Halo Wars leaderboards wiped

By Robert Purchese Published 30 July, 2009

Robot not sure if accident can be fixed.

Robot Entertainment has revealed that all Halo Wars leaderboards have accidentally been wiped and may now be lost forever.

An "Xbox Live technical issue" is to blame, the developer explained, and as a result all single-player, multiplayer and TrueSkill leaderboards - as well as matchmaking data - have disappeared.

"At this time it’s unknown if the data can be restored," Robot added, "resulting in the Halo Wars leaderboards being reset to original launch day status. The Xbox Live team is investigating the cause, and they will provide an update to the situation as soon as possible.

"We at Robot Entertainment apologise for the Live technical issue and any frustration players have experienced in having their statistics disappear from the leaderboards."

Halo Wars was released back in February, which means an awful lot of data must have disappeared.

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 (35) Latest comment 3 years ago

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

  • Optyk #1 3 years ago

    Alot of players at the top of the boards will be greetin' in there cheerios.

  • asphaltcowboy #2 3 years ago

    Ooops!

  • StooMonster #3 3 years ago

    What, no backups?

  • Dizzy #4 3 years ago

    DELETE * from GAMES_LEADERBOARD WHERE NAME='Halo Wars'

    /oops

    I guess we are lucky they didn't use LIKE '%Halo%', *that* would have caused WW3.
    Edited by 1 at 30/07/09 @ 14:38

  • miiiguel #5 3 years ago

    Major fuck up.

    "any serious side-effect of losing it? "
    Disregarding the fact that it'll completly mess up the matchmaking - for a loooong time! - puting vets against new comers, and screwing up the insane amount of points needed for a certain Achievement ?

  • Optyk #6 3 years ago

    "I guess we are lucky they didn't use LIKE '%Halo%', *that* would have caused WW3. "

    and some light entertainment.

  • Xerx3s #7 3 years ago

    "Aside from validating the amount of time gamers sunk into the title, what else did this data provide and is there any serious side-effect of losing it?"

    It's like using scissors on your E-Penis. ;)

  • Xerx3s #8 3 years ago

    Miiguel, i don't think that the matchmaking system is related to the scoreboard system. Iirc, they keep track of their own dataset.

  • schnide #9 3 years ago

    Gamers to find excuse for returning to the real world?

    *remembers all the other games with online features*

    Face sinks.

  • miiiguel #10 3 years ago

    @ Xerx3s:
    I thought they mentioned TruSkill data was also erased, and the system is more accurate the more it gathers data: http://re search.microsoft.com/en-us/proj...

  • Markusdragon #11 3 years ago

    Pity about the matchmaking data. The leader boards are no big loss except to those who were in, say, the top 200 or so.

  • Eraysor #12 3 years ago

    lolololol

  • Domovoi #13 3 years ago

    I never understand how stuff like this can happen. They don't make any backups?
    Edited by 1 at 30/07/09 @ 15:08

  • Canyarion #14 3 years ago

    Hm, those quotation marks were never closed. That means Robot Entertainment is still talking!

  • SL33PY #15 3 years ago

    Unacceptible. Every database must have a backup! If you have a system that stores user data the way they have it cannot be that there is no daily backup!

  • JensonJet #16 3 years ago

    I don't buy this as being an 'accident' at all. As has been mentioned above, there has to be systems in place to back up the data. Persoally I think it was done on purpose. After all, it may make a lot of sense. The game's been altered recently to balance out the battles, and cut down on formulaic wins. And what better way to give newcomers or those previously lacking behind in the leaderboards a chance to fight for a better rating than to reset the leaderboards.

    I wish they'd 'accidentally' reset Gamerscores! Imagine how upset the gamers would be who purely play to increase their score.

  • BabyJesus #17 3 years ago

    It would of been hilarious if this happened to Halo 3.

    The internet would explode in l337 speak.

  • Toothball #18 3 years ago

    @Dizzy:

    One the developers at my work managed to run a query along the lines of

    UPDATE table SET field1 = 1; field2 = 2; WHERE condition;

    on a system a few months back. Restoring that one was a laugh.
    Edited by 2 at 30/07/09 @ 15:35

  • altitude2k #19 3 years ago

    Hopefully this will provide some people with a little perspective about what REALLY matters in this world.

  • cathalzx #20 3 years ago

    @Dizzy - "DELETE * FROM YOURTABLE WHERE ..." is incorrect syntax - it wouldn't matter if they did use like '%Halo%'. Phew.

  • MeBrains #21 3 years ago

    maybe it ran on a 360 and the machine RROD'd?! :huh:

    ^ i'm with stupid.

  • Darren #22 3 years ago

    @BabyJesus - You've now got me secretly hoping it does! ;)

  • jonbwfc #23 3 years ago

    I don't buy this as being an 'accident' at all. As has been mentioned above, there has to be systems in place to back up the data.
    Not always. backing data up (especially a lot of data) on a system you can't periodically take offline is a very expensive process and requires a lot of technical support. If you're offering something for free, often you don't have the budget to do that. Neither windows live mail (hotmail) or google mail for example are backed up. They are replicated i.e. copied 'live' to a second machine but there is no copy on tape. If you actually read the agreements when you sign up for an account with those two, they specifically say something along the lines of 'we will not back up your data. We will make reasonable efforts to ensure your data is not lost but if it is tough luck'.

    if they then have a major failure at the hosting datacentre and both copies get taken out for some reason, then the data is gone. if there's been some nasty corruption - or some does the whole 'drop table' thing - and they didn't catch it before it was replicated to the second copy, then the data is gone.

    This is what you get for what you pay for. I'm fairly sure MS do have a backup copy of everyone's gamertags and passwords and points but I doubt very much if they have backups of the individual leaderboards for all the game that may use them on XBox live. That's just not 'mission critical' enough data. if they lose it you can still play the game.

    Jon
    Edited by 3 at 30/07/09 @ 16:31

  • Gearskin #24 3 years ago

    I bought this and never played it

  • Dizzy #25 3 years ago

    "@Dizzy - "DELETE * FROM YOURTABLE WHERE ..." is incorrect syntax - it wouldn't matter if they did use like '%Halo%'. Phew. "

    Ha yes true... the * shouldn't be there. You can see I am not a SQL guru ;)

  • bratmandu #26 3 years ago

    Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-one cares.

    I played a good deal of this online, but as far as I knew there wasn't any online stat tracking like Halo 3. If there was I certainly couldn't (be arsed to) find it. I just played random 3v3 multiplayer games, never worrying about rank or stats. Don't see them as a big deal in games like this. I'd be pissed if it happened in Battlefield 1943 though!

    Maybe this will balance out the playing field, since a recent update nerfs/boosts certain units that may or may not have helped top players get there. Now they have to start again without their warthog spamming and hawk rushes.

  • kangarootoo #27 3 years ago

    @jonbwfc

    Good post.

  • miiiguel #28 3 years ago

    @bratmandu: I amazes me why you bother to comment on this then - then again if you're wiling to backup that pseudo-witty of yesterday comment of "no one cares" take a look at halowars.com site and community.

    To all the ppl talking about backups (and the lack of it), although there's technology to do backups of 24/7 systems it is not trivial or inexpensive for that matter. The restore process of such data is even more complex and requires efective downtime.

    edit: err... now that I've read all the comments, what jon said, though it's a subject that is particulary dear to me as do that stuff for a living. Thankfully we never had to do a full restore of a buisness copy though we did, once, had to recover the all main database to a clone system to recover a few corrupt tables - and that was *expensive*.
    Edited by 2 at 30/07/09 @ 19:06

  • djed #29 3 years ago

    MAYBE THEY SHOULDN'T BE ASKING THE BLOODY ROBOT THEN, EH?! NAY-SAYING PIECE OF JUNK

  • GrandpaUlrira #30 3 years ago

    "If you're offering something for free, often you don't have the budget to do that."
    XBox Live isn't free though.

    Shit happens, I guess, but when you pay for the service it's not quite as acceptable for stuff like this to happen.

  • StooMonster #31 3 years ago

    Maybe if they used Oracle instead of SQL Server they would be okay? ;)

  • YoungPayters #32 3 years ago

    big who cares!

  • wellzy4eva #33 3 years ago

    problem is that a lot of people just will give up on the game, picture if this had happened on COD4 though...

  • 3william56 #34 3 years ago

    "You TALKED to it?" exclaimed Ford. "What do you mean you talked to it?"

    "Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself
    into it's external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length,
    and explained my view of the universe to it, " said Marvin.

    "And what happened? " pressed Ford.

    "It committed suicide, " said Marvin,

  • elephant_stone #35 3 years ago

    LOL

    pwned