PC Saboteur sabotaged by ATI cards

By Robert Purchese Published 10 December, 2009

NVIDIA must be delighted.

The PC version of stealthy openworld World War II game The Saboteur does not work with ATI graphics cards. At all.

Official game forums are awash with complaints (spotted by Kotaku), so much so that digital distributor Direct2Drive now carries a warning for all prospective buyers.

EA is apparently "digging into the issue" and has found a workaround to enable The Saboteur to run while a proper fix is found.

This, not ideally, involves turning multiple CPU support off. To find out how this is done check The Saboteur "ATI Graphic Issues" forum post.

The Saboteur, Pandemic's swansong before EA-closure, was released last Friday. Attractively, the game presents a World War II, Nazi-occupied Paris, which you - an Irish mechanic - must liberate (from black-and-white into colour) by sneaking around and hitting people over the head with socket-wrenches, probably.

You could do worse, Eurogamer's review of The Saboteur pointed out.

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 (60) Latest comment 2 years ago

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

  • roz123 #1 2 years ago

    How did they managed to miss that in testing?
    Edited by 1 at 10/12/09 @ 10:25

  • FireMonkey #2 2 years ago

    So, who is going to fix this then seeing as EA have closed down Pandemic now? lol @ EA

  • TaoJay #3 2 years ago

    Sad state of affairs, did EA have to rush this game out this much ........

  • Boomerang #4 2 years ago

    Yep, i fancied this but any hopes of patches in future are slim to say the least...

    Bloody EA...

  • CatWeazle #5 2 years ago

    QA... Qu'est-ce que c'est?
    Edited by 1 at 10/12/09 @ 10:44

  • sneetch #6 2 years ago

    *Mmmm* That's good quality control.

  • miiiguel #7 2 years ago

    This is what I don't like about PC gaming, you buy your game and you never know when you're going to have problems with your... er... "rig" ?

  • bad09 #8 2 years ago

    Here we go...

  • kangarootoo #9 2 years ago

    "So, who is going to fix this then seeing as EA have closed down Pandemic now? lol @ EA"

    I imagine EA still have a few coders working for them...

  • Sunyavadin #10 2 years ago

    One can't help but wonder if this was a deliberate act of sabotage by disgruntled ex-employees on their way out...

  • cianchristopher #11 2 years ago

    Fucking delighted that Pandemic shut down - I hope they have a miserable Xmas (it's called "holiday season" in the US)...

    Useless company, fucking useless...

    It'd be a black mark on your CV to mention you worked at Pandemic - maybe they should start thinking about a different career in a different industry.

    I hear McDonalds are hiring...

  • bad09 #12 2 years ago

    You know cianchristopher they may not of been the greatest, but that "useless company" did give us the Full Spectrum Warrior and Battlefront games.

    Besides, as you say, it's the "holiday season" so don't be a douche on people loosing jobs.

  • Skurmedel #13 2 years ago

    Maybe cian should loose his job as well and see how fun it is.

  • des #14 2 years ago

    Nice job EA...

  • IneptPercy #15 2 years ago

    "This is what I don't like about PC gaming, you buy your game and you never know when you're going to have problems with your... er... "rig" ? "

    I must say this kind of thing doesn't happen very often, many years ago things didn't work due to all sorts of compatiblity problems. But of course I can't say it doesn't happen because ti just has, but mostly with PC gaming these days it just works.

    As mentioned it would be interesting to know how that got through testing, yes I know you can't check with every hardware combination but I am sure ATI cards make quite a big chunk of the market.

  • Ferral #16 2 years ago

    I decided to grab this one on PC instead of console and it has been installed for days now and I have been unable to play it. From what I have read AMD/ATI are also helping with the fix. With a bit of luck we will see the patch in the next few days.

    Shame about Pandemic, they have done quite a bit in the past. Feel really bad for them with what has happened so close to Christmas.

  • sneetch #17 2 years ago

    @miiiguel
    This is what I don't like about PC gaming, you buy your game and you never know when you're going to have problems with your... er... "rig" ?

    If something is untested then you can have problems with it regardless of the platform.

    The fact that this game was obviously never properly tested on one of the two main sets of graphics cards available on PC (last I heard they had 25% of the market, can't remember how recent that figure is though) is a damning indictment of their quality control not of PC gaming.

    It's a bit like developing and testing for the Xbox and then assuming that because that's ok and the code compiles on PS3 the PS3 version is fine too.

  • justsomeone #18 2 years ago

    "loose" is what happens to your bowels when you eat some bad shellfish and you can't hold in your turds, or causes your trousers to fall down when your belt is.

    lose means you lost something.

    ok?

  • xentar #19 2 years ago

    is this for real or did i slept over and its the Fool's Day already?

  • asphaltcowboy #20 2 years ago

    "Maybe cian should loose his job as well and see how fun it is."

    You imagine he works? How do you think he heard about McDonalds hiring? ;)

  • Grimfang #21 2 years ago

    Strange...

    It works perfectly with my Ati 4870X2.
    The game won't even start for some or what?

    Damm Nvidia sabotours :)

  • Darrengamer #22 2 years ago

    This is just unacceptable! I couldn't run the game on my sooopercompooter when I got it last Friday. I had to ring the helpline to see what the hell was going on, but as soon as a real person was on the other end of the line I couldn't speak, I'm not used to that sort of human interaction!

    So in order to play the game I've had to order another £2000 computer with a different grafix card. It's worth it though to play the game on a soopercompooter rather than playing the 360 and PS3 versions that I've also bought.

  • ChaK #23 2 years ago

    just fix it, as you fixed mercs 2 on PC


    oh wait...

  • chukcyQ #24 2 years ago

    NVidia paid them money for this stunt. Dead developer doesn't do anything with fame anymore.

  • LHH #25 2 years ago

    Just bought a HD 5770 and the bugger doesn't work, PC doesn't POST or anything. After the hassle with my X1950 overheating I think it's the last time I buy anything ATI again, I reckon they have next to no QA on their products, maybe some basic checks but nothing real world.
    Going to take it into to work tomorrow with my PC and hook up the ol' multimeters to see if the PSU (so often blamed for a variety of issues) is at fault

    Kind of unrelated but getting sick of ATI products. Funny how they also make the GPU in the 360 >_>

  • Haloboy #26 2 years ago

    EA should have done the decent thing and allowed Pandemic the time to finish the game properly before closing them down. Believe it or not this was my most anticipated game of 2009 due to me being a long term fan of Pandemic. So how gutted was I when I'd only just bought myself an ATI 5770 card only to find out if I buy the game the chances are I won't be able to play.

    Given that it is to be Pandemics final game on all platforms I think the developer deserved better treatment.

    In short. EA are absolute cocks.

  • miiiguel #27 2 years ago

    Weird thing is, it works on a 360 which has an ATI gpu.

  • Haloboy #28 2 years ago

    I'd love to hear EA's official explanation for it then.

  • DaemonSpawn #29 2 years ago

    So they're basically telling me to turn my quad-core CPU into single core - wow! PC gaming really is on rise.
    I wonder what kind of perfomance poor AMD users will get in Saboteur with such great 'tweak'.
    Edited by 2 at 10/12/09 @ 12:09

  • Bravestinsane #30 2 years ago

    @LHH

    yeh because thats really ATI's fault isn't it.

    This is purely down to EA if the morons actually tested the cards they would know what was wrong and what isn't

  • IneptPercy #31 2 years ago

    "Just bought a HD 5770 and the bugger doesn't work, PC doesn't POST or anything"

    There is a chance its a borked card, but what board and PSU are you running?

  • davisorle #32 2 years ago

    Its funny reading all those posts blaming EA. I dont give a crap about EA but even if they shut down pandemic, EA is only the damn publisher and Pandemic responsible. Not the oher way around, as much as I feel bad for shutting down the studios you need guys to get your shit straight and learn who to blame and stuff. Stop being retards ffs.. Its annoying.

    @LHH
    You get the award in this thread though. More ignorant of all and also you got no clue about GPUs and console developing differences. If you dont like ATI products dont buy them. Who really cares and seriously.. Has nothing to do with the company nor your product. Its purely a fault of Pandemic and not ATi. OK? Hopefully you get it :)

  • Haloboy #33 2 years ago

    @ cianchristopher

    It seems you and EA have something in common. You're both cocks.

  • urban #34 2 years ago

    wow...this is a cluster fuck.

  • urban #35 2 years ago

    awesome.

  • Caimbeul #36 2 years ago

    "This is what I don't like about PC gaming, you buy your game and you never know when you're going to have problems with your... er... "rig" ? "
    _______________________________________________________

    Not a problem with the "rig" more in a problem with the game/delopers/utter lack of QA.
    Its like buying a 360 or PS3 game but the developers had forgotten to include support for joypads.
    Edited by 1 at 10/12/09 @ 12:42

  • Eraysor #37 2 years ago

    Now that is a debacle.

  • miiiguel #38 2 years ago

    This is what I don't like about PC gaming, you buy your game and you never know when you're going to have problems with your... er... "rig" ? " Not a problem with the "rig" more in a problem with the game/delopers/utter lack of QA.

    Well, thing is, who fault is it isn't really important, in the end what matters is if it works and how it performs. Is like blaming devs for not being able to use the "untapped powa of the c3ll" or saying it's not MS fault that Zune service is not available where I live, I have to blame copyright agreements. I mean those are nice and interesting as a discussion subject, but when I sit down to enjoy my free time they're pretty much worthless.
    Edited by 1 at 10/12/09 @ 12:46

  • Zoink #39 2 years ago

    @sneetch

    either 28.97% or 27.12% depending on what number you believe

    http://store. steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

  • Skurmedel #40 2 years ago

    asphalt: touché :)

  • Murton #41 2 years ago

    A quick look at the credits to Mercs2 and LOTR Conquest tells me that PAndemic have their own QA department and EA was purely a publisher. While there is some basis to "blame" EA for not giving Pandemic the time to finish the game the finger of blame must end with Pandemic for not properly testing their game throughout development and spotting this sooner.

    On the subject of Pandemic closing, it's a bad thing for the guys who worked there certainly but it's also a bad thing in the industry in general. They get some stick for for their games but when you look at them, they were good games, they just needed a little more polish. I was a huge fan of Mercs and Mercs2, they were both great games that with a little more dev time could have been massive hits, but their publishers Lucas Arts and EA just didn't grant the time needed to make that happen, it's a shame really.

  • YourMessageHere #42 2 years ago

    @miiiguel

    It's true (generally, in fact, not just in this issue) that who is to blame is less important than fixing the actual problem, but to say that the problem is a problem specifically with PC gaming basically isn't accurate. Isn't it also true to say that you never know when you'll end up with an RROD, or when your PS3 just dies for no readily apparent reason, or your Wii is struck by lightning? And you never know when you'll buy a game and it'll just be so shoddily made that it doesn't work, either literally as in this case, or figuratively, by which I mean you bought a game as entertainment, but it is not entertaining you, because it's absolutely crap (c.f. Rogue Warrior - if you had bought that for your console of choice expecting a fun game, would your anger and disappointment with their new game really be any different from a PC gamer running ATI graphics hardware who bought The Saboteur? Both are basically unable to enjoy the game, due not to their equipment, but to the incompetence of the creators).

    TLDR version: crap games are crap. Why/how they are crap is less important than the fact that they are crap. This might be fun, but the fact it doesn't work with slightly under half of all PCs makes it crap.

  • telboy007 #43 2 years ago

    "Weird thing is, it works on a 360 which has an ATI gpu."

    Lets be honest, there are only a few different SKUs for the 360 and they are the same in a broad sense. However PCs are a whole different kettle of fish... maybe they saw it working on the 360 and thought that was good enough. O_o

  • Altrezia #44 2 years ago

    WOrking fine on my C2Q with ATI 4870 X2

  • eddiep #45 2 years ago

    I think all of this "publishers must grand devs enough time to polish their games" thing is utter bollocks.
    Why?
    Simple. When you start working on any project, you know beforehand what the final deadline is. So you're the one that needs to scale the project down to the amount of time and human resources you have. And this is true for any industry, not just video gaming.

  • offside5 #46 2 years ago

    I can't get past the menu screen in the game using my hd 5870

  • dirk_aircool #47 2 years ago

    is it a bit of payback by Pandemic ??

  • Retroid #48 2 years ago

    cianchristopher: "Fucking delighted that Pandemic shut down - I hope they have a miserable Xmas (it's called "holiday season" in the US)..."

    Have some bloody respect, dozens of people lost their jobs, FFS.

    Mercs 2 might have been a bit messy at time but I had a load of bloody good fun with it, especially co-op. It certainly wasn't terrible.

  • sneetch #49 2 years ago

    @dirk_aircool
    is it a bit of payback by Pandemic ??

    If I were planning on a "bit of payback" then it'd screw up all versions.

    But who do you want to payback? Surely not the people who actually bought your game? Wouldn't make sense to me to do it. Naw, it's just a QA/dev failure.

  • jaywalker3010 Verified Mastering Manager, Square Enix #50 2 years ago

    I've read enough ATI users saying its working fine for them to suggest that maybe its not as obvious a problem as people love to scream about.

    The usual `where was QA?` responses are just typical of people looking to blame someone without understanding how the QA process works. QA dont make the bugs or fix them, they report them. Who is to say it wasnt reported and waived by producers/publisher or as reported by users actually NOT an issue as it worked for QA on their ATI hardware.. :)

  • Whizzo #51 2 years ago

    Problems mostly occur if you're using Vista/Win7 not XP, something the story is wrong about.

  • jaywalker3010 Verified Mastering Manager, Square Enix #52 2 years ago

    @Whizzo

    That then suggests a possible driver issue more then anything else, which could mean developed for version X but now version X+1 has been released which breaks it..
    Edited by 1 at 10/12/09 @ 16:43

  • Darren #53 2 years ago

    I'm amazed to hear this. ATI graphics card owners do tend to get the short end of the straw when it comes to games thanks to NVIDIA's This Is The Way It's Meant To Be Played endorsement which favours their hardware, Batman Arkham Asylum and Need for Speed SHIFT being recent examples, but it's disgraceful IMO for a game to not work AT ALL on ATI cards.

    I'd be really pissed off if that was me... it took EA almost three months to fix NfS SHIFT which was seemingly released three months early on the PC, i.e. untested on 64-bit Windows and unfinished!

  • Whizzo #54 2 years ago

    It's not quite that simple as there's some people having problems with XP (although not many) plus some Nvidia users as well, ATi responded to DriverHeaven's query here.

  • sneetch #55 2 years ago

    @jaywalker3010
    The usual `where was QA?` responses are just typical of people looking to blame someone without understanding how the QA process works.

    I know exactly how QA works and what their purpose is in a software house. They're supposed to find problems with the software. In this case they failed.

    Now, there are many (understandable) reasons why they might have failed in doing so - not least of which will be that it's difficult to give a shit when you're worried about finding another job - but the fact remains that their job is to find the problems and they missed this rather large one.

    Who is to say it wasnt reported and waived by producers/publisher

    Possibly, but unlikely I think, "it doesn't work at all" tends to cry out "critical blocker". :)

  • jaywalker3010 Verified Mastering Manager, Square Enix #56 2 years ago

    @sneetch
    Check the number of people saying `it works on my ATI` that says its not 100% critical blocker as you say.

    The compat testing on the title should have found this, but thats done more and more by external companies not in house. So if theres a fault its there. Thats a different part of QA with a very specific function.

    May be wrong but am guessing you are not in QA right now (may have been in qa before possibly) but how you talk is not someone who is an active QA employee somewhere

  • Gouki #57 2 years ago

    typical story with EA.... no reflection on ATI. Its not their job to test the game same if it had been the other way round and it had been nivdia facing the problem

  • Lord_Gremlin #58 2 years ago

    Oh god. That's the reason I buy almost all multiplatform for PS3. My PC has ATI Radeon graphic card. So did my previous PC, and the one I owned before that...

    At least Valve still optimize their games properly. I suppose they haven't tested Saboteir with ATI videocards at all. Which is kinda bad tone.

  • SwedBear #59 2 years ago

    It's interesting that it was also an EA game, Need for Speed Shift, which ran like a dog on ATI cards when released (I know, I tried to use it for benchmarking but gave up as some tracks really ran really poorly). I'm not sure if the patch to fix this is out yet but to me it still is very damning that a game doesn't work as well as it shoiuld on ATI cards, especially since AMD/ATI has had a very good run with first the HD4xxx-series and now the HD5xxx-series of cards.

    And even though I reviews video cards for my site and have great PC's I must say that I think that you are sticking your head into the ground if you can't agree that this IS a problem with the PC as a gaming platform. I run a lot of different games when I benchmark and I think it's quite often that a game is very otpimized for one card or CPu or that one driver from one company introduces issues with certain combinations etc. (just look at the release notes for NVIDIA and AMD's drivers each month). PC Gaming is great and the variety of hardware combinations you can use is one of the strong points as you always know you can keep the computer up to date but it also introduces a lot of problems for the developers and I think we just need to accept that this is an issue. This is also a reason I for a long time always bought games for my 360 or PS3 since I just wanted hasslefree gaming. Now that the PC (IMHO) has left the 360 and PS3 behind it in terms of performance (I am lucky so I have the latest videocards) I sometimes get games for the PC but not until I checked if there are any issues with the game and the hardware I have.

  • thesonglessbird #60 2 years ago

    Neaerly bought this on a whim the other day. Glad I decided to check the reviews first. Shocking thing to miss.

  • penhalion #61 2 years ago

    Hiii-frakin-larious.

    How does this even happen and how was it even possible. The ATI cards have a more, not less, advanced version of DX available to them. Nothing written for an Nvidia card should have been able to fail on an ATi card unless some moron used cuda.