Borked KOTOR 2 Switch Release Ends As It Began: A Shit Show

Almost exactly a year ago, we discussed the train wreck release of Knights of the Old Republic 2 as a port for the Nintendo Switch. How big a screw up was this whole thing from the start? Well, if you’re not familiar with our previous post on it, we can just start with there being a bug that makes the game literally unfinishable and take it from there. Aspyr, the company that did the port, apparently didn’t do the sort of QC to uncover this itself, and instead only learned of the issue when many customers who bought the game got very angry on social media some two weeks after the game was released for purchase.

So, that’s how it started. How’s it going? Well, Aspyr’s patch to fix the issue making the game non-completable managed to introduce further bugs and issues with the game. And in recent days, Aspyr announced that the Restoration Content DLC, a fan-led effort that added in cut content from the original game and was promised to those who bought the Switch version of the game for free, is simply not going to be provided at all to those paying customers.

The studio behind the port, Aspyr, delivered the bad news late Friday night, telling Switch owners of the game that the update to add support for a series of fan-made mods that fix certain bugs and round out KOTOR 2’s characters and rough ending had unfortunately been canceled. It’s basically the unofficial “final cut” of Obsidian Entertainment’s excellent RPG, and Switch players will now essentially miss out on it, despite the fact it was previously marketed alongside the port’s 2022 release.

“Sadly, today we are announcing that the Restoration Content DLC for the Nintendo Switch version of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords will not be moving forward for release,” the studio tweeted on June 2. “We’d like to thank everyone for their continued support by providing a complimentary video game key to players that purchased Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords on Nintendo Switch before this announcement.”

Those free games on offer are a bunch of other Star Wars games, mostly for the Switch, or the full KOTOR 2 game on the PC, which does include the DLC being denied to Switch customers. However, as Kotaku points out, there are a couple of potential problems here. For starters, maybe a Switch owner doesn’t have a PC to run the game, or simply doesn’t want to play it on a non-handheld console. And those same folks, or others, may already own the other games on offer that could be played on the Switch. These are Star Wars fans we’re talking about. They tend to buy much/all the things when it comes to this stuff. So those customers are what, just shit out of luck?

This all dovetails with rumors of real problems at Aspyr that has some wondering just how long that organization will be around. But if you’re Nintendo, famous for its heavy-handed policing of everything that reaches its customers, this entire port has been an abject failure. It sure would be nice of Nintendo to step in and make sure effected customers on its console were made whole after all these failed releases and broken promises.