Starcraft 2’s latest patch causes all sorts of problems. Released to the South East Asia region earlier today, Blizzard fast found that the patch introduced an issue they didn’t want to spread to all players globally. So they’ve delayed the patch’s release outside of the region until the issue is fixed.
That’s not the only problem, though. All recorded replays of Starcraft 2 games from before patch 2.0.10 will no longer be compatible with the game.
Don’t worry, your recordings are not lost.
While your recordings won’t be compatible with the latest version of the game, Starcraft 2 discreetly loads archive versions of its client when you watch old replays. Meaning that you can watch old games on your computer but, as Blizzard explain, “when StarCraft II loads a replay in an older version of the game, it has to disconnect from Battle.net. This means that some of the new, advanced replay features that were added in Heart of the Swarm aren’t available when watching replays that were created in 2.0.9 and earlier. […] After patch 2.0.10, you won’t be able to watch old replays with your friends, and you won’t be able to recover multiplayer games from replays created in 2.0.9 and earlier.”
The new feature for replay that comes in 2.0.10 is the ability to fast forward through your recordings. Previously you could only skip backwards.
There’s something else strange going on with the release of 2.0.10: the patch notes have been pulled. Now, links to the document with the update’s changes simply take your to the front page of Starcraft 2’s corner of Battle.net. All we have is this video highlighting some of the alterations coming in the patch:
According to a statement from one of Blizzard’s community managers, the patch’s release in other regions is to be delayed “by a day or so”.