Fable 2 Pub Games glitch was intentional

By Robert Purchese Published 16 September, 2008

Cheaters to face in-game consequences.

Peter Molyneux has claimed that the Fable 2 Pub Games glitch, which allowed bets to be increased ten-fold by some timely button pressing, was absolutely intentional.

And those who cheated, Molyneux told IGN, will have a surprise waiting for them in Fable 2. The crafty old blighter.

The Fable 2 Pub Games are rubbish, but allow players to accrue gold that can be transferred into Fable 2 when the game launches on 24th October.

The glitch revolved around the Fortune's Tower card game where, by pressing the left bumper as bets were placed, gamblers could increase their stake by ten times the amount for free.

We're fairly confident anyone who forked out the ludicrous 800 MS Points (GBP 6.80 / EUR 9.60) for the Pub Games would have resorted to this. Funds, otherwise, were rather hard to come by, in a selection of games based almost entirely on chance.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (66) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • Doctor_What #1 3 years ago

    And he's always a trustworthy source of info ;)

  • redlander #2 3 years ago

    pifff he had to say summert.

  • Skooch #3 3 years ago

    Ridiculous.

  • illusiondance #4 3 years ago

    if this is true its a pretty smart idea, presumably these people will be tagged as cheating rogues and pernicious brigands - or somesuch...

  • asphaltcowboy #5 3 years ago

    If that's true... that is amazing! :D

  • Triggerhappytel #6 3 years ago

    Bullshit; more like they've gone back and changed it so you get penalised if the game recognises that you cheated.

  • Jimbob89 #7 3 years ago

    If there are 'consequences' i have a feeling that maybe a group of bandits will try and hunt you down because you cheated in the games. Or maybe you're threatend to cough up the money by a mob boss or something?

  • the_dudefather #8 3 years ago

    If this is true imagine how cool that would have been for lionhead when people discovered the 'glitch'

    he shouldn't have spoiled the surprise for people ho cheated though, could have been loltacular

  • peteb #9 3 years ago

    but didnt they release an update fixing it?

  • onezeonx #10 3 years ago

    they messed up......so they add stuff to cheaters so it looks like it was set up

    nobbers

  • Wickerman #11 3 years ago

    This has the potential to be interesting depending on the nature of the 'punishment' levied once in game. I'm sure it'll just be something 'small' like a temporary title ('The Cheater' perhaps) or something, but if its something applied to a character out of the users hands I'm pretty sure it won't go down at all well. And given Pete's track record with stating things he wanted to do to characters (like turning your character bald and fat if you earned too much in the Pub Games) I wouldn't put it past him/them.

    Still, all speculation and such until we actually see any end result to this, given the reliability of the source and all (by which I mean Molyneux, not EG).

  • Der_tolle_Emil #12 3 years ago

    First of all I think that claiming it was intentional is bullshit. Second of all I find it even worse if they now brand players who used this because their QA team was not good enough to catch that bug. Had I bought that game I'm sure I would at least try this once just to see how it was done. There are probably a lot of people that tried this and it would be unfair to punish them in any way.

    I still think that it is one of the most lame excuses ever to say that this was intentional. It's just a bit hard to believe that a developer deliberately fucks up a game just to brand cheaters in another game.

  • skillian #13 3 years ago

    I don't know whether to believe it or not. And I guess we'll never know unless one of the developers blows the whistle.

    If it is true, I think it's pretty clever and applaud him for the original idea, though it would seem he's kinda spoiled the surprise.

  • the_dudefather #14 3 years ago

    @Der_tolle_Emil

    Its your choice to use the glitch to your advantage, and I doubt the punishment is anything serious, most likely a mildly annoying nickname as people mentioned before

  • kangarootoo #15 3 years ago

    Intentional my arse.

    Let me guess.

    The punishment in the game is that your character gets robbed of their illgotten gains by the famous highwayman Patchy McBugFix.

  • nickthegun #16 3 years ago

    Yes. Im sure at this stage in development they care enough about what dicks on the internet say to retroactively make this a feature rather than a bug...

    Jesus christ...

  • kangarootoo #17 3 years ago

    Could easily have been a debug option that they forgot to remove.

  • TheBoyChris #18 3 years ago

    "Cheaters to face in-game consequences."

    Welcome to Fable 2. You lose. Bitch.

  • kinky_mong #19 3 years ago

    Yeah I agree with the majority of you that it was most likely stuck in after the cheat had been discovered because of the (different) developers fuck up. And even if it is a big punishment given to the cheaters it will only effect them if they decide to merge the pub games character with the Fable 2 game.

    And I read on CVG that the punishment is giving the player black teeth or something equally as superficial.

  • Lutz #20 3 years ago

    There's also the problem of what if someone completely un-intentionally, and didn't notice, that they hit this "glitch", and is branded a cheater?

  • Quint2020 #21 3 years ago

    If this is true, hilarious.

  • Kannan7 #22 3 years ago

    Wow... now I kinda wish I had bought the pub games knowing I would have cheated. Will be fun to see what the consequences will be. Someone mentioned thugs hunting you down, now that would be cool. They could probably take away a lot of the money so you couldn't buy the whole of Albion.

  • RedSparrows #23 3 years ago

    I hope this is true, is far more interesting than a mere glitch.

    Fable 2 actually sounds pretty great, from what Edge said and stuff. Yay.

  • Wickerman #24 3 years ago

    @Tiste - yes, probably for testing purposes. Leaving the very real possibility that someone forgot to remove it.

    Of course, it could have been the best set up ever to play on the whole 'morality' angle he is constantly harping on about, but when he never seems to shut up its not a surprise that many view his words somewhat dubiously...

  • jonsaan #25 3 years ago

    Why would he tell people this upfront? Talk about ruining the surprise. Unless he's trying to get more people to buy pub games of course......

  • paulf #26 3 years ago

    they will probably get labelled 'the cheat' whereas everyone else who bought it will be called 'the ripped off' ...

  • MrChuckles #27 3 years ago

    I 'think' that there will be a consequence for gambling in the game, much like everything else. Everyone who has gambled up to massive amount of cash, well, they are gonna get the consequence more than everyone else, and sitting a gambling table all day isn't going to exactly make you look great?

    And, intentional? Nah...i doubt it...

  • Dizzy #28 3 years ago

    "Bullshit; more like they've gone back and changed it so you get penalised if the game recognises that you cheated. "

    Maybe, maybe not. We will never know. The result is the same. All part of being good and/or bad.

    "No malice here, butI really think Fable2 is going to tank badly"

    Currently in the USA it has massive pre-orders. I will easily do 2 million+ IMHO.
    Edited by 2 at 16/09/08 @ 17:07

  • patchbox360 #29 3 years ago

    'The punishment in the game is that your character gets robbed of their illgotten gains by the famous highwayman Patchy McBugFix.'


    highwayman Patchy McBugFix = haha excellent

  • BTBAM #30 3 years ago

    Annoying.

    When I start a new game after I've completed the first one I hope to God it still isn't telling me I cheated. Also if I'm branded a cheat straight away for the whole game then bang goes any incentive to play it any other way because no matter what I do I'm still the guy who exploited the bug in the shitty mini-games.

    What a load of shit.

  • kangarootoo #31 3 years ago

    MrED209 loves PM and wants to kiss him on the mouth.

    ;)

  • MisterFalseName #32 3 years ago

    I don't see why so many of you think he's lying, and that it would have been hard to pull off. Working in marketing myself, I can readily believe they'd put the bug in the game, then upload the video of themselves exploiting the hack for others to copy, thus revealing the players to give the surprise to.

    Sounds like just the kind of thing that the man (like him or hate him) loves to do with his games. I'm impressed.

  • patchbox360 #33 3 years ago

    the intentional glitch haha, now thats funny stuff, all developers should use that one

  • BartonFink #34 3 years ago

    Soo funny if it's true.

  • Bremenacht #35 3 years ago

    Not having tried it, I hope it's all true and that the cheating scum are punished severely.

  • Graafke #36 3 years ago

    My guess is that the system will only recognize you as a cheater when you merge your character. So if you don´t want to feel the wrath of Lionhead, you better start off clean ;)

  • Flabio #37 3 years ago

    Fable2 has an ESRB of 'M' and a BBFC of '15' according to the respective websites.

  • shinki #38 3 years ago

    I very much doubt Molyneaux is bullshitting, it's not the kind of bug that appears randomly. The only possibility is that it's a feature implemented for testing and they forgot to take it out but that would be a very amateur error, with Lionhead being such an established studio I'm pretty sure it was intentional.

    Those worried about this messing their game up: if the consequences for the cheating actually affected your game significantly Lionhead would be under fire from most of their preorder fans, they don't want that.

    Would've been better if they had waited until launch to reveal this though.

  • Cronan #39 3 years ago

    If you cheated in the pub games you get a very very small penis in-game. Or a very large vagina. If you cheated "a lot", you get both.
    Edited by 1 at 16/09/08 @ 18:43

  • Agent_Llama #40 3 years ago

    I remember being quite miffed at doing the stealing trick in Link's Awakening and subsequently being branded THIEF!! by everyone for the rest of the game.

  • IkariW #41 3 years ago

    Moly Poo: "How can we put a positive spin on this debug mistake...Hmmm...I know! We'll say it was intentional, then say they'll be a 'Surprise' in Fable 2 for them...then they buy it! Its a Win! Win!"

    Sheeessshh....

    Personally, I hope anyone who buys into this gets bummed by their in game dog.......

    I finally figured out why Moly Poo releases very few games, its because he is hoping that anyone that was pi$$ed with his last effort will have forgotten how pi$$ed they were when they bought into his bull$hit the first time!

    Unfortunately, it works! :(

    I have the upmost respect for the talented people at Lionhead.....its just a shame they have to put up with his lordship, I think they would be a better off as a team if they didn't have to 'Retro-fit' his bul$hit into every game they make, as they are making it!!

    I can only imagine the pure hell they have to endure every morning when he walks in the office with another 'Brain wave'..... after all, they are the real talent behind Lionhead.

    Although, no doubt, I expect others opinions will vary....

    Ik













  • makeamazing #42 3 years ago

    Someone said "If you cheated in Pub games perhaps you will get robbed in game of all your money"...

    to be honest anyone who paid that much money for the pub games download has already been robbed once ;) - jk

  • IkariW #43 3 years ago

    "to be honest anyone who paid that much money for the pub games download has already been robbed once ;)" - jk

    Too right....

    Ik

  • smelly #44 3 years ago

    >so they add stuff to cheaters so it looks like it was set up

    Doubtful

    The game is out in the shops next month. Therefor the final game would've had to have been finished completely at the very latest the end of july/early august (as it has to be submitted to microsoft months, duplication time, etc etc)

    Unless the game is getting a release day patch to put this "feature" in.. it would've had to have been in months ago..

  • Zumbug #45 3 years ago

    It's blatent bullshit to make players stop exploiting pub games so that the fable 2 currency isn't devalued any more than it already is.

  • seasidebaz #46 3 years ago

    I reckon it will be a case of they couldn't patch the pubgames. So they've probably put a patch into the main game that says "if startingmoney > largeamounts then break" kind of thing.

    Which will affect legit players as well.

    Either that, or it will just be like an earlier poster said, and the player's starting fatness and baldness is directly proportional to the amount of money made in the pubgames. Thus cheaters = fat + balding.

  • TheMoonRat #47 3 years ago

    Seasidebaz: they can't do that, because it is possible to legitimately get a very high amount of money. The only way to punish using the "cheat" would be that it really does check to see if you do it, and if you do, it logs it. And if that is the case, then it HAS to have been planned. If the "cheat" being used was never logged, there would be no way of punishment in game

  • smelly #48 3 years ago

    As i said.. if it turns out the player truely IS punished in the full game.. Then it was intentional - as there's NO WAY they could change the game code now.. (unless it gets put back to next year)

  • OfficialBlue #49 3 years ago

    How does it know you cheated?

  • JayScott #50 3 years ago

    Usually it's from the shifty look on your face.

  • smelly #51 3 years ago

    >Usually it's from the shifty look on your face.

    LMFAO!

  • RazorObsession #52 3 years ago

    so you know how you get the option to merge pub game characters with your fable character? well can you have a character that is merged with a cheater of your own accord or is there no way of escaping it?

    I wouldn't mind playing a character that starts with nothing, i.e hadn't played pub games at all, one who is in serious debt, one who has fairly gained wealth and one who is a cheater.

    if the game is as varied with as many consequences as molly claims there is, surely its a no brainer to allow people this re-playability?

  • smelly #53 3 years ago

    How many of you lot ACTUALLY BOUGHT pub games anyhow?

    And if you did WHATS THE MATTER WITH YOU? Do you not READ REVIEWS?

    Nut jobs...

  • hoonatic #54 3 years ago

    I think Pete went to the Denis Dyack school of marketing - he doesn't care if you hate him or his games just as long as you keep talking about his games.

  • Lutz #55 3 years ago

    I *really* want to know how it'll know if you cheated...

  • Thalanos #56 3 years ago

    If it really was an intentional exploit then they can tell, but I saw an interview with PM where he says they were adding in the consequence in Fable 2 at the last minute. In that case the best they could probably do is see whether you start with vast amounts of money. We'll find out in October.

    Rumour has it they will make your teeth black.

  • IkariW #57 3 years ago

    Hold on a second....something just struck me while reading these comments....

    Why would, or indeed, should, Moly Poo and Lionhead punish players for cheating?

    I thought their whole Fable 'Experience' was based on the fact that you can be good or bad? Therefore...isn't it up to the player what they do, to punish the player for this would be a bit of a contradiction in their games logic wouldn't it??

    Oh....sh!t.....hold on, phew, crumbs, don't know what happened there, I almost starting believing Moly Poo's bull$hit that he's actually going to do anything about this in the full game!!! .... he definitely has mind control powers I'm telling you! resist!! you must resist!! he'll control us all!!

    ;P

    Ik

  • seasidebaz #58 3 years ago

    It's somewhere in the pages of Eurogamer that Lionhead was working on a PATCH to the pubgames. But they didn't say it was to actually patch the PUBGAMES. So, I reckon the patch will be applied to Fable2 at launch.

    There is no way to detect whether an extra button is pressed milliseconds before another one, short of running a keylogger. Which would be a SERIOUS breach of privacy. So, the patch must be along the lines of if your money is high, you cheated. Whether you did or not.

    Lionhead must know that the game was so bad people wouldn't legitimately gain huge amounts of money anyway.

  • kangarootoo #59 3 years ago

    @IkariW

    First off, what is with putting $ into words seemingly randomly. People put $ into MS because MS make a lot of money. I'm not sure that pissing or bullshit have much to do with money. And the Moly Poo thing is a bit childish too, lets face it...

    However, now that I have callously attacked you, I shall confuse you by saying well done for making one of the most important points of the thread.

    "Why would, or indeed, should, Moly Poo and Lionhead punish players for cheating?"

    PM could do with reading Chris Crawford's excellent work on game design (though actually, I'm sure the punishment will actually be aimed at the player character rather than the player, and will fit the game workd and probably deepen the experience overall... but the principle stands dammit).

  • kangarootoo #60 3 years ago

    @seasidebaz

    "There is no way to detect whether an extra button is pressed milliseconds before another one, short of running a keylogger. Which would be a SERIOUS breach of privacy. So, the patch must be along the lines of if your money is high, you cheated. Whether you did or not."

    I'm not a coder, but surely the "cheating mechanic" could write to a file when used, recording its use for posterity. So the patch could simply check said file to see whether it says yay or nay.

    This appears to me like a debug option that has been left in (contrary to what was stated in a previous post about professionalism, a minor non-intrusive bug such as this could easily lie undiscovered and overlooked by any otherwise competent QA dept) and so it would likely include helpful debug functionality, such as recording whether it had been used or not.

  • seasidebaz #61 3 years ago

    Yes, it could be a debug thing, but I seriously doubt it. It's a bug in the way that combos in Street Fighter 2 were bugs. I also seriously doubt that it writes anything about a cheat being used, as I don't think Lionhead knew the glitch existed, and now PM's trying to cover it up (as usual)

    Developer's blog clearly says a patch is coming to sort out the money glitch. It also says that if you owe too much money in Fable2, you go to prison / do community service. I reckon the "patch" is that they also do the same thing for owning too MUCH money.

  • XdarXideX #62 3 years ago

    A one-button "glitch" to increase your bet tenfold without any consequences? Yeah, that sounds accidental! That sure wouldn't be picked up in testing! O_o

    After reading the Developer's Blog, it's almost blatently obvious it was intentional. It's an exploit, not a bug... it even fits in perfectly with the ongoing themes of Fable and Fable 2.
    Edited by 1 at 17/09/08 @ 11:22

  • MrChuckles #63 3 years ago

    I doubt they are going to take anyone's ill-gotten gains, but as i said, they'll probably have something in game anyway if you have made loads of money from gambling, and well, if you have made more money, it'll hit you harder.

    Seasidebaz is probably right with 'Thus cheaters = fat + balding.', but this is because making money from gambling = fat + balding?

    Maybe?

  • IamAdam #64 3 years ago

    "A one-button "glitch" to increase your bet tenfold without any consequences? Yeah, that sounds accidental! That sure wouldn't be picked up in testing!"

    Does the button not do anything throughout the rest of the game?
    Edited by 1 at 17/09/08 @ 11:32

  • HottestCarl #65 3 years ago

    I myself am a software engineer for a fairly large semiconductor company. I won't get into the mechanics of it, but it is my belief that the "glitch" was intentional because of the nature of the glitch. I have played the pub games so I know how terrible they are. (Free with game reserve.) If the glitch was not intentional, you would be able to raise up to the max bet at any time during the hand. This is not the case, you have only a small window to press the RB to get the extra bet. This leaves the possibility that it was a debugging "Break" or testing feature. This is more likely to be true than a simple programming error but I don't think it was a testing feature either. This testing feature would serve no purpose to a programmer that I could see. If you would like me to fully explain my reasoning just ask.

  • oupe #66 3 years ago

    How do people find out you have to push the RB in a timewindow of milliseconds when placing a bet?

    Doesn't seem like a bug though, I expect that the outcry comes from people who feel uncomfortable that they´ve been caught cheating. Like XdarXideX said, it fits nicely within the Fable theme.