SingStar dev sorry for catastrophe patch

By Tom Bramwell Published 16 November, 2009

Deletes songs, crashes game, corrupts files.

SingStar game director Dave Ranyard has apologised to fans of Sony's multi-million-selling karaoke series who have had to put up with the fallout of a disastrous patch.

Writing on the European PlayStation blog, Ranyard revealed that "several serious bugs" slipped through the "normally rigorous" testing procedure before update 4.2 was released.

These included "SingStore songs being deleted from the hard drive", "Game crashing in the middle of a song" and "Media file corruption". Whoops! Not what you want after eight pints.

"As soon as we were aware of these issues, the senior SingStar development team came together and have been working flat out to fix these issues with the aim of getting a patch out as soon as possible," Ranyard explained.

Apparently software update 4.3 has an estimated release date of 1st December, which is also my birthday (all presents and karaoke patches gratefully received).

Ranyard also reassured gamers that anyone who had a song deleted would be able to re-download it as soon as the next patch comes out, if they haven't been able to do so in the meantime.

"Whilst this has been a really unfortunate experience both for me, my team and especially for you, the positive side of this story is that we have now put in place several steps to ensure that this does not happen again, including a more vigorous QA period and, starting next year, a Closed Beta where SingStar fans will be able to experience new features before they are released," Ranyard concluded.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 2 years ago

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

  • JahB #1 2 years ago

    massive QA fail. guess somebody's gonna get fired

  • neilka #2 2 years ago

    "a Closed Beta where SingStar fans will be able to experience new features before they are released"

    Sign up now for the latest corruption, crashing and deletion features!

  • budgietheii #3 2 years ago

    Is the 4.2 update still prompted for download when you start the game or have they removed it?

  • nuanimal #4 2 years ago

    This is a PR nightmare not just for the Devs, but also, for DLC.

    What makes it worse though is that (sorry please excuse the generalization) SingStar's player base is mainly non-core gamers, and the likely players won't be as undertanding as other gamers ("Where's my stuff gone?";). This would likely make people think twice about DLC and updates in future.

    I would defo be curious to know how many people out the player base this has affected though?

  • login_name #5 2 years ago

    That's pretty bad, but I'm sure there's more to it than simply poor testing, usually is. Office politics an' all that.

  • oreillymj #6 2 years ago

    I wonder if any of the recent disc based releases use the 4.2 software. That would be a bigger problem, because if your machine isn't on PSN, it will never auto-update and you'll be stuck with a game that crashes. Luckily it can't wipe stuff off the Blu-Ray.

    I am surprised that neither Sony or MS provide free firmware/game patch discs in game retailers that would scan your game data and apply patches for people who do have access to PSN/Live updates.

  • Bigglesworth #7 2 years ago

    @oreillymj
    Unlikely. Those discs will have gone into production weeks, if not months, ago.

  • Fletche #8 2 years ago

    Is a good job we haven't played for a couple of weeks, I do sympathise as I work in a testing enviroment and things can slip through no matter how many scenarios you can think of.

    Would still have been pissed off if this had of happened, not as much as Mrs Fletche though!

  • Shadders #9 2 years ago

    @nuanimal

    "What makes it worse though is that (sorry please excuse the generalization) SingStar's player base is mainly non-core gamers, and the likely players won't be as undertanding as other gamers ("Where's my stuff gone?";). This would likely make people think twice about DLC and updates in future. "

    The typical SingStar player is also unlikely to regularly check the PlayStation Europe blog to see if any game directors have issued apologies.

  • makeamazing #10 2 years ago

    My Mics had run out of battery power, so fortunately i hadnt updated the game... which is good as I would have only got complaints from the kids :)

  • Lee_Morris #11 2 years ago

    I played it yesterday after downloading the patch and nothing happened to me although I'm gonna check when I get home. Does eurogamer know how wipespread this is?

  • jefranklin18 #12 2 years ago

    @Lee_Morris: don't think it is that common to be honest. Certainly I have had not any issues with mine. I lost one when I quit the game before a song download was complete but as I was drunk and it was Carl Douglas' Kung Fu fighting, it was probably for the best.

  • mthomas50 #13 2 years ago

    I downloaded 5 songs last week but lost 62 from my carousel! Luckily it let me redownload them (for free) but it took a while on my poor net connection.

  • Pablo2k5 #14 2 years ago

    I lost a shed load of songs and some of my high scores!

    I thought I was going mad...
    Edited by 2 at 16/11/09 @ 23:46