Users report that Fallout 3 Broken Steel DLC is, yes, broken on PC [update]

by JC Fletcher { May 5th 2009 at 9:17AM }

[Update: Bethesda tells us "We're seeing the same error, which is a Games for Windows Live DRM Install error. Microsoft is working on fixing it, and we'll let everyone know once we've verified it."]

The last Fallout 3 DLC didn't exactly launch smoothly -- users reported issues with the Xbox 360 version of "The Pitt," requiring Bethesda to release an updated version. The latest DLC, "Broken Steel," came out today, and it's also causing problems for players -- this time on the PC.

Would-be "Broken Steel" players are reporting on the Bethesda forums that installation of the DLC isn't working. After the files are downloaded through the Windows Live Marketplace, the installation stops and displays the message "Not a cryptographic message or the cryptographic message is not formatted correctly. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8009200D)."

Bethesda is aware of the issue -- "Dermont" from the company commented on the forum, "I am even getting the same issue." The team is "looking into it."

Gallery: Fallout 3 Broken Steel DLC

[Thanks, Nick G]

Tags: bethesda, broken-steel, dlc, fallout-3, fallout-3-dlc

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Ignatius @ May 5th 2009 9:20AM

More of the usual from Bethesda, at this point.

Dr. Flex @ May 5th 2009 10:23AM

Yeah, I had a feeling this was gonna happen. Not necessarily in this way, but something. I thought it was gonna happen on xbox though.

xGeneral DEATHx @ May 5th 2009 11:03AM

I sort of feel sorry for them (my dept at work has some days like this where nothing's going right), but these kinds of errors seem to be spanning the entire breadth of their DLC offerings, which makes me think they were a bit...rushed?

Andy @ May 5th 2009 1:31PM

Seems again this is actually Microsofts fault so we can feel sorry

BigD145 @ May 5th 2009 2:29PM

More of the usual from Microsoft, at this point.

In A World (XBL) @ May 5th 2009 3:48PM

I'm just glad I made the decision a while back to wait for the GOTY edition. I bought the special edition (with bobblehead and lunchbox) at launch, but I've skipped all the DLC. My patience will pay off in the long run as I'll be getting FO3 + Anchorage + Pitt + Broken Steel + Mysterious DLC #4 + a year's worth of patches... all for $60!

Heimbachae @ May 5th 2009 9:20AM

i'm assuming the same issue is going on all over XBL? YOU RUINED MY DAY!!!

tmacairjordan87 @ May 5th 2009 9:22AM

Well I'm currently in the middle of the last (well...formerly last) mission so I guess I'll find out shortly if it's broken on 360 as well. So far it's working, because I got a message after starting the old final mission saying broken steel had loaded and I'm starting to get XP again too.

THE Ezio Auditore de Firenze (PSN slycooper_rocker) @ May 5th 2009 5:37PM

tell me how it is when you get there. i won't be playing it. :/

tmacairjordan87 @ May 5th 2009 7:17PM

Hate to do this, but I beat it a few hours ago and it was amazing. There's a few ways to change things a bit so there's plenty of replayability (unless you do that cheap save before big decision thing) and the new weapons and perks are awesome.

Kevin Carpenter @ May 5th 2009 9:23AM

It's probably broken on 360 again too like 'the Pitt' was. I'm not plunking down cash until I know the product works for sure...not again Bethesda...not again.

tmacairjordan87 @ May 5th 2009 9:30AM

Well if it is broken, it's not in the same way the pc version is because I got a message that it loaded, and my XP cap has been lifted.

Walsh @ May 5th 2009 9:24AM

Man, you'd think they would test this crap before releasing it to the general masses. It's basic QA to test the install before release.

joeybeast @ May 5th 2009 10:23AM

MS cert at its best.

superklye @ May 5th 2009 9:25AM

Yet another reason Bethesda needs to eschew their buggy ass, poor-animation filled engine and either use a REAL engine or build a new one from the ground up that actually gets finished before they start releasing games using it.

And get someone who animates people primarily, horses secondarily for the next one please.

saregos @ May 5th 2009 12:52PM

Uh....
What?

There's absolutely nothing here that's an engine issue. It's an issue with the GFW Live programs.

General rants are all well and good, but if you're trying to tie it to the general topic of the article, it helps to *know* the general topic of the article.

Duke @ May 5th 2009 1:12PM

You know, I thought that the horses in Fallout were all awful. They all looked like people running around shooting at me. Hell, the worst was Fawkes - didn't look like a horse at all! C'mon Bethesda, what's your deal with that!?

Archon (PSN: Archonik, XBL: DarkARHN) @ May 5th 2009 9:36AM

For god's sake.
HOW, tell me HOW can Bethesda still be called a professional company.

I HATED them after playing Oblivion on the PS3 for the stupid bugs that were never fixed, for their inability to fix simple problems and rushing broken software to the market.

Then came Fallout 3, randomly uncompletable (requiring to replay the whole game!) on all 3 platforms if you are unlucky, glitchy with many problems still left unpatched.

Then, every single piece of DLC for it they create is broken on release.

How can people still be happy with what Bethesda delivers?

It's like buying cheap chinese knockoffs and claiming they are as good as the real products. They're not.

Azerael @ May 5th 2009 9:55AM

I think your problem is trying to play it on the PS3, which seems to get the ass end of every console port. Stick to the exclusives for the PS3, use your Xbox for the rest.

Works great on my PC and 360.

Archon (PSN: Archonik, XBL: DarkARHN) @ May 5th 2009 10:13AM

Sure, especially the BROKEN Steel DLC, which works so great... And The Pitt that, you know, had no problems on the XBox...

And the game breaking bug in F3 that prevents you from completing the game is present on every platform.

Also, the argument of 'oh, yeah, their PS3 port is crappy, don't play it' doesn't in any way help to convince me that they are all about the gamers and the quality of the products they release.

Juliox @ May 5th 2009 10:14AM

To Azerael

I suppose joystiq is lying then... a i mean there are no glitches and everything is like a rainbow......

Read the report for God's sake....

Marcus D @ May 5th 2009 10:38AM

See, it's fine to call out a company and complain their products are garbage. What's pathetic is you keeping buying it.

Archon (PSN: Archonik, XBL: DarkARHN) @ May 5th 2009 10:51AM

I don't agree with you Marcus. I love the Fallout universe. I liked F3 (can't say I loved it, but I like it a lot). And I'm not saying that Bethesda should die in a fire.

All I'm saying is they really should get their crap together and start working on POLISHING their titles. Their games are like gems that need polishing, but no-one can be bothered to do so, because... well it IS a gem, and someone is going to buy it anyway. It just looks lazy on their part, and probably hurts their prestige as a huge game designer.

There are companies that spend bags of money, delaying their games just so they can keep their high standard. The gamers acknowledge that fact and know that if, for instance, Blizzard (the pre-Activision one at least. We'll se what the future brings) gets to release a game, it will be big, polished, tested, responsive, supported and patched for balance for years to come. It's just an offense to those companies, when a growing company, like Bethesda, does something as unprofessional and still gets kudos it doesn't really deserve.

Anticrawl @ May 5th 2009 3:15PM

After spending hours leveling up and only completeing a few missions in Fallout for the 360 I finally get on with the main quest but my game glitches and several key NPC's cannot be activated. I am not going to replay all those now wasted hours just to get the achievement points. I went ahead and pirated a copy for the PC so I could atleast finish the damn game where I left off.

Anticrawl @ May 5th 2009 3:16PM

I really love how no gaming journalists call them out on their blaiming all of Fallout 3's shortcomings on the game engine when an MMO, a fucking MMO by the name of Warhammer Online has superb fighting/walking/jumping animations (again for an MMO) and it uses the same engine.

BlackDove @ May 5th 2009 9:38AM

Well it does have "Broken" in the title...

SoulBlade @ May 5th 2009 9:45AM

Wow... is QA really that hard? You'd think that someone out there would have seen the install errors before ship date... of course, the same was said about the RRoD.

Walsh @ May 5th 2009 2:23PM

I bought a 360 one month after launch and still have not experienced RRoD, fingers crossed...

Chris D.(PSN: Aggie_CEO | XBL:The Aggie CEO | Steam: Aggie_CEO @ May 5th 2009 9:50AM

ouch...Ima need for Bethesda to get their shit together...

baby sea tuna @ May 5th 2009 9:57AM

Shock, awe.

BRPD Cop @ May 5th 2009 9:58AM

Why has Bethesda done this to their reputation? After three clean installs of windows vista fallout finally runs, but now im encountering random crashes. And I haven't purchased any DLC for this very reason. Game Companies need to make games that work properly for everyone, then they can worry about dlc.

Azerael @ May 5th 2009 10:03AM

If they worried about *everyone*, no game would ever be finished.

The vast majority of people have no problem. Considering the massive nature of Fallout 3, that's a pretty big win. The only game that rivals Fallout 3 in simultaneous scale and graphical fidelity is GTA4 which had a much, much bigger budget.

It was either have some bugs for a small group of (very vocal) people, or release the DLC six years later.

Juliox @ May 5th 2009 10:17AM

To Azerael

Are you on Bethesda's payroll?

What's your point?

There are issues with bethesda's games. it's well documented. Stop with your bullshit.

Tmoney @ May 5th 2009 9:59AM

Well now that there has been 11 comments all saying the same thing (Bethedsa sucks - [thanks for the insight, I'm sure that explains why their products sell so well]) :

Anyone know if these updates will be put together into one expansion pack like the oblivion content was?

Snowblind @ May 5th 2009 10:09AM

"sucks" is perhaps too strong, they make really great games.. but the amount of glitches and bugs they get released with is ridiculous. With huge games like Oblivion and Morrowind it's almost forgivable that they may have missed one or two things but they can't even release DLC packs without game breaking flaws.

Also, they badly need to hire new animators. There are seriously students out there who would be willing to do that kind of work for free who would make a better job of it.

Tmoney @ May 5th 2009 10:25AM

@Snowblind:

That seems like a fair assessment that I can get behind.

PhoenixGeek @ May 5th 2009 10:01AM

I'm guessing that whoever uploaded the file picked the wrong one, because the file size of the download is off from what the official size should be. I don't know if it's Bethesda or Microsoft's fault, but I hope they have it fixed in time for me to kill some enclave when I get home from work.

Maulok @ May 5th 2009 10:09AM

Headline on Associated Press this morning:
"Fallout 3 DLC broken, sky blue"

Sorry, I'm just bitter they won't break my PS3 version with DLC :-(

Maulok @ May 5th 2009 2:04PM

Just saw the update that it's a MS G4W DRM problem. Must update my snark accordingly:

"DRM breaks a good game, sky blue"

NeoK-182 @ May 5th 2009 10:25AM

The issues with broken steel are effecting anyone who tries to install it through games for windows live

and for those people who get it to work via other ways, are still having crashes.

Oh and if you put any mods into your game the new patch 1.5 will kill all of your mods.

Bethesda pretty much said fuck you to PC gamers today.

OH and the 360 version works perfectly.

Alex Sohn @ May 5th 2009 10:26AM

I like how a screwup of properly launching some dlc, equates to bashing bethesda's facial animators? So far the only issue I have had with any Bethesda released dlc, was The Pitt, and only in so far as coming home and seeing it delisted while they fixed the issue. Never once did I have an issue downloading any of the Oblivion dlc period. Quite honestly considering that 99.9% of the time I have no issues downloading anything off of xbox live or Playstation network, is something good to write home about. I mean seriously you guys all expect 100% perfection and satisfaction no matter what. Some countries can't even get consistent internet speeds, and you guys are all crying and bitching that you have to wait a bit longer to download dlc.

And so far, I've only seen one person mention the xbox version of the dlc, and they say it's just fine. And to rip on the PS3 version right now, is just idiotic seeming how they don't even have the dlc to download. From what it looks like, it's an issue with the PC version of broken steel so far.

Oh and completely off topic I just wanted to let everyone know, the most recent IGN Wii podcast stole the pick of the week song from the joystiq podcast, sans the narrator.

Ozborne @ May 5th 2009 10:44AM

I have no problem with their facial animators, but I really want them to implement a human looking jump for those of us who aren't roleplaying as seizure-prone frictionless robots.

Really, it is only the fact that I find the game so engrossing that these things stand out. That said, Warhammer Online, same engine, same limitations, no slidey moonwalking characters.

Petebot330 @ May 5th 2009 11:18AM

@Osborne: Why are you playing in third person?

RyanD @ May 5th 2009 11:29AM

This is kind of funny: When I tried to buy Broken Steel a couple of hours ago (PC version), the price was not 800 MS points. It was negative 2 billion points! Clicking buy did not give me that amount though.

It's removed from the Windows Live marketplace now so I guess the problem is being fixed.