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EVE-Online Patch Makes XP Unbootable
Nobo writes "CCP's latest major patch to the EVE-Online client, Trinity, comes with an optional DX9-enhanced graphics patch that dramatically improves the visual quality of the in-game graphics through remade models, textures, and HDR. It also has an unfortunate bug: the incredibly stupid choice of boot.ini as a game configuration file, coupled with an errant extra backslash in the installer configuration. The result is that anyone who installs the enhanced graphics patch overwrites the windows XP c:\boot.ini file with the EVE client configuration file, bricking the machine on the next boot. Discussion in a couple of forums threads is becoming understandably heated."
Wow... if this story isn't a wild exaggeration, then this is about as unfortunate as a game-bug can possibly get. Of course, a reasonably savvy user could probably have an affected system working again fairly quickly without any data-loss, but my own experience suggests that such users will be in the minority.
The only gaming-related parallel I can think of relates to the uninstall programme bug for the 2001 version of Pool of Radiance. In that instance, attempting to uninstall the game (something many users would do not long after installing it, given the tedious and half-baked nature of the game) had a good chance of wiping the user's hard disk. I actually deliberately triggered this bug for fun myself when I decided it was time to wipe my old machine after I bought a new system. If anybody can think of any other examples on this kind of scale, please do share them.
I wonder if this is going to cause any unpleasant and potentially expensive legal repercussions for CCP, from users who have lost data while trying to fix the issue?
More likely cause: The patch was tested but the patcher was not.
Don't forget that this is an issue with the the *patcher* that was not present in the full premium install from scratch, only the upgrade (which is probably the route most people would've taken, in fairness). It basically boils down to a simple typo in one version of the installer and rebooting to test the installer might not be part of their QA tests for the patcher.
Really what they should catch flak for is not a bad typo, but as the summary points out having a game file with the same name as a critical OS file. Boot.ini isn't a new thing, in fact it is on its way out with Vista, so there's really no excuse to claim you didn't know that Windows had such a file. It's been there since 1995 or so.