The bug corrupts save files and deletes characters, but there is a solution

Oct 22, 2012 11:56 GMT  ·  By

Borderlands 2 is currently affected by a pretty major glitch, with players finding that their characters have been completely lost and their save games have been transformed into a new file called “graveyard.sav”.

Borderlands 2 came out back in September and quickly delighted millions of players with its special “shoot and loot” gameplay.

Sadly, it was plagued by quite a few issues, with many players reporting that their character’s challenge points were reset or that their special Golden Keys were deleted, despite not actually using them.

Now, an even more serious issue has appeared, as a glitch is currently spreading like wildfire through the community on the Xbox 360 platform, turning save games into unreadable files and effectively causing the death of the player’s character.

According to a thread on the Gearbox forums, this glitch prevents a character from respawning after dying in the game. Instead, the camera just pans above their character’s dead body and goes into free mode. If the player chooses to do things like load another character, exit the game, or restart the console, the save file is renamed into graveyard.sav, and can’t be recovered.

Forum user KuteKuddleyKiwi has even posted a handy FAQ about the whole problem that supposedly appeared after some players modified the game and started playing with others who didn’t do this, spreading the glitch throughout the community.

What is graveyard.sav? What does this have to do with me? When you get hit by the glitch that turns your save into graveyard.sav, upon entering Fight For Your Life and then subsequently dying for whatever reason, you will never respawn. You die and go into a free roam camera. If you try to load another character, dashboard, restart your xbox, etc, your save data is completely gone and there is no hope of recovering it at that point, as it is renamed graveyard.sav and is missing the majority of the data it once had.

What?! How did I get this? As stated above, the glitch originated with the modding community and may or may not have been accidental. It spread from there, and it passes from the infected player to all other players in the game with said infected player. At this point, it's a terrible chain, and chances are it passed to you through some [random players].

But I don't play with random people! I play with my friends only Do your friends play with [random players]? Have any of you ever had somebody come into a game and trade you anything? It's easy to spread, unfortunately.

How can I get my character back?

Once your save file has turned into graveyard.sav, you cannot get your character back. Too much data has been lost at that point, and it is far beyond salvageable.

So how can I prevent this, or save my character if it gets effected later?

If you want to prevent this, you have to make sure you're not playing with randoms, and that everybody you play with isn't playing with randoms, AND that it isn't currently effecting anybody in your group. Along with that, MAKE FREQUENT BACKUPS, and if you are on 360, do not backup to the Cloud, as it will sync with your HD saves and your backups will be overwritten, apparently. Memory card or USB drive is best.

A temporary solution has been found, according to the forum user, as players need to follow a few steps in order to prevent the save file from being corrupted.

If you get hit by this and recognize it (free roam camera, no respawning, etc), you can salvage your save. 1.] Quit (it'll tell you you can’t save, that’s fine, hit quit without saving) 2.] At main menu, hit Continue 3.] Load up, hit start, hit Save and Quit

If you salvage your save in this way, and then continue to play, the next time you die, it will happen again, and you must repeat the steps above. I highly recommend following the above steps and then NOT TOUCHING THE SAVE after that.

Gearbox is apparently looking into the issue but, until then, you might want to refrain from playing online or at least to remember this specific list of steps in order to prevent the loss of your character. The glitch has been confirmed on the Xbox 360 platform but it's unclear if it has appeared on the PS3 or PC.

Expect an official statement soon enough.