back to article BioWare zeroes in on Mass Effect download snafu

Top marks to BioWare which yesterday pumped out a downloadable module for Mass Effect 2. The only problem: the DLC consisted of nothing but zeros - all 1.5GB of it. Dubbed Lair of the Shadowbroker, the DLC went live yesterday evening. Within minutes, fans reported that the installer failed to work on their PCs. At first, …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Badgers

    1.5GB?

    Their compression algorithm sucks!

  2. SteveK

    refunds

    Hopefully they'll refund people on metered downloads... that'll eat hugely into someone's monthly 2Gb allocation. Still, at least the file should compress well.

    1. Tigra 07
      Pint

      Easily compressable

      How it is now, they should be able to compress it to a 4kb file

      Something along the lines of - 0x999999999999 on a notepad file

  3. Rob 9

    if...

    If you're into downloading huge DLC and patches and still only have a 2GB download allowance per month you've got nobody to blame but yourself...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Flipping heck!

    1.5GB for an addon to a game?!?!

    I can see ZX Spectrum coders turning in their graves!

    1. LinkOfHyrule

      I wonder

      I wonder how many 48k Speccys you would need to store 1.5 gigs between them all? I cant be bothered to do the math(s) but maybe someone else could and then a "Speccys worth" could maybe become a new official unit of measurement?!

      1. serviceWithASmile
        Unhappy

        corrections to "SCIENCE!!!"

        the first few " / " should infact be " * "

        my aplogoies to any pedants, coders or mathematicians reading this comment

      2. serviceWithASmile
        Boffin

        SCIENCE!!!

        1.5GB of 48K =

        1.5 / 1024 = 1536 MB / 1024 = 1572864 KB

        1572864 / 48 = 32768

        So. 1 BF (BiowareFail) is equal to 32768 DS (Dead Speccys)

        also, as I pionted out on their forums a little earlier -

        for any penguin lovers who want their very own bioware DLC for completely free, just run this command!

        dd if=/dev/zero of=foobar count=1572864 bs=1024

        won't even use up your download allowance :D

        1. Wize

          Remember...

          ...some of that 48k also drives the 'graphics card'.

          Stuffing data in there will have lots of coloured flashing squares.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    *chuckle*

    Talk about a Mass Defect ....

  6. greggo
    Alert

    violation of EULA.

    Using a hex editor to look at the bzillion zeros is probably a violation of 'reverse engineering' EULA

  7. iamapizza
    Boffin

    :P

    Do you reckon someone did a

    cat /dev/zero > MassEffectDLC2.exe

  8. RichardB

    so, uh

    exactly how many 0's can you fit into 1.5GB?

    1. Christopher W
      Paris Hilton

      Oh come now, Google can tell you this

      1.5 gigabytes = 12 884, 901 888 bits Guessing it's using 1024bits/Kb.

      Paris, because even she can type "1.5 gigabytes in bits" into your favourite calculator-equipped search engine

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Either 1500000000 or 1610612736

      depending upon who you talk to

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Watch out for the fakes doing the rounds on P2P

    there's a 1 or two towards the end...

  10. This post has been deleted by its author

  11. Chad H.
    WTF?

    Says a lot about bioware

    If the best thing the companies ever done is 1.5Gb of 0's

  12. TeeCee Gold badge
    Coat

    Whoever did this.....

    .......is a *very* noughty boy.

  13. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    I bet they did run cat /dev/zero > foo.exe

    "Do you reckon someone did a

    cat /dev/zero > MassEffectDLC2.exe"

    You know, in all seriousness, I bet someone actually did (or, the "dd if=/dev/zero of=MassEffectDLC2.exe bs=1024 count=1572864" so the size could be specified) to generate a fake file to seed on P2P networks. And then due to a mixup it was put up as the real DLC.

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