Holy disappearing save files, Batman"

    /Robin

  • Murton #27 7 months ago

    @Der_tolle_Emil

    I see. I read your post as a general comment of QA =/= testing, I can see now that you consider both parts of the process as a single entity.

    I think I was rather fortunate in that our bug reports were taken seriously, this doesn't appear to be the case in many games, which is why we're seeing what we perceive as a decrease in technical quality.

    I remember during my brief stint in QA being asked to come to the studio for a couple of hours to help replicate some of the bugs I had reported on a dev kit and discuss it with the programmers and artists who would then go about fixing it. An approach that I am lead to understand doesn't get taken very often.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #28 7 months ago

    To be honest I am not sure how QA works in big studios. For me it's whatever is necessary to make sure that the game meets a certain quality. You have testers to find bugs, report them to someone who decides whether to fix them or not, then it goes back to the programmers and whole process repeats itself. There's a good chance that in reality it works totally different but as a consumer I don't really care why there is such a serious bug in the game and who screwed up, that's why I generalize the whole process as QA.