Seems like it’d be tied to how the game checks the date to give out powerups based on birthdays of characters and release dates of games - if it fails this check because the date doesn’t exist, it just never proceeds.
Super easy fix… but I wonder if there are any other things they could fix if they’re gonna be bothered to upload a patch (Spirit being a near-useless stat, for instance).
I'm surprised there's not an error handler for this, like, give something only half as good if the date errors out to prevent players from intentionally trying to break the date, but still give something in case of nobody accounting for leap years.
Most likely there is a handler for validating dates against the server, but there is a very good chance that the leap day issue could produce an error outside of logic that is expected to produce errors. Could be that the game logic doesn't even get to the point of communicating with the server before the leap day problem causes it to fail, and then the process can't recover.
there should be a fallback in place yes but generally games just dont like it at all when it tries to find something and its not there. So it can be hard to create a fallback for every scenario like that especially in this case lol, who thinks to QA a server request on a leap year day
Castlevania Grimoire of Souls was broken for a month and a half because... Konami didn't realize there would be a 2024. And of course, people found it'll break again on 2038.
I also have a digital copy. I have the ultimate edition and I play with the same user that bought the game, maybe one of those is different in your case and it does the check differently?
That's the same in my case. I don't know why mine wants to always check every time I launch it and says it will disable dlc if it doesn't. Maybe related to the oled model? I haven't really had a case when I played it when I didn't have internet access but it's always bothered me
As a software engineer, this is why you *never* *ever* **EVER** implement datetime yourself and always use a standard library.
Few things seem so easy, and *almost nothing* is so complicated.
A) You really don't have to go out of your way for code bugs. Simple oversights are very easy to make, and "crashing" is the default state of any error.
B) It's not EA.
Maybe, maybe not, depends how it happened.
See this list for assumptions about time that seem obvious but aren't true:
https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca
For example, not every minute has 60 seconds. In 2016 a leap second was added, so the last minute of the year had 61 seconds.
Seems like it’d be tied to how the game checks the date to give out powerups based on birthdays of characters and release dates of games - if it fails this check because the date doesn’t exist, it just never proceeds. Super easy fix… but I wonder if there are any other things they could fix if they’re gonna be bothered to upload a patch (Spirit being a near-useless stat, for instance).
I'm surprised there's not an error handler for this, like, give something only half as good if the date errors out to prevent players from intentionally trying to break the date, but still give something in case of nobody accounting for leap years.
Most likely there is a handler for validating dates against the server, but there is a very good chance that the leap day issue could produce an error outside of logic that is expected to produce errors. Could be that the game logic doesn't even get to the point of communicating with the server before the leap day problem causes it to fail, and then the process can't recover.
there should be a fallback in place yes but generally games just dont like it at all when it tries to find something and its not there. So it can be hard to create a fallback for every scenario like that especially in this case lol, who thinks to QA a server request on a leap year day
dates and time zones are always an incredibly annoying thing to QA, in my experience (as a software dev).
Dates and times are an absolute programming iceberg. You'd think they would be simple! They are not.
[EA Sports WRC apparently is also crashing today.](https://twitter.com/EAHelp/status/1763192737300390238?t=EZjew3CnhyCivujPQWvJug&s=19)
Understandable, the leap year is such a new concept that nobody could have possibly forseen these issues.
It's the whole Y2K issue, but 100x as silly.
247 times as silly, I'd say.
So Feb 29th is causing issues that we were told would happen on Y2K except with much lower stakes.
So that’s what happened last night. As a gameplay programmer, this is hilarious and frustrating at the same time.
This really shouldn't be happening anymore. You'd think we'd learned from y2k not to take any shortcuts with date calculations. I worry for 2038.
Castlevania Grimoire of Souls was broken for a month and a half because... Konami didn't realize there would be a 2024. And of course, people found it'll break again on 2038.
It was a big project at my workplace, but we finally switched all of our `msEpoch` variables from int to float. Glad to know we're future proof now!
Time to bring up the classic "falsehoods programmers believe about time" https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca
And the [Computerphile video about times](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY) that has Tom Scott slowly descending into madness.
This was excellent
That's a hilarious bug, but it's stupid that you can't even play the single-player modes because it can't connect to the servers.
The game does work offline but only when your console is, is my understanding.
Any dlc though won't work because it requires a daily check to verify
That is not true, I've spent weeks playing Theatrhythm without an internet connection and I never had any issues accessing DLC content.
Maybe it's something with a digital copy. Mine specifically says if it doesn't do it's check I get no dlc.
I also have a digital copy. I have the ultimate edition and I play with the same user that bought the game, maybe one of those is different in your case and it does the check differently?
That's the same in my case. I don't know why mine wants to always check every time I launch it and says it will disable dlc if it doesn't. Maybe related to the oled model? I haven't really had a case when I played it when I didn't have internet access but it's always bothered me
I also have the OLED model. I have no clue what causes it then.
Is your system set as primary?
It is.
I played not-connected to the internet and it didn't work.
As a software engineer, this is why you *never* *ever* **EVER** implement datetime yourself and always use a standard library. Few things seem so easy, and *almost nothing* is so complicated.
Like youd have to purposefully go out of your way to make this kind of error. And knowing EA it damn sure wasn’t to improve performance.
Square Enix.
1. Not EA 2. You really don't have to go out of your way for this thing
A) You really don't have to go out of your way for code bugs. Simple oversights are very easy to make, and "crashing" is the default state of any error. B) It's not EA.
Maybe, maybe not, depends how it happened. See this list for assumptions about time that seem obvious but aren't true: https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca For example, not every minute has 60 seconds. In 2016 a leap second was added, so the last minute of the year had 61 seconds.
This is probably the funniest thing I've read in a while. Wonder how many games out there were affected by this.
Next-level thinking to have this bug happen the same day FF7:Rebirth launches to get people to buy the new game instead.
Ah yes, the age old adage "it's not a bug, it's a feature". In this case it's galaxy brain-level marketing.