Assassin’s Creed III DLC is erasing player data

By Anthony John Agnello Published December 7, 2012

assassin's creed 3 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Careful downloading Assassin’s Creed III downloadable expansions like The Hidden Secrets and The Tyranny of King Washington. Those add-ons to Ubisoft’s adventure game can cause no end of trouble if they’re downloaded at the wrong time. A number of players on Ubisoft’s official forum are reporting that the downloadable content is erasing their save files, forcing them to completely restart the game.

Recommended Videos

A thread opened on Ubisoft’s forum on Tuesday with one user reporting that downloading The Hidden Secrets caused their money to disappear as well as all story missions to reset but all side missions to be labeled as complete. While this user reported the problem on PlayStation 3, others playing on Xbox 360 followed up and reported the same problem.

Ubisoft representatives popped into the forum to confirm that the glitch is in fact real. “Just a quick heads up, we’re able to reproduce this issue at the studio and are working on a fix/workaround,” reads Ubisoft’s statement, “From what we can tell, this problem seems to be rare and should generally only affect a small number of players. That said, we’re taking the speedy and complete resolution of this very seriously.”

While an update isn’t ready as of this writing, Ubisoft did post a tip on how to avoid the problem with the following statement: “AVOIDING THIS BUG: Do not load your saved AC3 game while the DLC is downloading in the background. This appears to be the key trigger for this bug. You can do anything else you want to do, just don’t load up your saved game and play while the DLC is downloading.”

Assassin’s Creed III is just the latest of 2012’s most popular games to be afflicted by glitches that can potentially wipe out a player’s progress. Shortly after Borderlands 2 was released in September, players discovered that the game was suddenly deleting their “Bad Ass Rank” in the game, closing off a number of perks as well as side missions.

Ubisoft especially has been affected by consumer-unfriendly glitches. The company’s Uplay client—an app for purchasing Ubisoft games as well as playing them—was vulnerable to hacking due to a specific plug-in.

The age of digital distribution is great since developers can fix bugs in games following release, but digital distribution causes plenty of new headaches in the process.

Topics

Action Games

Anthony John Agnello

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. He works as the Community Manager of Joystiq.com and his writing has…

Gaming

How to get Knowledge Points and what they do in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

One of the protagonists in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

By the time we get to Assassin's Creed Shadows, most of us will be familiar with how the games work. Since transitioning more towards RPGs than stealth games, the titles have not only gotten longer but also embraced skill trees. Naoe and Yasuke each have unique progression paths to work through, but right away you will notice that most of the best abilities are gated off. Like Scouts, Knowledge Points are a new feature that you will need to master if you want to be the best assassin possible. We'll share all our knowledge about Knowledge Points with you.
How Knowledge Points work and how to get them

Knowledge Points are a separate system to XP that allows both Naoe and Yasuke to unlock the better and more powerful skills in all their skill trees. Unlike XP, you can't earn them by performing normal tasks or taking out enemies. Instead, Knowledge Points are rewarded for doing specific non-violent activities in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Gaming

How to get and use Scouts in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Naoe perched on a spire in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

There are plenty of familiar mechanics returning in Assassin's Creed Shadows, such as fast travel and earning XP to level up both Naoe and Yasuke. One of the many new features you will be introduced to early in the game is the Scouts. Once you unlock the Hideout and are given your initial Scouts, they will become an essential tool for finding your next objective and gathering vital resources needed to upgrade your Hideout. However, how to use them or get more isn't very clearly explained for how essential they are. Let us fill you in on all the details about how Scouts work in Assassin's Creed Shadows.
How to get and use Scouts

Scouts have several primary functions, the first and most important being to scout areas on the world map. Very often, your next objective will not be placed on the map, but instead, you will have directions on the rough location of where it will be. This is where Scouts are necessary. By following the game's directions on the map, you need to put your cursor over the area it is describing and assign one or more Scouts to reveal the area. You do this by pressing Square or X to bring up the dispatch menu and then deploying them at that area. You can see how many Scouts are available on the bottom left of your screen and can assign multiple to an area by pressing the right trigger. The more Scouts you use to scout an area, the larger the area they will reveal.

Gaming

How long is Assassin’s Creed Shadows?

Yasuke in Assassin's Creed Shadows fighting an enemy. He's dressed in his samurai armor.

It's no secret that the Assassin's Creed games have gotten longer and longer over the years. This is typical for Ubisoft open-world titles, but many are hoping that Assassin's Creed Shadows has scaled back on the bloat a bit. There's always fast travel and finding the fastest ways to earn XP to cut down on the grind, but there's only so much time that can be saved. If you're worried that this game might be another 100-hour time investment to fully complete, let's use our Eagle Vision to scout out how long Assassin's Creed Shadows is before you start playing.
How long is Assassin's Creed Shadows?

As you would expect, the amount of time you could put into Assassin's Creed Shadows will vary wildly based on how you approach it. You can focus on just the story and nothing else, tackle a handful of side missions and activities, or attempt to complete anything and everything the game has to offer.