Alan Wake 2 developer's nightmarish technical disaster reminds us how annoying game development can be

Alan Wake 2 trailer — (Image credit: Remedy Entertainment)

Alan Wake 2 is described as Remedy's "first survival horror game," but its communication director recently experienced their own very real nightmare when they tried to show a demo of the highly anticipated sequel to a VIP.

"Today was peak dev 'fun,'" Thomas Puha tweeted, explaining that the latest build of Alan Wake 2 "had some issues," so he instead decided to use the demo from Summer Game Fest, which "took hours to find."

Today was peak dev ”fun”. Had to show the AW2 demo to a VIP. So playing the latest build had some issues and no time to check it out properly. Took hours to find the June SGf demo build because that’s ancient history so who remembers where that is LOL. 1/xJuly 27, 2023

Eventually, Puha did manage to locate the demo, but when he booted it up, he found that it wasn't in the mood to play ball. "I deploy it and it won't work," Puha said, adding that he was met with a weird error message despite the fact it was running on the same kit that worked just fine back in June. "I'm getting pretty frustrated by this point," he admitted.

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Puha then tried other builds but still had no luck. "It's been hours," he wrote in another tweet. "We try the demo build on another dev kit and get the same error and we are all stumped. I take my PS5 dev kit to the demo room and plug it into the AV and…image keeps cutting out whenever the game runs."

After getting IT involved, he finally managed to play a mission but then experienced a hard crash as that particular section was still being fine-tuned. With about 5 minutes to go before the VIP was expecting to see Alan Wake 2 in action, a "QA hero" who doesn't even work on the game tested the demo build on another dev kit. "It boots up and I used that one and it was fine in the end," Puha said. "It's amazing how annoyingly complicated easy things can get."

In another tweet, Puha admits that running the PC build was "probably the way to go," but, like with any good writer of tense tales, he leaves the audience with a slight sense of unease by adding, "But that's another story."

Alan Wake 2 is launching later this year on October 17. If you've not been keeping up with Alan's escapades so far, fear not, as newcomers don't need to have played the original game to enjoy the follow-up.

You can get our thoughts on the sequel and co-protagonist Saga in our Alan Wake 2 preview.

Originally from Ireland, I moved to the UK in 2014 to pursue a Games Journalism and PR degree at Staffordshire University. Following that, I've freelanced for GamesMaster, Games TM, Official PlayStation Magazine and, more recently, Play and GamesRadar+. My love of gaming sprang from successfully defeating that first Goomba in Super Mario Bros on the NES. These days, PlayStation is my jam. When not gaming or writing, I can usually be found scouring the internet for anything Tomb Raider related to add to my out of control memorabilia collection.