If you’re playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on Xbox One, you should watch out for this.
Players are reporting a couple of ways save games are becoming corrupted. For some, it happens out of nowhere, after dying. Others are convinced it’s related to a specific mission. But for most, it happens after leaving The Witcher 3 suspended for several hours.
Game Informer executive editor Andrew Reiner ended up writing a whole rant about it:
I’m now playing the game scared. Kill a monster. SAVE! Talk to a villager. SAVE! Pick berries off of a bush. SAVE! Losing progress in a game like The Witcher 3, which heavily favors choice and emergent storytelling, can be crushing. Getting a second chance to correct a wrong or see a story play out in a different way is something no player should experience unless they are playing the game for a second time. I now feel like I’m Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, sick of hearing the same conversations, bored of the same events, and praying that my game saves and I can see new content again.
CD Projekt RED ended up sending Reiner a few temporarily solutions, which I’ll pass on below:
One, avoid suspending the game. (That’s a shitty solution!)
Two, perform a hard reset of the Xbox One, which involves removing the power cable:
- Power down your console
- Unplug the power cable from the back of the Xbox One.
- Wait for two minutes
- Plug the power cable back into the back of the Xbox One
- Monitor the power brick, waiting for it to cycle from a white light to an orange light
- Turn the power on.
- This will perform a hard reset of the system.
Three, swap your local saves with your cloud saves:
- WARNING! There is another possible solution, however, this may result in losing progress if cloud saving s not on (for more information on cloud saving please consult http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360… )
- Go to the console’s settings / system / clear local saved games.
- Upon re-starting the game should re-sync, become functional, and progress should be retained as long as the cloud is on.
A spokesperson for CD Projekt RED told me the studio is aware of the issue, and while there’s no timeframe for a fix, it’s a “priority.”
“We are aware of this issue and we are working to address it as soon as possible,” said the company in a statement. “Everyone affected should contact our consumer service as there’s a temporary solution which can help them.”
You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.