Mass Effect 2 is all about protecting the galaxy from hostile aliens, but some PS3 owners are finding that the galaxy doesn’t want to be protected, and is sabotaging their efforts by corrupting their save files. Players have reported losing as many as forty hours of gameplay in the blink of an eye.
According to posters on the BioWare forums, the game will lock up, forcing the player to reset his or her PS3. When the player goes back to the game, the save files are worthless. What’s more, saving in a different file each time doesn’t seem to help, as the crashes corrupt all data for that particular character. BioWare’s community manager, Chris Priestly, acknowledged the problem, and said that it was being investigated. Mass Effect 2 producer, Jesse Houston, asked anyone affected by the bug to let BioWare know where in the game the problem occurred, how many levels had been played beforehand, and how long the game had been running before it crashed.
If you’re concerned about this happening to you, then you might want to backup your saves on a USB memory stick. Forum posters have confirmed that USB backups work, even if your save data for the character has become corrupt. Obviously, it isn’t an ideal solution, but it means you won’t lose everything if the save on your hard drive is ruined. Details on how to back up files on the PS3 can be found here.
