Glitch

A ‘glitch’ is a term used in video games to refer to a fault in a video game. Although the term ‘glitch’ is commonly used to describe all the errors we encounter whilst playing, this is not entirely accurate. There are also other types of errors that are not categorised as glitches, such as bugs or exploits.

The difference between a glitch, a bug and an exploit

It is important to distinguish between three terms which are often mistakenly used interchangeably:

Glitch

A glitch is characterised by being an error that does not prevent the game from continuing, is nothing more than a minor annoyance that the user notices. For example, the most common type of glitch occurs when graphics fail to load completely or when they load only partially. 

Another glitch might be animations playing incompletely or the player ending up outside the game map. Glitches do not usually prevent the user from continuing to play, but they can affect the gaming experience and make it less immersive. In general, glitches tend to be cosmetic.

Most of these glitches are unintentional, but some developers include deliberate glitches by way of Easter egg, so that players can discover them as just another secret or curiosity within the video game.

There are various causes of glitches, but they are generally due to errors in the code from the video game, to hardware faults or to a insufficient capacity of the console or computer system.

Bug

Unlike a glitch, A bug is a fault that does seriously affect the gaming experience, sometimes making it completely unplayable. These bugs are the result of errors in the game’s programming code and usually cause the video game to stop working altogether. Bugs can also occur in software programmes other than video games. A well-known example is the blue screen of death.

Exploit

An exploit is an unexpected bug in the game code that makes it easier for the player to progress in the video game. A player can therefore take advantage of an exploit to complete the game more easily. In many cases, exploits can lead to alternative gameplay strategies. However, sometimes an exploit can cause the game’s difficulty to plummet to such an extent that it is no longer fun to play.

Examples of glitches

If you’ve been playing video games for a while, you’ve probably come across some or almost all of the glitches we’re going to mention:

• FPS (frames per second) drops: The lower this setting is, the slower the game’s images and visual sequences will play (in gaming slang, they’ll ‘lag’), and they may even stutter or freeze temporarily.
• Corrupt save file: Although, given its intrusive nature, this is more of a bug than a glitch, the data in a save file can become corrupted to such an extent that the game is unable to load it, causing the player to lose all their progress.
• Audio faults: This extremely frustrating error can cause the audio to become distorted or to disappear partially or completely throughout the game.
• Rendering failed: As we have shown earlier, this is a very common glitch in which certain textures or elements of the game fail to load or appear distorted.