Top 10 Worst Game Breaking Glitches

#10: Ice Cream Factory Save

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“Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” (PS2 Version) (2002) “Vice City” is undeniably a masterpiece. Unfortunately, it was not without its problems. On the original PS2 release, some players reported a corrupted save file after saving their game at the ice cream factory. Upon loading, the game would present players with the usual “load successful” screen, but just when you're ready to cause some mayhem, the screen goes black. As you can imagine, this infuriated players to no end, as countless hours of progress would be lost and you were forced to start from scratch due to the file’s failure to load. Hopefully you had an extra save, because if not, you were SOL and just might go full Tommy Vercetti psycho on your PS2.

“Soulcalibur III” (2005) It sucks when one save file becomes corrupted. It's something else entirely when your entire memory card is wiped out. That's what some poor unfortunate souls discovered in 2005 when playing the fighting game “Soulcalibur III.” If you moved, deleted, or did ANYTHING to a memory card with a “Soulcalibur” save file on it, it could result in the entire game's file becoming corrupted. At its worst, the glitch would wipe out the ENTIRE contents of your memory card, although this was relatively rare. Want to know how to avoid this? No problem! They're lucky this game was so good.

#8: Broken Bridge

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“The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” (2006) Nintendo back in the day had some thorough Quality Assurance but there were always a few bugs that slip through the crack, as with any title. For the Eldin Bridge though it got pretty bad. If you save and quit after destroying the rocks blocking your path to Lanayru Province, you will find the bridge destroyed and impassable upon loading the game. Due to the bridge being, you know, split in half, players couldn't cross it, effectively stranding them and forcing them to start AAALLL over again. There’s another game breaking glitch that happens in a room with a cannon, where players can’t leave if they save in there. Two game breakers in one? Ouch.

#7: Game...Slows...Down…...Slowly

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“The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” (PS3 Version) (2011) “Skyrim” is a massive and intricately detailed game, so it's going to take up a crap ton of space on your hard drive. Unfortunately, many gamers playing on the PS3 began to experience severe, crippling performance issues after only saving 5 MB of data, or about 15 hours of play time. The game becomes extremely laggy, which makes for a frustrating and unplayable experience alone, but many players also reported poor rendering, the inability to trade, and prevention from completing quests. For a game that can be played for hundreds of hours, experiencing these issues after only ten to fifteen is simply unacceptable. Still, awesome game though, providing you play on a working system.

#6: Stupid Door Won't Open

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“Metroid: Other M” (2010) Metroid fans are no strangers to the ol’ “preventing your progress” glitch, either. In this game, it comes in the form of the pyrosphere door, or Sector 3, glitch. If the player backtracks to a previous room after defeating the Dessgeegas, a major door in the Desert Refinery will shut, effectively stranding players in a locked room, unable to continue due to there being no possible way to open the locked door. Once this happened, there was no going back, and players were forced to scrap their progress and start again. This glitch became so infamous that Nintendo directly addressed the issue and fixed numerous SD cards that had to be mailed in, since the Wii wasn’t capable of downloading patches.

#5: Game Breaking Barrel

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“Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest” (1995) Back in the 90s, the infamous Castle Crush Glitch was known as one of the most fatal and damning glitches in all of video gaming. In the level Castle Crush, this glitch requires players to pick up the first barrel, drop it, and then quickly pick it back up again. After throwing the invisible barrel, it was common for Diddy to turn into different characters, including a multicoloured mass of pixels that represented Klubba. Upon trying to move, the game would pixelate and instantly crash. Many players reported a corrupted save file as a result, and for some gamers, the game would never work again! Worse it could even damage your SNES if you did it on a console.

“Tony Hawk's Underground 2” (2004) This glitch is nothing but a troll’s fantasy, and a harmless player’s worst nightmare. Players who plugged a USB keyboard into their PS2 could bypass the character limit of the online text chat. If a particularly malicious player broke the limit and sent a message with extra brackets, it would instantly freeze the receiving player’s console, forcing them to lose progress and restart. What's worse is that the receiver didn't even have to open the message in order to be affected! This eventually became such a major problem that the game's online community was severely crippled, as everyone feared the famed message attack. We don't know what's worse: the spamming or the cutscenes.

#3: Accidentally Break Your Computer

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“Eve Online: Trinity” (2007) This expansion to the core game, “Eve Online,” significantly overhauled the game's graphics engine and added some new features. One of those new features was the inability to start up your computer. Some Windows XP users who upgraded from the original version had their boot.ini files deleted, a file which is paramount to starting up your PC. Many gamers were left with computers that would not properly start. CCP were left scrambling to find a quick solution and were forced to apologize to hundreds of people. While they did eventually send instructions on how to fix the affected computers, many players were left reeling and extremely upset at the whole calamity.

#2: The Uninstall Bug

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“Myth II: Soulblighter” (1998) Before Bungie changed the gaming landscape with the likes of “Halo,” they were wiping out entire hard drives with the click of a mouse! While “Myth II” was certainly a great game, it came with a particularly nasty, Flood-like bug. If a player installed the game in a location other than the default directory and then decided to uninstall, their entire hard drive would be wiped clean, as the game, like an action hero on their last stand, took everything down with it. Although this problem was not widespread, it understandably pissed off a percentage of the game's user base, forcing Bungie to replace the games at a significant financial loss. We think a big “oops” is in order here.

“The PlayStation Underground 2004 Holiday Demo Disc” (2004) Back in 2004, demo discs were still a thing, and this disc was sent to all current subscribers of the popular magazine PlayStation Underground. Unfortunately, playing the Viewtiful Joe 2 demo on the disc would also delete ALL the saved data on any memory card currently sitting inside the PS2 console. Everything on your memory card, years of memories of your favourite titles; Gone in an instant. Fans were understandably outraged, and took to Sony to vent their frustrations. Sony basically just shrugged their shoulders, said, “Ah jeez, sorry 'bout that,” and players were left heartbroken of all their progress gone to waste. Happy Holidays! Do you agree with our list? Have you encountered any game breaking bugs of your own? For more reliable top tens published every day, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.