And you think server downtime is bad. Spare a thought for players of Korean MMO M2, which thanks to a little accident has actually been deleted. Forever. Like, it’s gone, and is never coming back.
The game, which was developed by Japanese studio Sankando, was undergoing maintenance on October 21 when integral code was deleted from the game’s databases. The kicker being this code wasn’t stored or backed up anywhere else. With that code missing, the game couldn’t function, so the whole damn thing had to come down.
Or so Sankando and the game’s operators in Korea, Hangame, say! That’s a pretty bush league mistake to make, which has some people suspicious as to the true motives of the game’s removal.
I’m erring on the side of it being real, though. I mean, a game that sucks might be a problem, but the most embarrassing thing in MMO history doesn’t sound like a very effective cover story.
＜更新11/15＞【M2 -神甲綺譚-】サービス休止について ｢M2 -神甲綺譚-｣のサービス休止について更新いたしました。[Hangame, via igxpro & GI.biz]
Some guy
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 7:53 PMI did not know that something like that could happen. Not to be racist but in an Asian country of all places!
klanky
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 10:29 PMEeeevery racist commment starts with a ‘Not to be racist, but’
klanky
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 10:29 PMEeeevery racist commment starts with a ‘Not to be racist, but’
Nyquist
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 3:47 AMIs there an echo in here?
Nyquist
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 3:49 AM…. Is there an echo in here?
Sandviscerate
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 5:06 AMI don’t think that’s worked entirely how you intended it to.
Will
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 7:56 PMhmm… I think this would just be an excuse. They would have backed up codes from development. At least you’d hope so.
TheJagji
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 8:05 PMWelcome too two weeks ago. lol
giort08
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 8:37 PMIndeed, for a minute there I thought it was a bit of the old Déjà vu, then I realised it was just Kotaku US lol
Jamie
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 8:15 PMI gotta agree with Luke. I can’t imagine a reason that would actually sound worse than this. They’ve pretty much killed any reliability they have in the industry!
Chazz
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 9:35 PMIt’s a Korean MMO, they have like several million of them. I’m sure they’ll be fine.
thxultra
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 9:35 PMReal nerds make backups of the backups…
Senor Freebie
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 10:13 PMUnless the developer was on contract to the distributor and both had separate and very bad data management skills / technicians this is fake.
James
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 10:21 PMIf only this happened to World of Warcraft, oh the sight it would be. Hehehehe.
MadDogMike
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 3:50 AMBeing a software developer, I don’t see how this is even remotely possible.
Production servers (servers which are actually running the software/game) don’t contain the uncompiled development code, just the compiled game and its databases.
What happened to:
- The uncompiled code?
- The compiled installation packages?
- Testing environments? Testing servers should exist with the most recent version of the databases/software (they do test their software before they release it, right?)
- Source code repositories with version control are used by nearly every development house in the world these days, not only to keep backups of each version, but also to allow teams of people to work on the code simultaneously. I refuse to believe that a game development company wouldn’t have a repository with a history of all previous versions.
whatever3003
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 3:44 PM^ agreed on all points, however what is more likely is that the live db wasn’t backed up properly (or at all) and it died leaving the game a write off. How would they get all their subscribers and their data back? Catastrophic and I’ve seen it happen more than once, although not to something so big.
If this is what happened to them they deserve to have been wiped out.
Ahtaps
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 9:02 PMIt’s not entirely unheard of for bad backup practices to result in key parts of systems being completely obliterated. Just read the whole Distribute.IT story.
Whether it’s truly the loss of key files with no backups or an attempt to cover up something else, it’s all incredibly dodgy.