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Most progress you've ever lost in a game?

In 2007 I was having some problems connecting with my Xbox Live account, and the recommended solution was to recover the Gamertag. I did so, making sure to select the option to keep saves and such, but it decided not to anyway. All my progress in all my 360 games gone.

I was most of the way through BioShock at the time (Apollo Square IIRC) and it took me years to go back and finish it by starting from scratch. I was in the middle of GRAW 2 and Rainbow Six Vegas too, and I still haven't gone back to them.
 
lost my save file for Tomb Raider Anniversary and had to start over.

Fallout 3 I lost a couple hours because I didn't manaully save it after playing for a few hours
 
I almost, ALMOST lost anywhere from 50-75 hours in Oblivion.
The Clavicus Vile quest was glitched (giving some statue/god some item to complete the quest). I forget HOW exactly, but it was like you couldn't get out of the mission or give the statue the item it needed or something.

The fix was hilarious I remember. You had to fast-travel to a nearby town, look at the ground and walk backwards until you were at the gate door and walk through it or something weird like that.

I honestly can't think of a game where I lost a huge chunk of time as I was playing it. I sold my copy of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance to a friend and he deleted my 150 hour save file. That stung a bit, but I was done with it so whatevs.
 
Bought a hip gear memory card for my gamecube and all of the data got corrupted. Had to restart most of my games. Fzero, tales of symphonia, Pikmin, and a bunch of others.
 
I'm not exaggerating:

* lost 4.5 million souls in Demon's Souls in one go.

* in RE:Code Veronica X, I had to start a new playthrough twice because I forgot to pick up two essential items without the ability to backtrack to where I can pick them up again.
the lighter and the fire extinguisher.

* forgot to backup my 90+ hours save data files for Terraria.

* my brother deleted my xxx+ hours of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. I was about to 100% every soul and skill in the game. :(

there're other games but most of them I really didn't care less for losing progress in them. e.g. Farcry 2.
 
101% of Burnout Paradise, i.e. I had completed and collected everything but the online challenges. I was actually a bit glad that happened. It gave me an opportunity to complete this amazing game a second time!

A few months later I deleted my new 101% save and started all over again.
 
I lost about 40-50 hours in Breathe of Fire II when my friend's mom, whilst cleaning, moved the SNES while the game was on. The game froze and when we turned it back on, all the save games were lost. It was absolutely devastating because of all the work I had put in and how difficult BoF II seemed to be at the time. Thinking I could never get back to where I was before, I never attempted to beat that game again.

I really should go back and try to finish Breathe of Fire II one of these days...
 
Dragon Quest 8

My mom made me let some fucking strangers (she says they are family but fuck that) play my ps2 while the adults talked. cut my game off when it was saving.
GTFO.
it was only 20-ish hours :p
 
300+ hours in Skyrim.
The ending of Shenmue 2. The VMU corrupted when I saved to eat and came back.
Lost all my Iron Storm save data on a game that had gone for solid days.
Those are just a couple since the 2600.
 
I was almost done Heavy Rain. I went to play it, and the save was gone. Not sure wtf happened.

Never did finish it, wasn't worth the effort.
It is the only time I can remember just outright losing save data like that.
 
100's of hours lost in (Dreamcast) Phantasy Star Online with VMU failure, BSOD, etc.

Edit: I also had Heavy Rain save death, I happened to press the PS button at the same time the Save icon came up and it killed my save. Was a near-Platinum save too.
 
I think I was about 8 or 9 hours into Darksiders 2 when the gamebreaking bug ended all possible progress.

When I found out this was the problem I ejected it, and sold it back to the store.
 
I finally buckled down to beat the first NES Zelda on the 3DS. I finished maybe 75-80% of the game, was really pushing through it - determined to finally quash my nagging childhood voice.

A few days later, I go back to the game, and it starts me off in the first panel, sword-less. I still to this day either don't recall what happened, or blocked out a memory of me doing something stupid with the save state. :(
 
Lost a 200 something hour FF X save file with most of the ultimate weapons unlocked (missing Wakka and Rikku) as well as all the Dark Aeons done
 
200+ hours of Pokemon Ruby because I let my nephew play it.

tumblr_maum35GoV61r2auyto1_500.jpg

This is me right here as well.

Twice I've gotten past Victory Road in both SoulSilver and Diamond after spending 100hrs grinding and trading my pokemon.

Both times my siblings have erased my file before I can curbstomp everyone in the Elite 4 and Lance/Cynthia.
 
Demon's Souls. Was on the final boss, only attempted twice at this point. Got a new slim, transferred and backed up data, sold old one. Couldn't find DS save. Found out by searching that the save was encrypted/locked and unable to do anything with it.

My question:
(this also came up in MH when the girl asked "why can't you trade everything, I don't need these Talons and you do?)
Why the fuck to developers give a shit what we do with the save files? I see a lot of decisions made in games like Pokemon where it just doesn't really matter. Who cares if I trade all my starters away so I have all of them? Why does it fucking matter?

/rant
 
The first assassin's creed got me right at the end with the bug that totally corrupts your save if you save and quit after killing that one boss but before proceeding to the next area.

I was not happy.
 
I just remembered another pretty devastating one.

My friend was playing his file of Gran Turismo 3, which was also on my memory card where I had my own file of the game. He finishes up an endurance race and accidentally saves over the wrong file: MY FILE.

I was pretty pissed because I had a ton of money in the game and a bunch of souped-up sports cars I spent a ton of time getting. I was so furious that I bullied my friend into racing ten full endurance races on his file so that I could use his file and money to sort of get back to where I was. He stayed up the entire night doing just that.

Thinking back on it now and I feel like a huge piece of shit. Nobody deserves to race in GT3 for 9 hours straight.
 
40 hours of tales of symphonia corrupted. vanished. gone.

Also: that time my little cousin saved over my pokemon yellow file.

probably around 200 hours of gameplay. which included a 99 alakazam, mewtwo, raichu, zapdos, pidgeot,

etc etc.. :(
 
Sank 200+ hours into Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced. Then just lost the cartridge one day on my way back home from school.

Never thought to buy it and go back. The wounds go too deep.
 
I had several save files for FF7 (max materia and levels for everyone) and FF8 (maxed characters with every type of magic/items/Aura FTW) both lost due to the memory card being tucked away somewhere.

I lost my best FF12 save that had around 120 hours and tons of progress.
 
Played FF7 up to the Missing No. fight without a memory card, died. Progress lost.
Also, PSX fell off of the dresser on disc 2 of Xenogears and I lost every save on it there as well. And Valkyrie Profile 2 corrupted my memory card while I was in chapter 5. So every single save on there was lost.
 
My worst was losing one of my PS2 memory cards. I had a few end game saves on for a few games (Onimusha 1 and 2, Xenosaga, FFX) and a 70 hour game of FFXII where I was going about finishing all the hunts before the final boss. No more card and I haven't gone back to FFXII since.

The worst one I have heard of was a friend having his save corrupt before the final boss in FFVII and then after another run, his younger brother overwrite his FFVII save at the same spot. He gave up after that one.
 
My friend accidentally overwrote my Melee save data. So that's 700 hours, roughly.

Even though that's a lot of time, I found myself surprisingly calm about it. It's not like an RPG where you invest time into your characters and progress in a storyline. All you lose is some stages and trophies and characters -- it's not like you lose all your skills too. And it's your memories playing with friends that really count with Melee, and I didn't lose those either.
 
I was in high school and called in sick to work to play Shining Force II, since my rental was up the next day. I was on the final chapter, and upon booting up the Genesis, the old lady on the title screen said "No Saved Data Found". I think I lost about 50+ hours of play. I haven't finished it to this day.

A few years later my sister and I were playing Phantasy Star online, and we had swapped Gamecube memory cards. She had characters that her boyfriend and her had sunk at least 200+ hours into. Somehow I saved over them... That did not go over well.
 
Not so long ago I completed MGS4 two times: one at Normal and one at Hard (with only 4 kills). A bit later I decided to play it again on Normal and clicked "New Game" instead of "Load Game" (to start a "New Game +"). So, I lost my stats but, of course, trophies are still here and I previously photoed my end-game-stats from the Hard completion. So it wasn't scary at all, but for a moment (when I realized that I've overwrote my save) I felt like an idiot.
 
100+ hours in gran turismo 3

Some halfwit friend of a friend was visiting while I was at the friend's house.
My memory card was in the ps2 and that inbred managed to overwrite all 3 of my saves while trying to save his new profile.
 
The only one that comes to mind was when I was playing Parasite Eve right after it came out-- I was just past the point where
Aya has to jump off the hospital roof to avoid incoming missiles
, and that was when my megamemory card glitched. I bought that card just a few months after the PSX launch, and it turned me into a total packrat. I saw no reason to ever delete any saves, so I didn't... had about three year's worth of virtually every PSX game save I ever made. Including every single save from my first time through FFVII. *sniff* I never bothered to go back and replay PE until... 2006 I think.
 
I had invested a lot of time into Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean not to mention numerous other GCN games, but one summer, my dad and I had such fight that I went over to my friend's house and stayed there for a few weeks.

Over there I called my mom in the hopes that she'd send my Gamecube memory card so I could resume my progress in Luigi's Mansion, Baten Kaitos, Twilight Princess, etc.

My mom told my dad, and in their infinite wisdom they hid my memory card. Yeah. My dad's a crazy control freak, and he's always hated my video game hobby.

Anyway, even months later, my mom said she couldn't find the memory card. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if my dad actually destroyed the card altogether.
 
20 hours of Dirt 3, most recently, before my GFWL save corrupted and the game overwrote it with a fresh one.

I have not gone back to it since.
 
Borderlands 2.

Lvl 50 siren :( wanted to play the dlcs and discovered my save file was deleted or is missing(xbox360)

No idea how this happened, but this ruined the game for me.
 
130 Hours of TWEWY and that was due to SE for having one save file and some brat who stole my ds and started a new play.

Fuck them both.
 
Like 400+ hours in Smash Bros Melee because the file corrupted for no good reason. That really pissed me off.
 
Got to the very end of Majora's Mask, and my house got broken into and I lost all my stuff.

Insurance comes and I replace everything. Go on like a 2-3 hour playing spree and the electricity goes out.

Not kidding. I was cursed with that game. Eventually I beat it though.
 
GT5 A SPEC lv. 39, B SPEC lv. 38

Over 700 cars in garage, over 1000 races, hundreds of hours of gameplay

All gone


Edit there is no worse feeling then having to redo everything all over again, it took me days, weeks even, to gold some of the events in this game.
 
I don't think I've ever had a huge amount invested in a single game. I had a first party Gamecube memory card corrupt on me which killed something like 60 hours of Tales of Symphonia. No big deal, I was done with the game but it also killed everything else which would add up to a lot.
 
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