This week saw Ubisoft release the comprehensive 1.2 update for The Division, but it seems that the patch is causing some players to lose access to their characters.

Ubisoft has been hyping up the improvements being made to The Division with its 1.2 update for a few weeks now, and on Monday the patch finally went live. However, there are now reports that it's having some unintended, disastrous side effects for a portion of players.

It seems that characters are going missing from the game once the update is applied. Between reports on the official support forum for The Division and the game's subreddit, it looks like this could be a far-reaching issue — and at present, there's not much indication of what is causing the problem.

However, it seems like the outbreak of character disappearances is confined to the PC version of the game, according to reports from VG247. As of the time of writing, there are no confirmed reports of players on the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 versions of the game having their operative go AWOL.

Obviously, this is a huge problem given that nature of The Division. Every element of the game is built around the continual development and evolution of your player character — so players potentially losing out on that investment of time and effort could easily turn audiences away from the experience.

That said, Ubisoft is currently making efforts to retrieve the characters that are currently missing, citing a server problem as the cause of the disruption. Affected players are being advised to give their Uplay username to a mod on the studio's forums to help with this investigation.

A few months after its hugely successful release, The Division seems to be a great game plagued by the realities of such a complex project. Between its ongoing troubles with cheaters and exploits and this unfolding situation, building and maintaining an online-only shared-world experience like this is obviously very challenging.

That being said, it's important to remember that the game boasts a player count of almost ten million, and it was released less than three months ago. The Division is still a huge success for Ubisoft — but it's clear that there's more work to be done if that's going to continue.

Unfortunately, the disappointing Incursion just added to the game doesn't seem to be evidence that things are headed in the right direction. Technical competence and worthwhile content are crucial if The Division is to realize its potential, and both are in serious doubt at this time.

The Division is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Source: VG247