In an earlier article “A Catching Case of Sequelitis”, I predicted “somewhere out there in corporate America, are some really nervous bosses looking at the final build of their soon to be released software: the sweat is pouring down their faces: its gone terribly wrong,” It turns out I should have included England (Guildford, Surrey to be more precise), where Lionhead Studios resides.   They seem to be the first company to show the symptoms of this latest corporate disease with Fable 2 , a game that’s been in full development since end of 2004 and is the sequel to the 3 million seller “Fable (2004) Having just gone “gold” last week, its now been officially announced (albeit quietly) that the game will be released without online coop: an update is planned “within the first week of launch in North America”!. (how long for the rest of the world?) Since the game’s online coop feature is one of the games big selling points, why is it not ready and what’s gone wrong? It’s possible that this is a strategy to prevent illegal copying: having to possess a legal copy of the game in order to download the “patch” is a good way to prevent disk copying? But,given the recent circumstances (the poorly made Fable Pub Games and its poor QA) it’s more likely just bad planning and panic. The project was maybe too ambitious in the first place and hiring the extra staff needed to correct the faults in time was obviously an unacceptable extra expense for a game that has been 4 years in the making hence the cuts and delays. Sadly though, the real disease still remains with no cure in sight : the number one priority of making sure the project made its important release date has been achieved. Well done Lionhead!