Dark Pictures fans complain at two month wait for crucial fixes
UPDATE: Patches now live, but some save files unsalvageable.
Nearly three months on, The Dark Pictures developer Supermassive Games has now released its long-awaited patches for horror games Man of Medan and Little Hope, following their late September updates which left players with various problems.
There are fixes here for infinite loading screen issues and missing collectables, but only a partial fix for corrupted save files. Even with this latest set of patches installed, some saves will not be retrievable, Supermassive said.
"We are sorry to report that due to the nature of the update, some players' save games will unfortunately remain corrupted. Players who played the game after the previous update using pre-existing save games are likely to be affected. Please accept our sincere apologies for this, and for any inconvenience caused."
Fans of Supermassive Games' Dark Pictures Anthology are unhappy at the long wait for what they see as crucial fixes to earlier games in the series.
The horror franchise's first two titles - Man of Medan and Little Hope - were updated on 28th September with a spruce-up designed to introduce difficulty settings, QTE warnings and more accessibility options. Man of Medan even gained a "previously unseen" story chapter.
But these updates also had the unintended consequence of introducing a raft of bugs to the games, with a number of players complaining of being unable to save or make progress past certain points.
Supermassive Games acknowledged these issues in a reddit post dated 17th October, which listed that it was aware of problems including "save game issues, progression blockers, missing collectibles (i.e. secrets, bearings and pictures) and missing audio/visual features".
"Our teams are actively working on creating fixes for these issues, and plan to release them in a patch as soon as it is ready," the Dark Pictures series' community manager wrote at the time.
More than a month later, however, fans are still waiting for these fixes to materialise.
Recent posts by Supermassive Games' staff in the same thread have continued to respond to fans, though players waiting to finish their games have said it feels like little progress has been made.
There's also a feeling of unfairness among some fans on consoles - as Supermassive was able to simply roll-back its updates for the games on Steam.
"The team are committed to investigating the reported issues thoroughly," Supermassive wrote earlier this month. "They are working hard to put a patch together and once there's more details about this available, I'll be sharing them.
"As I've mentioned elsewhere, the Steam versions of the two games were rolled back as it is a platform which allows for this. It isn't something that the team are able to do on the console however, which I'm sorry for.
"I'd like to assure you that the team are treating these issues as a priority, and fully appreciate the frustration that players such as yourself are feeling about these issues. I'll provide more information when available, and appreciate your understanding in the meantime."
"Fixes are being prepared and a patch will be released as soon as it is ready," a Bandai Namco spokesperson told Eurogamer today. "Once we know more information and can share it, we'll do so! Thanks for your patience and understanding in the meantime."