How have save file glitches affected your experience?

[Maximuswood]

The only thing it effected for me was my choices, thankfully I have the game on the PS3 as well as the PC. I just wish my saves on the laptop weren't broken.

[be_prime]

As a programmer, I understand that bugs in software are going to happen regardless of the best efforts of programmers and QA staff. I'm sure Telltale isn't any happier about this than their affected customers -- they obviously care about making games, and want players to enjoy the experience.

I'm affected by the issue described elsewhere in this thread where I can't continue on to Episode 5 from my saved game. When I try and start Episode 5 it asks me if I want to generate random choices, and if I play back through the final sequence of Episode 4 from my saved game it shows Episode 5 as "Coming soon."

This is a really unfortunate bug because for me, the continuity of my choices between episodes makes me an active, emotionally invested participant in the story. Without that continuity it's like watching a pilot episode of a television show: interesting, perhaps, but flat. How much fun is a choose-your-own-adventure book if you're forced to open to a random page whenever you read the book?

My expectation is that Telltale will work to fix the issue, and that they'll review their development practices to prevent this category of issues in the future. I can wait a while to finish the series. Still, it's regrettable!

[Luigi01080]

took down my 4 episodes i had completed. Right before i was about to play episode 5 my save file glitched and i lost it all. I still played episode 5 but it gave me random choices and it just wasnt right. Gonna replay from episode 1 and redo my choices and get it done right.

[Mrow]

To me, it's been more than a minor annoyance but less of a game-breaker.

I got the Season 1 pack from Steam recently. I'm sure it was buggier back then. I'm still shocked that the Episode 1-2 import bug hasn't been fixed. It happened to me, I noticed it right away during the preview to the next episode. I overwrote my prefs.prop file in My Documents folder with the steamapps copy. I also had to do the same for Episode 3-4, but that looks like a rarer bug.

I haven't lost data, but I don't like having to place a back-up copy of my save file on my Desktop whenever I make a major decision just in case they're wiped. They haven't been, thankfully.

I've enjoyed the series and plan to purchase Season 2, but only after it's come out in a full pack. I hope to avoid save bugs that way.

I know most people are louder when something they've purchased breaks, but three quarters of the people voting experiencing bugs, and over a third of them considering the series ruined as a result? That's really bad. Especially since most people aren't loud and just return the product. Of course this doesn't apply to digital purchases...

The flag data is stored just in the prefs.prop file, right? They don't get very big. Maybe Telltale could have made a back-up save slot that empties and overwrites the other save slot after being loaded, like the quick save function in most roguelikes. It may have made save-scumming easier but people are already doing that with all the save file bugs anyway.

[wrex08]

Got a save glitch when Episode 3 was released and then the same happened with Episode 5. Got it fixed pretty fast (many thanks to the helpful community here). Still, I hope Telltale will learn their lesson with those glitches and we won't see them again in Season 2.

[Theudeon]

Ruined it for me.
Got it during the Steam sale and the save bugs messed up my game two times during Episode 3. Sadly, the fixes provided by other forum users didn't help me.
I'll wait a bit before playing Episode 1 and 2 for the third time. I'm pretty sour on the game and Telltale right now and I couldn't enjoy playing it. If Telltale fixes the issues I'll gladly play it. If not, well, then I won't buy their games anymore.

Also, the spelling mistakes in the subtitles really irritated me. Those aren't nearly as embarrassing as the save bugs, of course, but it adds to the picture of sloppy and lazy development.

[nisibee]

I feel like I spent more time trying to get save games to work than actually playing. Did the version straight from Telltale 1-3, then switched to Xbox 4-5. Had to do workarounds to carry on decisions 1-3, then just gave up 3-5 when nothing seemed to work after spending a few hours figuring out save games for each episode.

Didn't feel emotionally invested in this game as a result.

[holeydonut]

I wonder if we should add an item in the poll asking whether or not the packaged disc failure on Xbox has ruined people's gaming experience.

[ghost_matt]

The game started over and I lost all my progress. Since people report that this has happened more than once to them and they've encountered other game breaking glitches later on, I'm hesitant to continue playing until this has been fixed because I don't want to get all the way to episode 5 and then have it start over again. I have the retail disc on Xbox 360.

[thestalkinghead]

does anybody have save problems on steam?
i have been backing up my saves since i heard of the problems, but i have only had minor graphical glitches that fixed themselves

[JordyLicht]

I had to start over twice. I was really annoyed and punched a lot of air and threw around a lot of bad words, but the pure awesomeness of the game just made it okay again. As soon as I was able to play through episode 3 to 5, I was a happy camper.

It took me almost 6 months until I was able to download all episodes and I almost got to the point that I just wanted to uninstall and try to get a refund somehow. But the story is just so amazing and as a Walking Dead fan it's really difficult to disappoint (even though I have a bad feeling about the new Activision game).
It's easy to get pissed off at Telltale, but they did a lot of patching and I'm sure they were just as frustrated as their customers. No company wants to disappoint their customers, that's like not wanting to make any money.

The fact that they are making Mac compatibale games is a BIG plus for me. There aren't a lot of companies porting their games to Mac. I'm really grateful for this.

[packfannatic]

I played through all four episodes now I buy Episode 5 and sit down to finish what had been a great experience and my save file is gone! I truly wish I could get my money back for the whole thing because now in order for me to get the most out of this game I'll have to start over and HOPE it doesn't happen again. I am severely disappointed in you TellTale.

[Notsileous]

I just encountered the glitch starting ep 4 but managed to fix it. It seems like the choices are saved to a save slot regardless of whether or not there is even a save present. I started a ep 4 in a new slot with random choices then exited it before it auto saved and started another ep 4 in the same slot and it did not give me the option of using random choices and when it started it was the same ones as before.
So I booted up my original save and went to ep 4 and it stArted up with my choices intact.

[owner070]

I never had a glitch or lagg in game or with the save file

[Hudomonkey]

My personal save file was fine but both my Brother's and My seccond game I was playing with my friend both got corrupted

I wanted to show my friend the ending of walking dead as we almost finished episode 4 but we don't have enough time to fully replay it and neither of us can stand not saving Doug

[Jared776]

Wow. I'm glad now that I encountered this glitch for episode 2, instead of making it all the way to 4 or 5. Still, definitely a game-ruiner. I mean, the MAIN IDEA of the game that your choices matter. They say it all the time, it pops up whenever you make a choice. Then to make something as simple as the previous decisions not carry over into the next game? And I just bought the game yesterday, so there is certainly no 'patch' out there. I'm no video game programmer, but I feel like it shouldn't be difficult to carry over a simple 'decisions' file from your save to the next episode. If only I had bought this on PC instead of Live, I could have just done Telltale's work for them.
But I don't think this thread or my message will ever be read by Telltale. After all, if they cared about this issue they wouldn't have released all the episodes, and even come out with a disc version without bothering with any sort of fix. Or, you know, maybe responded to one of these many, many threads of the same problem. I call for a refund!

[IncrediblyDisappointed]

I decided to pick up the last 2 episodes because they are on sale, even though I knew it was a terrible idea because of how broken and unplayable episode 3 was. I threw caution into the wind and tried to load up my save file so I could continue my game, just for the game to not only delete my save but to make it so I can't even start episode 4 without being kicked back to episode 1.

Does anyone know how I can get a refund for this scam of a game?

[Kydosan]

This is my first post on this forum - I only came here looking for a solution to the saves issues as I've lost mine twice.

As there doesn't seem to be a solution, I think it's fair to say it's absolutely ruined the game for me.

Sort it out, TTG, this is completely unacceptable.

[jnoble]

Xbox360. Wife and I played four episodes through, making choices, becoming invested in the story. Started fifth episode, only to find the first episode introduction playing. Thought for a moment it might be some Clever Storytelling Device, re-living the key events or something, but once I saw the help text telling me to point to the rear-view window as if I were a new player, I knew something was wrong. Quit out of the game, went to see the save game, and sure enough it said I was on Episode 1. Apparently overwrote the game I'd put hours into. Went to start the game again, again choosing Episode 5, and it was willing to start me there but with NONE of my previous choices saved. Must be using some defaults or something -- different people were on the search, dialogue about different choices than I'd actually made. What a betrayal of the player -- to have a bug that's even CAPABLE of wiping out the one key thing that is is importance to the player: the player's choices so far. As the game itself (and its hype) repeatedly emphasize: it's about your choices, and how they affect the game. Went through Episode 5 cringing every time the game mentioned some choice that I had not in fact made. Just going through the motions, didn't care any more, the gamemakers didn't care about the players, and I no longer cared about their creation. Utter fail. I want a refund of my money, because you can't refund my time.

[owner070]

There is only one solution: after every episode just save your save files on a usb or extern hdd.