UPDATE 2.0: “The Pitt” is back on Xbox LIVE and apparently working like a charm.

UPDATE: Bethesda has taken “The Pitt” off Xbox LIVE

If you downloaded “The Pitt”, the new downloadable expansion for Fallout 3, the above image may be quite familiar to you. You see, “The Pitt” is “a broken-ass waste of money”, to quote one angry Fallout 3 owner.

Common complaints across several Bethesda and Microsoft threads include missing textures, graphical hiccups and the above, big ass red diamonds with white exclamation points. Many have taken to the internet to bitch and moan about the seeming lack of QA on Bethesda’s part, and while these complaints are indeed valid, the issue isn’t as simple as “Bethesda being lazy”.

You see, I’ve seen what “The Pitt” is doing for myself. The red diamonds are signals that textures haven’t loaded properly. This is probably due to the source files being placed in the wrong folder or some kind of corruption in the programming that has the game load the world’s texture files.

This may also explain why the DLC is crashing for some people.

Either way, this isn’t something to point blame at. If I were a betting man, I would say that the game was corrupted when Microsoft uploaded the game to LIVE, though it could have happened when Bethesda uploaded it to Microsoft. Hell, Bethesda may have even sent the wrong build to MS, though I have a hard time believing somebody could be that boneheaded.

Here’s Bethesda’s statement on the matter:

We are continuing to look into the issues people are experiencing with The Pitt for Xbox 360. As of now it looks like the file for the English version on Xbox Live was somehow corrupted. We are currently working with Microsoft to remove the existing file off of Live to prevent any further downloads. Our plan is to replace it with a new file as soon as possible. We hope to have another update for you shortly.

Well, there you go, people — Pitt happens.

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