Why Some Video Game Glitches Should Never Be Fixed

Video game glitches are rarely a good thing, and many are bad enough to ruin an immersive experience or prevent you from progressing. In most cases, glitches should be patched as soon as possible, but some deserve to be preserved.

Glitches Are a Comedy Goldmine

To say video games are complicated would be a massive understatement. Every video game can be described as a collection of moving parts that work together in order to immerse you in massive worlds and engrossing gameplay systems. It’s impressive when each and every aspect of a game works perfectly, but that’s also what makes it so morbidly fascinating when a game starts to fall like the virtual equivalent of a train wreck.

When they aren’t corrupting your save data or creating permanent progress blockers, glitches can result in the most unintentionally hilarious moments you’ll ever see in a video game.

Probably one of the most famous glitch-filled games is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which features an absurd variety of unique bugs ranging from dead bodies skating across the ground to dragons miraculously flying backward. There’s no end to the bizarre sights that fans have documented while playing Skyrim, but some are just guaranteed to happen under the right circumstances.

Anybody who’s played Skyrim before is probably familiar with the bugs that allow giants to send you skyrocketing into the clouds or let you blind anyone with a bucket while you rob everything they own.

Over a decade later, most of these glitches can still be found in nearly every version of Skyrim, and the game is all the better for it. Glitches like giants being able to smack you into the stratosphere and the infamous basket-exploit—as silly and immersion-breaking as they may seem—aren’t just a source of laughs; they also help shape a game’s unique identity.

Skyrim certainly isn’t the only game to be filled with bizarre glitches, but its memorable bugs have left the game with countless odd quirks and unintended features that you won’t ever see in any other game.

There are plenty of other games that have thankfully preserved their most iconic glitches. Grand Theft Auto IV never patched its infamous “swing set of death.” It’s exactly what it sounds like: a swing set that flings both vehicles and pedestrians to their demise—typically by sending them crashing against the side of a concrete building or splatting onto the busy streets.

Halo 3 features a similarly unusual glitch that allows two players to fly away from the battlefield with a dumpster. Not only is the dumpster glitch still present in the game’s Xbox 360 version, but it was also preserved in Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

Not every glitch involves sending random objects airborne, but even the simplest bugs can be worth preserving. Just like glitched physics and game-breaking exploits, a game’s most insignificant problems can still be a part of its unique identity.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a notoriously unpolished game with technical problems in just about every aspect, including its voice acting. There are numerous flubbed line reads that were accidentally left in the final game, including one infamous example in which the priestess Tandilwe—ironically, the only NPC who provides master speechcraft training—delivers two takes of the same exact line. Rather than patching this mistake, the developers left the flubbed line in the game and even re-used the same recording in the game’s recent remaster.

Obviously, not every game gets better with bugs. While glitches that launch you into the sky are perfect for single-player sandboxes like Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto, they would be incredibly frustrating in any serious competitive multiplayer game or story-driven experience. But when it comes to glitches that don’t do anything other than add to the fun of a game—either by creating memorably bizarre moments or allowing players to perform hilarious feats—it doesn’t hurt for developers to prioritize fun over functionality.

Exploits Reveal a Game’s Hidden Depth

So far, I’ve been describing glitches as “flaws” and “technical problems,” but bugs have also proven to be capable of making games even better than their developers ever intended. Some of the most game-changing exploits of all time were initially mistaken for innocuous oddities in a game’s programming, only for hardcore players to exploit these glitches with genre-defining results.

Modern fighting games were practically built on an exploit from Street Fighter II. It’s no secret that Street Fighter II had a massive influence on the genre, but it introduced the concept of “combos” by complete accident. Combos in Street Fighter II were an unintended exploit that first appeared in the game’s original 1991 release.

By hitting an enemy with an attack that has less than 5 startup frames and immediately following up with another attack, you’ll temporarily lock them in a stunned state and prevent them from blocking the next attack. With the right timing, you could combine this glitch with a super move to guarantee your opponent will feel the full brunt of the devastating finisher.

At first, the discovery of combos wreaked havoc on Street Fighter II‘s already lopsided balance. The careful mind games of every match were suddenly dominated by the new meta of careful setups and painful payoffs. Even worse, the frame-perfect inputs required to pull off combos—especially those involving supers—meant only the top players had access to this powerful technique.

Rather than dialing back on the original’s combo-centric combat, later versions of Street Fighter II kept combos in place while giving other players a fighting chance with faster attack speeds and expanded movesets. It didn’t take long for combos to start appearing in nearly every other fighting game as an intended feature, including Street Fighter III.

The fighting game genre has only grown more complex since the release of Street Fighter II, but that has only encouraged players to dig up even more high-level exploits. Even after almost 25 years, Super Smash Bros. Melee continues to be a shining example of how a broken game isn’t always the same as a bad game.

If you’re willing to take the time to delve into its mechanical depth, Super Smash Bros. Melee will provide a seemingly endless supply of wonky physics bugs and unbelievably powerful techniques. Character-specific glitches exist for nearly every fighter on the roster. Plenty of attacks have inconsistent hitboxes that can be abused to manipulate the game’s physics. Even the name entry screen is tied to multiple game-altering exploits. And you’ve probably heard of professional Melee players sliding across the screen by “wavedashing.”

Unlike the Street Fighter series, later Super Smash Bros. didn’t keep all of these glitches, and they were arguably worse than Melee as a result. In fact, the sequels added divisive new mechanics like random tripping and made the games slower to discourage wave-dashing and other unintended movement techniques.

The intention was to simplify the later games for casual players—largely due to the addition of online multiplayer in these entries—but that didn’t stop fans from finding new exploits to dominate the competitive scene. Wavedashing and a few other notable glitches were eventually restored with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which embraced some of the infamous exploits from Melee without being anywhere near as broken.

Of course, useful glitches aren’t exclusive to fighting games. Plenty of other genres have their own useful glitches that fans discovered after years of trial and error. Kart racers like Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing often contain unintended shortcuts that let you skip over large parts of a track.

Most first-person shooters tend to feature some form of movement exploit, though none are as influential as Quake and its accidental inventions of rocket jumps and bunny hopping. However, you won’t find anything that comes close to the extreme exploits of 3D platformers, with Super Mario 64 practically being the poster boy of infamous video game exploits.

While exploits are often capable of trivializing any challenge, learning to use them is always a challenge in itself. Most exploits that fans discover are notoriously difficult to perform and are mainly reserved for high-level players and competitive speedrunners. However, the process of discovering and mastering advanced exploits—whether on your own or with the help of online tutorials—can feel incredibly rewarding if you’re willing to put in the time.

Not every player will be interested in learning complicated exploits and practicing frame-perfect input, but that’s what makes accidental mechanics so great. Glitches allow hardcore players to experience their favorite games in brand-new ways, but they’re usually too difficult for new players to abuse on their first playthrough. If these exploits were easy, the developers would have patched them before launch.

But as an extra challenge for players who have completed countless playthroughs and memorized every inch of its level design, glitches are a gift that keeps on giving. Even today, fans are still uncovering bonkers physics bugs in Super Smash Bros. Melee and unintended movement techniques in Super Mario 64, which is part of the reason these games have remained relevant for well over two decades. And even if you have no interest in using glitches yourself, it’s still worth watching speedrunners and competitive players put these exploits into action.

No matter the obscure circumstances that may cause them, very few glitches happen only once. Some bugs are so common that just about everyone who plays a game will eventually find it themselves, which can feel like a rite of passage for new players.

Many other bugs are hidden deep within games, and players have had to go through great lengths to uncover them. It can take years for some glitches to be discovered and even longer for anyone to learn how to exploit them, but the excitement of finding and figuring out game glitches has brought numerous passionate gaming communities together.

Speedrunners and fighting game players rarely learn the ins and outs of a game’s exploits on their own. When a new exploit is discovered, it can take months of lengthy forum discussions, online tutorials, and failed attempts at replicating the bug for someone to finally pull it off. There’s no official tutorial for making use of glitches, so players have always had to learn from each other.

Sometimes, a newly discovered glitch can help shave minutes off of future speedruns, though other discoveries are worth the effort just to give fans a fun new way to break a game. Either way, the communities surrounding glitch hunts and speedruns are just as collaborative as they are competitive, and their years-worth of documented discoveries and online guides have only made it easier for newcomers to get involved.

Of course, not every glitch relates to some high-level exploit. Plenty of popular glitches don’t do anything other than inject an extra dose of silliness into serious games. Many of these have evolved into inside jokes and internet memes, such as Geralt’s teleporting horse, Roach, in The Witcher 3 and Agent 47’s homing briefcase in Hitman: World of Assassination.

Others have become the basis for playground rumors, online hoaxes, and internet creepypastas, such as the game-corrupting MissingNo. glitch in Pokémon Red and Blue and the creepy lighting bug that causes some shadows in Luigi’s Mansion to resemble a hanging body.

No matter what game they appear in, glitches have always been oddly effective at bringing people together. Aside from the entire communities that have formed around the goal of trying to break games in as many ways as possible, you may have had your own memorable experiences thanks to glitches.

Maybe you and a friend randomly encountered a hilarious bug while playing in multiplayer, or you might have learned about an important exploit through an online guide. Even talking about glitches with others can be a fun time, whether that means discussing shared experiences or describing extremely rare bugs you encountered on your own.

A game being flawed doesn’t mean it’s any less fun, and being able to enjoy its faults alongside others is an experience that shouldn’t be patched out.

While bug fixes exist for a good reason, it doesn’t hurt to let some games remain a little glitchy. Weird exploits and bizarre bugs can create some of the most memorable moments in a game or even alter its gameplay for the better. Today, most game developers are quick to patch any faults they find, but it might be time for them to sit back and let players enjoy these mistakes.