Rest in pieces, operating system – EVE Online. 7 Worst Bugs in History of Video Games

Gaming is a risky business. The TV can tell you all about how games are bad on your eyes, psyche, social skills, physical condition, and the ability to cook the perfect lasagna. Somehow, though, the news was all quite about how gaming can ruin your... operating system?

EVE Online is an iconic science-fiction MMO, which gives players so much freedom in shaping the virtual world that entire books are written about the empires they founded, the wars they fought, the betrayals they committed, and the heroic deeds they've done – and they read better than many "real" sci-fi novels. However, when EVE's world was expanded with the Trinity expansion in December 2007, it wasn't the virtual betrayals that were on players' minds.

One of the main attractions of this extension were to supposed to be EVE's overhauled graphics. To allow players to enjoy it as soon as possible, the developers decided to use a previously unused installer that offered better data compression. It must have been a matter of astonishingly bad luck, but the developers messed an important part of the code: instead of deleting a file called "boot.ini" and located in the game folder, the installer deleted a file of the same name, but from the main system directory. This file is (or "was" – in the case of the unlucky individuals who did install Trinity) responsible for booting the operating system up. Without it, Windows simply won't start.

The bug was quickly identified and fixed, but not quickly enough to prevent "taking down" the computers to a few hundred unlucky players – the developers mention 215 people who contacted technical support, but at least several times more players probably dealt with the problem on their own. It's not the first and not the last time EVE's online world proved extremely violent.

1. More about EVE Online

I AIN'T GOING DOWN ALONE

Another game that decimated OS by the dozens in a manner similar to EVE, was Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. This rather bad RPG was full bugs, but the worst awaited those who, tired of dealing with it, eventually decided to remove the game from the disk. Uninstaller errors caused key system files to disappear from the hard drive along with Pool of Radiance.