Rockstar Apologises for Buggy Bully

And apparently Microsoft has something to do with it.

Early reviews for Rockstar's recent update of Bully (originally released in the UK as Canis Canem Edit) for Wii and Xbox 360 were generally favourable, but with the game making it into the hands of US customers, the cracks in the company's work are starting to show.

A user named Costanza at popular video game message board NeoGAF started a thread on Tuesday chiding Rockstar on a "pathetic" port of the PlayStation 2 game.

According to Costanza and users on NeoGAF and across several other message boards, Bully: Scholarship Edition is riddled with bugs, some of which cause the game to crash, forcing players to replay parts of the game.

The criticism has snowballed in the days since the game was released in the US, prompting a response, posted at Kotaku, from Rockstar's Sam Houser who apologized for the glitches and said the team is working "around the clock" to fix them.

Houser put the blame for "framerate issues, freezes and other problems" on older models of the Xbox 360.

"You have our word that we never experienced any of this in QA - in any of our offices or at Microsoft. I am horrified, and we are now working around the clock to rectify this situation. Thanks to NeoGAF for bringing this matter to our attention."

Houser denied that Rockstar had released the game before it was ready.

"We love our games and put a huge amount of energy and care into making them all that they can be," he said. "We would never shove anything out the door - we never have and never will. We apologise to everyone affected for the inconvenience."

Microsoft, for its part, has steered clear of the whole mess, refusing to comment on Houser's accusations that the Xbox 360 hardware is to blame.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo