The weird and wonderful patch notes of 2018

When our favorite games release a patch, we always dive right into the patch notes. We have so many questions! Did that bug I noticed get fixed? Has that annoying exploit been squashed? Can the Pope still excommunicate me because he doesn't like my looks? When I urinate will my hands and penis get locked together? You know—typical, everyday game questions like that.

Amidst the dry, routine patch notes about improved optimization and tweaks to weapon damage there's occasionally gold to be found, notes that make you laugh even if you don't play the game itself. Here are some of the weirdest and most wonderful patch notes of the year.

Scum has penis problems

Bug fix where penis would get bigger with each login

Fixed a bug where urinating would lock hands and penis if interrupted

Fixed a bug where it was possible to increase penis size without it affecting other attributes

Oxygen Not Included has oxygen and poop problems 

Fixed a few crashes if a duplicant steps in water, breathes oxygen, or tries to idle near the edge of the world

Loading a save file with dupes who are low on breath should no longer cause the dupes to be invisible

Sneezing now actually plays the full sneeze animation

Fixed a crash that could occur when a fish flopped outside of the world

Creature's recent diet will properly load to become poop, no more mass loss

Creatures should no longer poop out literal tonnes of material

Stardew Valley has international law and relationship problems 

Fixed a Geneva Convention violation (by replacing red crosses in graphics)

Fixed babies sometimes spawning in houses that don't belong to the parents

Fixed player sometimes getting stuck in bed after another player got in and then back got out

Fixed spouse NPCs not kissing farmers

Golden Pumpkin is now a universal love (instead of universal hate)

Crusader Kings 2 has Pope and AI problems

The Pope is no longer likely to personally excommunicate you just because he slightly dislikes the look of your face

The AI no longer thinks it is a brilliant idea to betroth its underage heir to a woman so old they'll be infertile by the time the betrothal can be turned into a marriage

Told the AI it might as well not bother to loot if it can't even muster 500 men

The AI now, having decided it should send its retinues home, won't simultaneously decide to leave them just sitting in the county of some random dude in the same realm, leading to the AI keeping its military AI alive indefinitely

The terrific artifact "Axe of Perkunas" is no longer described as "not terribly useful"

Fixed rare edge case where a sub-unit commander you killed would miraculously return to take your eye out in your next battle event.

Discord has sound problems (and Daft Punk solutions) 

Added a volume slider to the inline media player because that llama video someone sent me was loud and confusing

We did some heavy tinkering on Discord’s core infrastructure. Most of the following bullets are related to this. Queue the Daft Punk track

We’re not joking, please listen to this while reading for maximum impact

The Sims 4 has responsibility and boundary problems

Fixed an issue where Father Winter could abandon his parental responsibilities by making all of his children disappear

Fixed a problem where if two sims WooHoo in another sim’s bed, the WooHooing sims could claim that bed as their own

Fixed teenagers being able to send inappropriate text messages regarding the Romance Festival

Destiny 2 has matchmaking and giant boss problems 

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West of Loathing has word problems 

Letters should no longer double-up when you type text in the Linux version of the game. Our apologies for the extra work now required when naming your horse “Balloon”, “Cappuccino”, or “Tennessee Bookkeeper”

Corrected a typo that was maybe preventing Pete from complaining about his joints in one pretty specific circumstance

Removed the worst 11 jokes, added 11 different, potentially worse, jokes

Fixed typos, more than we cared to count (maybe... 42?)

Fortnite has 99 problems and players ain't one 

The size of the Soccer ball in the juggling emote has been fixed

Players hit by a Boogie Bomb while holding Balloons will no longer have physics issues. They will now properly drop the Balloons

Guided Missile no longer fires in the wrong direction

You can now build through Shopping Carts

Vending Machines spawn more often, cost less, and have an increased chance to spawn at a higher rarity

Players will no longer hear ‘ghost footsteps’ after eliminating an enemy

Dwarf Fortress has zero problems (while continuing to be the high water mark for patch notes)

Mulling over long-term memories can lead to shifts in intellectual values and personality changes

Changed horror calculation from seeing a dead body

Stopped stuttering lag from repeated vegetation connectivity checks

Stopped inebriation personality alterations from being permanent

Separated thoughts for seeing somebody die and finding the body

Made dwarves visit museums properly

Stopped animals from developing need for alcohol after experiencing trauma

Stopped unintelligent creatures associated to civilizations, like domestic animals, from worshipping gods when given historical status

Stopped animals from forming grudges and other chat-based relationships

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.