'Metroid Dread' patch ends game-crashing bug

Metroid Dread, the latest iteration in Nintendo’s long-running franchise, was released at the beginning of this month to much anticipation. While Dread has received generally favorable reviews, some players have run into a bug that can materialize towards the end of the game, resulting in the whole thing crashing and an error message that reads: "software was closed because an error occurred." Thankfully, Nintendo just released a fix.

Dread marked the first time Nintendo has put out a 2-D Metroid game since 2002’s Metroid Fusion for the Game Boy Advance. Since Fusion came out, fans of the series have had to wait for the franchise to return to its side-scrolling roots and instead hold themselves over with fan-made equivalents like AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake). Now that it’s finally here, no one wants a bug putting a damper on the excitement.

The folks over at Nintendo became aware of the issue last week and put out an acknowledgment through the official Twitter account:

A patch was released on Wednesday to remedy the whole situation. Users will have to download and install the update while connected to the internet, unless their Switch is already connected, in which case the update will download and install automatically. Here are the patch notes courtesy of Nintendo:

Fixed an issue where, if a map marker is placed on a specific door on the map screen (the door destroyed with the beam obtained at the end of the game), destroying that door at the end of the game would cause the game to forcefully quit with the message "The software was closed because an error occurred”.

Fixed several other issues to improve overall gameplay experience.

Quite specific — As explained in the patch notes, the bug reared its head when players destroyed a door while a marker was placed on that specific door on the map. Markers were introduced in Dread to help players monitor places of importance, so while the issue seems unlikely, it was occurring more than one might think. The last part of the patch note highlights tweaks to other aspects of gameplay, which the company didn’t go into detail about.

Nintendo has had a busy end-of-year, releasing the OLED version of the Switch, which Input’s Ryan Houlihan suggests passing on for now. On top of hardware releases, Nintendo also plans on releasing new Pokémon games this November and early next year.