Crippling Bug Found In Borderlands’ Co-op

Sure, Borderlands is more fun with a friend – but it’s also more dangerous. Not long after the insanely addictive RPS was released, gamers started posting some serious complaints to Gearbox’s technical support forum regarding a devastating bug in Borderlands – and isn’t a King Spiderant or Mothrakk.

Players are complaining about the loss of skill points after joining or leaving co-op games, with no way to get them back. The affected character is still the same level they were before the problem – they just don’t have any points in their skill tree, which removes all of their passive abilities. Turning the game off doesn’t fix the problem, and trying to reallocate skill points at a New-U station also has no effect. Other players have had similar problems with weapon proficiencies being reset to zero as well.

The cause of the problem is unknown at the moment, but one of the common symptoms is poor connection quality before the bug occurs, which have led some to believe it’s a packet loss problem.

Gearbox has acknowledged the bug is real, listing the frequency of both the loss of skill points and weapon proficiency progress as being “Very Low” on its Known Issues list. It also states the disappearance of equipped items upon leaving co-op games as known bug, though fewer users have complained about it.

The list confirms the bug exists in both the 360 and PS3 versions, but PC users have also started complaining about the same issues. Borderlands’ lead programmer Steve Jones has been promptly responding to complaints on Gearbox’s forums and appears optimistic. In regards to players losing their skill points, he posted, “Your report has been heard and we're working on it. Unfortunately there isn't a fix just yet, but when one is available we hope to be able to repair as much of your character data as possible.”

We’re betting Jones’ comments won’t win over skeptical gamers or those who have already had their character crippled by the bug. After all, what’s he supposed to say? “Holy sh*t, that’s a big problem. You’re totally screwed...” But it makes sense that a quick fix could work; gaining skill points is uniform – you get one point for each level. And since players affected by the bug are reportedly still at the same level, it should be easy enough to reinstate the correct number of points. Right?

Weapon proficiencies may be another story. These progress independently from your level, and depend on how much you use a specific class of weapon. If that data is lost, there might not be an easy way to get it back. But don’t give up hope just yet; in a post related to one user’s weapon proficiency not increasing, Jones states that, “The proficiency points are stored separately from the proficiency level. This bug appears to be setting proficiency points down to 0 so you don’t see any progress since you have less proficiency than is required for your proficiency level.” If this is the case, then perhaps the separately stored data could help Gearbox reinstate lost proficiency levels too.

Whatever the outcome, Gearbox has been explicit that their goal is to restore all the data missing from affected characters. Whether that’s possible remains to be seen, but we’re going to go ahead and chalk this one up to being another unfortunate example of the one-save-for-everything approach screwing over gamers.

We will update you as soon as Gearbox announces/releases a solution. Until then your best bet is to manually copy your Borderlands save to an Xbox 360 Memory Card from the Dashboard menu before you play online. Hey, it looks like we finally have a reason to buy a memory card!