Dev Denies Sabotaging PC Game With "Time Bomb" Code

The developer behind indie offroading game Spintires has spoken up to claim he did not "sabotage" his own game as it's being suggested he did. Players recently reported on places like Reddit and the game's official forums that the PC title contained "time bombs" in the code that made the game at times unplayable. But the developer, Pavel Zagrebelnyy, said in a statement to Gamasutra that he did no such thing, though he did acknowledge that Spintires contains a "time-related" bug that was never fixed.

"Well, I don't understand who and why started the rumors of sabotaging--apparently they are based on reverse engineering Spintires code?" he told the site. "Anyways, publisher (Oovee) have the source codes so they know (they should) I didn't sabotage Spintires--there is no such code!"

"But there is in fact a time-related bug (a self-check uses time functions to see if game wasn't cracked by pirates) which was not fixed in time (because we have little to no communicating with Oovee.)"

This bug was fixed earlier this week, Zagrebelnyy said, though it has apparently not yet been implemented into the game. "I don't know what actually prevents Oovee from going with it now," he said.

Another interesting element to this story is that Zagrebelnyy and Oovee have been at odds. The programmer claims in an interview with Eurogamer he is owned a "s***load of money according to our contract."

He reiterated this point in the new statement, further claiming that his efforts to get Oovee to tell him why they won't pay have been unsuccessful thus far.

"Yes--it's true, they violated our contract from day one basically and still owe me lots of money," Zagrebelnyy told Gamasutra. "What makes it worse is that they don't ever comment on that if I ask if they plan to resolve the issue anyhow. I was compensated but not in full.

"But I would never do something that would affect the gamers! In fact I do my best to make sure the game only brings joy to whoever plays it. So like I said--fixed game version should be LIVE soon--and I will try to pick better partners next time."

For lots more on this story, be sure to read Eurogamer's development overview and this piece from Rock Paper Shotgun that summarizes the events and more. This Kotaku piece also covers the issues.

In the aftermath, Spintires has been removed from sale on Steam, though the game's product page remains online.