Myth II Maker Bites Bullet

Bungie Software may have once had dreams of a killer launch of Myth II, but today it awoke from a nightmare instead.

Yesterday, the company chose to recall the full manufacturing run of Myth II: Soulblighter. And while Bungie is hoping for the best, it can't be too sure of the recall's fallout. "It's too early to tell what the repercussions will be with retailers," Bungie's Doug Zartman told GameSpot News Wednesday. Zartman said the bug was discovered by one of Bungie's overseas publishers. Why it wasn't caught earlier - by one of Bungie's QA team in Chicago - is a question that remains unanswered.

While very, very few games made it into gamers' hands (we did speak to one gamer who had his copy wrenched from his hands by a concerned Electronics Boutique salesperson), Zartman said a downloadable patch would be available as early as Wednesday afternoon on Bungie's site. Still, the company is recommending that gamers wait for version 1.1 of the game.

The bug (which affects Windows users only) is severe - the worst possible scenario being the complete erasure of one's root directory. Given that no full deletions have been reported, Bungie may have gotten out of this with its reputation intact. "We're all feeling a lot more positive than we did yesterday," Zartman said. He expects new versions of the game to be available at retailers in couple of weeks.

And what about those thousands and thousands of buggy Myth II discs? Zartman said Bungie might save a couple as souvenirs.