Dead Island dev build accidentally released on Steam

Techland's Dead Island hasn't got off to the most auspicious of starts. Steam received a wonky build when the open-world zombie shooter launched today, which was apparently intended for developers, not players, and suffers a few... quirks.

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Techland's Dead Island hasn't got off to the most auspicious of starts. Steam received a wonky build when the open-world zombie shooter launched today, which was apparently intended for developers, not players, and suffers a few... quirks.

"We deeply regret that an incorrect version of Dead Island was inadvertently made available to players on Steam launch in North America," reads a note on the game's Facebook page.

"We are very sorry for any issues you may have experienced while playing the game - the correct, patched version will be made available to North American players ASAP."

Steam players noticed some very unusual behavior, such as the 'Y' key activating "noclip" mode. This would let players fly through the air and pass through solid objects, and handily also wiped out their character's stats. Ars Technica's own Ben Kuchera fell victim to the bug, having to start a new game.

The launch was also accompanied by a day-one patch with 37 fixes.

Publisher Deep Silver insists that the rest of the world is "not affected by this situation," and will receive the fully-patched version when Dead Island launches elsewhere on Friday. North Americans, you might want to hold off on playing any more until the game's ship-shape, as some on Facebook are reporting that their saved games have been outright wiped by updates.

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  • reply
    September 6, 2011 1:30 PM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Dead Island dev build accidentally released on Steam.

    Techland's Dead Island hasn't got off to the most auspicious of starts. Steam received a wonky build when the open-world zombie shooter launched today, which was apparently intended for developers, not players, and suffers a few... quirks.

    • reply
      September 6, 2011 1:40 PM

      Protip devs: Spend more time on the game and less time on advertising and trailers

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      September 6, 2011 2:06 PM

      This doesn't look better than L4D2 to me. Especially since guns are featured so late in the game.

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        September 6, 2011 2:07 PM

        it's L4D but, your weapons degrade overtime and you level up!

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          September 6, 2011 4:04 PM

          it's L4D but, your weapons degrade overtime and you level up and so do the bad guys so you can't even tell the fights are exactly the same!

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        September 6, 2011 2:47 PM

        Call me crazy but I actually find that guns make zombie games less fun. Something about being forced to get up close to your enemies to fight them makes it more exciting/challenging.

        So honestly this game looks pretty awesome, melee combat looks well thought out and it's not just random swinging. Plus you can upgrade all the weapons and shit.

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          September 6, 2011 2:47 PM

          Oh and I would say it's more like Dead Rising than L4D.

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        September 6, 2011 4:14 PM

        Can you jump kick a zombie and then punch their face into the ground in L4D? Nope, therefore Dead Island kicks ass.

        L4D is amazing as well

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        September 6, 2011 4:34 PM

        I love how a lot of people here cannot accept a game at face value and always have to compare it to another one. This is not supposed to be a game close to L4D. This is a RPG game. Oh man it has zombies!

        A lot of you who do this are probably missing out on some incredible games.

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      September 6, 2011 2:46 PM

      Now it's almost guaranteed to show up in a steam sale.

      "Hey we patched our game a bunch! Please buy it!!!"

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      September 6, 2011 3:03 PM

      So what have publishers learned this month?

      Dont mislead about your fucking DRM (From Dust)
      Upload the proper fucking game build, i mean how do you fuck up picking the right release candidate? lol

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        September 6, 2011 3:18 PM

        Sounds like they don't use any sort of build/code management system, which is almost inconceivable...

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          September 6, 2011 7:06 PM

          That would be really odd. Maybe one day in a postmortem it will be revealed..

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        September 7, 2011 5:43 AM

        My favorite part about the build is that it means no one tested downloading and playing it before you know releasing it to the public.

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      September 6, 2011 3:04 PM

      LOL

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      September 6, 2011 3:28 PM

      It won't ever load for me. :P

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      September 6, 2011 3:38 PM

      I played it for an hour or so last night and it worked pretty okay and was fun...until I suddenly could not ascend stairs anymore and got stuck in a bathroom.

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        September 6, 2011 3:59 PM

        I got stuck in that same bathroom and had to load a save.

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        September 6, 2011 3:59 PM

        That happened to me too! I bet you got stuck exactly where I was. Just start jumping and swinging your weapon at the same time and you'll be able to get out. My very first startup of the game, i got stuck right when the FMV was over and you were in that room after you passed out. - couldn't move at all. Though, I DID get the STEAM version and not the "final" version everyone else got.

        Make no mistake though, this game is still fun as hell. I've crashed 4 times in my first 4 hours and STILL I come back for more. Not many games can do that for me.

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      September 6, 2011 3:59 PM

      After playing for a bit it's rough around the edges but actually a little fun. Combat can get satisfying with better weapons.

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        September 6, 2011 4:20 PM

        Never been so satisfied to smash a zombies face than with this game.

    • reply
      September 6, 2011 4:23 PM

      They said it will be fixed "asap"

      "We deeply regret that an incorrect version of Dead Island was inadvertently made available to players on Steam launch in North America. We are very sorry for any issues you may have experienced while playing the game - the correct, patched version will be made available to North American players ASAP."

      • reply
        September 6, 2011 4:31 PM

        Then people will complain endlessly about downloading the game again. Dead Island moar like FAIL ISLAND amirite? LULZ

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          September 6, 2011 5:40 PM

          You don't need to download again, just verify game cache.

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            September 7, 2011 5:45 AM

            Well really it should just be downloading new executables that aren't dev build.

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      September 6, 2011 4:32 PM

      This is bullshit. Started first quest, started to stutter and eventually ran at like 1 FPS and locked up. Had to alt tab to kill the process. Fuck.

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      September 6, 2011 4:34 PM

      why isn't it updated yet? if the game is shipping to retail how hard can it be to put the shipping stuff on steam already?!

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      September 6, 2011 4:54 PM

      Called it. Also, HAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHHLOOOOOOOOOOL

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      September 7, 2011 6:56 AM

      A company that doesn't even notice something this big I have to assume missed the mark on alot of small things too. I wasn't really interested in the game except for shackhype and this has put the nail in the coffin and I will pass.

      A company really has to put more care into their product.

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        September 7, 2011 7:01 AM

        well from the tidbits I can gather, its only the north american version on steam that is 'wrong', if that is the case it can be related to localization, maybe the localization was done by another party ? sure they should check it before they release it but, yeah.

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      September 7, 2011 11:18 AM

      Pretty much expected this result and the overall quality of the game doesn't surprise me either, based on the last few trailers which were not encouraging. Saves me $$ though in a crowded fall. Back to L4D2...still the master of the genre. :)

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      September 8, 2011 8:29 AM

      Screw Deep Silver...

      I applied there as a tester for their games and they didn't take me cause I don't know programming code...

      FFS cheap bastards. Fuckem. This aint Rockstar Vienna anymore.

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      September 9, 2011 12:01 AM

      Got this at midnight (uk).

      Looks great and seems interesting after an hour but does run a bit crap!

      I max it out and get some pretty noticable slow down.... my rig should not be struggling with this.

      Story seems... well i havent seen one yet but the setting and the fact is more of an RPG than i expected are nice surprises

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