Borderlands bug strips players of skills

By Oli Welsh Published 27 October, 2009

Online play at own risk.

1up reports that Borderlands players are encountering a rather serious bug that resets their character's skills to zero when they try the game online.

According to posts on the Borderlands forum, skill points and weapon proficiencies are sometimes lost when you join or leave an online play session, and players have no option but to start from scratch with a new character. The problem has been experienced across 360 and PS3.

"We're working on it. Unfortunately there isn't a fix just yet, but when one is available we hope to be able to repair as much of your character data as possible," a Gearbox rep replied to one unlucky player.

Gearbox says the frequency of the bug is "very low" in its known issues list, but it's serious enough that we thought it worth bringing to your attention. You might want to think twice before going online with the game if you don't want to lose progress.

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About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (26) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Korpers #1 2 years ago

    Nasty.

  • ZuluHero #2 2 years ago

    so... i get a free skill point reset? :)

    EDIT: Oh wait - start again?? :S

    EDIT EDIT: Why'd i get neg rep? :(
    Edited by 2 at 27/10/09 @ 15:55

  • RedSparrows #3 2 years ago

    Thankfully not had this yet.

    Borderlands has a few bugs here and there. Hope a patch comes soon, esp. for PC/PS3 owners, who seem to be having some more trouble.

  • JahB #4 2 years ago

    has anybody had this yet? i've been playing quite a bit of borderlands (on- and offline), but no problems so far.

  • Lord_Gremlin #5 2 years ago

    Not buying this game, until next year at least.

  • smernicki #6 2 years ago

    way to jinx yourself JahB ;-)

  • mungolikebeans #7 2 years ago

    The framerate drops dramatically for the first 30 secs or so when entering a new area....annoying when you've got 7 skags nipping at your heels!!! (ps3)

  • groovychainsaw #8 2 years ago

    Texture streaming on load IS pretty slow - thinking about installing for swifter loading maybe? Anyone find any speed improvements?

  • kinky_mong #9 2 years ago

    Is this one of those "bugs" that is completely avoidable if you exit out of the game properly rather than switching off in the middle of a save?

  • Stegofreak #10 2 years ago

    There also seems to be a bug that stops the second player from recieving quest reward upgrades. One of my characters missed out on unlocking their third weapon slot because they were being controlled by a mate of mine in splitscreen. Really annoying.

  • JahB #11 2 years ago

    damn you smernicki!

  • TeaFiend #12 2 years ago

    For a decent game it does have quiet a few bugs. Seen quite a few people saying trophies/achievements are not unlocking. Had this happen too :[

  • telboy007 #13 2 years ago

    @kinky_mong - you cynical person you! :)

  • mingster #14 2 years ago

    Its also well buggy on the PC.
    Beware it crashes a lot.

  • Restart #15 2 years ago

    I'd imagine this is down to people not exiting the game properly more than anything else.

  • Vice.Destroyer #16 2 years ago

    Hm, this bug sounds very familiar. Which other open-world, apocalyptic gameworld game also had a game-breaking bug? A bug that made me cry real tears after I had lost about 80 hours and couldn't get a certain Doctor Li to acknowledge me in the last level?

    This game sounds more like Fallout 3 with every passing day.
    *sniff*

  • Cider-X #17 2 years ago

    Haven't heard any complaints about this bug until now.
    Decent but flawed game indeed. Completed the xbox360 version last night and they clearly ran out of either time or money in the end... Also the framerate when playing 4 player co op is atrocious at times. They should try to fix these problems before talking up new DLC already.

  • HairyArse #18 2 years ago

    There's also a bug whereby when a player leaves a game you sometimes get the achievement for having level 10 proficiency with any weapon. Even when your highest level is only 7.

    Not that I'm complaining....

  • davisorle #19 2 years ago

    @ZuluHero
    You arent gonna get anything out of possitive rating so why care why kiddos minusrate your comment? You will only end up commenting differently to avoid it which wont be your honest opinion and words and makes it worthless. And why the rating system in here sucks. Its not a popularity contest for retards in here :) Let them rate -100. Why care?

    My impressions are brief cause i only played about 10-20 mins. That far it looked and felt as a pleasant game which I didnt expect to grab so much my interest. I had to go out though so.. I let it go. Ill get back to it in a few so I guess ill stick to campain till they patch it up... Sucks to get such a bug and reroll chars for it.

  • harzo #20 2 years ago

    Fantastic game! The biggest bug so far I have seen is on the boss where you go to get the mine key (??), I just stood and continually snipered him in the face till he died... weird! I think I'd have got mauled anyways so I was kinda glad lol

  • Murton #21 2 years ago

    Not played this one online yet and until someone on my friendslist gets it I doubt I would anyway.

    Aside from a slow loading of the game environment following map transitions Borderlands has been one of the most positive gaming experiences I've had in a while (PS3 is severely underserved by developers just lazily porting their 360 code without optimisation) Not only is it much more stable than the game everyone tries to compare it to, Failout 3, but it also has better FPS mechanics and more indepth RPG mechanics so it's pretty much top of the FPS/RPG hybrids and best post-apocalypse game currently on the market.

  • Discalceaterabbit #22 2 years ago

    Its started. As consoles become more and more networked, so the stability of the games will decrease until, like their PC bretherin before them, games are released in woefully buggy, unfinished states with the promises of various patches and fixes at some point down the line.
    Whether magazines and review sites start to highlight such shoddy worksmanship, or just sweep it under the carpet (cought EMPIRE Cough)as they have done with PC games remains to be seen.

  • DaftVice #23 2 years ago

    On the PS3 version can we just copy the save to another profile as a backup? Would that work?

  • GamesConnoisseur #24 2 years ago

    Playing on X360 version, loadings between map also a bit long but no frame rates prob and only did 2 players online co op and no serious problem so far. Game is indeed one of most fun I had, had a bug where I got seriously stuck between scenery and restarted to previous checkpoint once when npc supposed to open door but never did!

    So far nothing so bad and hoping bug fix sooner than later.

  • mcmothercruncher #25 2 years ago

    Jesus Christ, can no developer finish a game these days?

  • poisonormints #26 2 years ago

    a way to stop this from happening hopefully, is the other players leave 1st, then the host of the game leaves last, just what my friends are telling me ;p