A nasty Outriders bug is completely wiping inventories

(Image credit: People Can Fly)

The nightmare scenario for a loot game has become a reality for some Outriders players. Many on the Outriders subreddit are reporting that their entire inventories have been wiped of all gear following a crash. People Can Fly is aware of the issue and has helped a few players recover their lost gear, but there's no word on when the bug will be fixed.

People Can Fly's list of known issues suggests the exact cause of the inventory wipe bug hasn't been determined quite yet, but judging by player reports, it seems to have something to do with the game crashing or disconnecting while leaving or joining another player's game. "Yesterday, I was playing with friends and I got kicked with a connection error. I logged back in, and my inventory is completely gone, even things I had equipped," reads a post from a_jacks_28.

This tragedy may sound familiar to those who played a lot of the Outriders demo. The same problem seemed fairly widespread back then, too. Those affected by the wipe are finding their inventory slots to be completely empty and some are even having trouble equipping stashed weapons, too. Plenty of people also seem to be playing multiplayer without issue as well, though I'd consider avoiding co-op until this stops happening seemingly at random.

This is starting to be really scary from r/outriders

In the meantime, People Can Fly is working on a better method for restoring gear to the unlucky players who have lost their stuff. "We're still figuring out whether the best way would be a one-to-one customer support team method (which may be more accurate but would take much longer and may not be feasible if there are many cases), or whether we are able to (as previously) run a mass-one-off restoration event via our backend."

A mass restoration would be the best outcome, if feasible. I can't imagine the frustration of losing dozens of hours worth of loot because of a lame bug. In case you missed it, we published our final Outriders review today and scored the looter shooter a 63%.

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.