Good things come to those who wait. That is, unless you’ve been waiting for Fallout 3’s newest DLC, The Pitt.

After having been delayed until the end of March, The Pitt was finally released today by Bethesda Softworks to Xbox and PC users. To the dismay of its fans, many of whom stayed up past midnight to be the first to experience the DLC hot off the presses, the release is apparently so riddled with bugs that the game is unplayable under most circumstances.

Within minutes of The Pitt’s debut, internet forums buzzed angrily with reports of a myriad of bizarre technical problems ranging from out-of-place smoke stacks to floating objects (trees, barrels, rocks, etc.) to system instability. While not game-breaking, perhaps the most obvious issue with the game is the presence of numerous red exclamation point boxes (pictured above) dotting the landscape, which are used in other Bethesda games (such as Morrowind and Oblivion) to indicate missing texture files.

Apart from its cosmetic problems, a number of serious glitches also plague the expansion. Most notably, users report that the downtown area of the city itself, an activity hub integral to advancing the story among its other uses, causes repeated system crashes at the loading screen upon entry. PC users complain of both constant crashing to the desktop and hard lock-ups requiring a cold reboot. For many, the game is simply unplayable in its current state.

Bethesda has acknowledged the problems on their forums and claims that the English version of The Pitt uploaded to Xbox Live servers was somehow corrupted:

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.

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No time frame for a solution has yet been offered. Given that all content and patches distributed over Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live are subject to a lengthy certification process (2+ weeks according to Relic Entertainment, who uses Games for Windows Live for hosting Dawn of War 2), it may be possible that The Pitt will remain broken for quite some time.

UPDATE 3/24 (afternoon):

Bethesda pulled the corrupted download from Xbox Live servers yesterday afternoon in order to fix the problem and get a working copy ready for online distribution. According to the Bethesda Blog, they are hopeful that a working version of The Pitt will be available to Xbox 360 users some time today. The development studio’s Twitter feed confirms this:

Our guys are working late tonight on The Pitt. If everything goes according to plan, it’ll be back up sometime tomorrow.

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UPDATE 3/25 (morning):

Gstaff, Community Manager on the official Bethesda Softworks forums, has informed us that a working version of The Pitt is being uploaded to Xbox Live servers as of 11:30 am this morning (EST) and that it should be available for download this evening:

I just got word that The Pitt DLC is now uploading and should be available for download sometime this evening. When it is up, I’ll let everyone know.

In the meantime, if you downloaded the corrupted content, you’ll want to delete it.

From the Xbox 360 dashboard:

• Select My Xbox
• Select System Settings
• Select Memory
• Select Hard Drive
• Select Games
• Select Fallout 3
• From there, you’ll find your game saves and DLC content. Just delete The Pitt DLC file.

When the new version of The Pitt becomes available, you’ll be able to re-download it at no additional cost.

I’ve received several questions about game saves. We highly recommend using game saves made prior to the DLC content being loaded to your game.

Thanks for your patience, we hope you enjoy playing The Pitt.

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