Weekly Recall: Developer Horror Stories

Welcome to a truly terrifying Weekly Recall. For this Halloween special, we asked Team 4 to regale us with stories that would send shivers down the spine of any reader who dared to dive in, ones that would keep our community tossing and turning in terror at night.

And what's scarier than ghosts, goblins, or ghouls? Derailing an entire live service game with a single line of code or sending Aaron Keller a meme about your dog instead of a pitch deck.

These are our Overwatch Developer Horror Stories.

"Back when we were teasing Juno's release, there was a crashed ship on Dorado that had a 'morse code' sound playing from it. The way the sound was implemented was a bit different from how we usually implement sounds like that, which resulted in the sound crashing the game on some systems. We unfortunately had to disable Dorado for a while until a hotfix could be made to replace the sound!" - Brian, audio

"To optimize how we implemented Zarya's Energy Lance Perk, which lets her beam pierce enemies, I made it so the tracking tech we use for her beam could return multiple entities rather than the first one it hits. However, in the new implementation, I forgot to rewind entities on the server to where the Zarya was shooting on the client. On the client it would look like you were hitting enemies (and the contact effect would play!) but the server wouldn't register the hit. What's worse is that there are other instances where we rewind on the server, so it was pretty much random whether the server had the correct position or not.

On Reddit, players were convincing each other that Zarya wasn't broken and their aim was just bad, but I knew deep in my heart that I broke her. When I initially 'fixed' her, she was able to pierce most entities and was able to shoot through things like cars and payloads, which took another couple years off my life. This change haunted me with bugs for about 1-2 months." - Allie, software engineering

"Once upon a weary day, I received a request from some spooky guy in Sound Design. They wished to play special music when Street Fighter skins were equipped with their corresponding Play of the Game. The task called to me like a sinister siren; I saw that skins could already have effects attached to them and so I began my dark work. Alas, seasons passed and an engineer approached me about PotG music remaining loaded constantly and the desire to halt such a practice to save memory. It was then discovered we had accidentally shipped without using my elegant craft, instead using an alternate system that forced the music to be loaded. We quickly discovered that all was not well: The original changes I made were plagued with rot for the effect was not packaged properly and would no longer load at all!

I consulted the sages and oracles of engineering to find a path forward and all was well. Yet a mere handful of weeks later I discovered disaster! Left untouched, the new changes would disrupt the data packaging systems and cause numerous errors. Alas, it was discovered too late to change without unacceptable levels of risk to surrounding systems.

I faced a conundrum. I was assailed by swarms of bugs for Halloween 2025-as soon as I smote one down two more would rise to take its place as this engineering time bomb continued to lurk. We entered the phase during which only the highest priority bugs for Halloween could be fixed and I realized I had but a single week to smite all the issues that plagued me, for I would soon be on vacation. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday passed. The horde of bugs slowed. Thursday, I began my task before a surprise onslaught of other requests demanded my attention. At last Friday came! My changes were ready and tested, but they needed review before I could submit. Time ticked down, too close to the end of the day for comfort, until at last my review was answered. The fix was submitted, and I was able to leave for vacation satisfied that my vows were fulfilled… but it was a battle to the end." - Grayson, software engineering

When we were building the loadouts feature in Hero Gallery,something happened (clearly witchy shenanigans) that caused the pineapple pizza souvenir to be equipped in one of the emote slots as a default...for everyone." - Anonymous, production

"I get asked if I happen to have a solution for a lot of insane situations. That's mainly because I'm really lucky and likely to simply guess the right answer, but that does NOT make it any LESS scary! In Team 4 Audio, the dark god we pray to for our power is Otmar, so when he comes to you with a question, you know it's serious.

One fateful night, he asks me if I have any idea why our Atmos For Headphones bus effects start multiplying in strangely specific instances. I don't, but he's not here for my brains, he's here for my luck, so I say, "I don't know, but I can take a look!"

As per usual, I looked around and found no obvious culprits or answers. I stared blankly at a screen I've seen probably 10,000 times over my career while using this exact audio software. No weirdness, no disparities, just the same settings and little yellow warning text I see every time I'm here. I've failed.

I force myself to read the screen one more time before returning in shame...and then I actually read the alert. 'Warning: Without a Listener game object, bus and effect instances may be unintentionally duplicated.'

I returned triumphant and revered because my superpower is luck and my secret identity is an ego with a fifth grade reading level. The moral of the story is: If you're ever scared, take a deep breath and reread through everything one more time like you mean it." - Super (Spooky) Joe, sound design

Happy Halloween! Sleep tight and don't let the ghoulish spirits of mistakes past bite.