Rumor busted: GTA 2 countdown is Y2K bug

A lot of us were shocked to see a Grand theft Auto 2 countdown on the Rockstar Games site, and for good reason. Some of us may have thought that the sighting could lead to a release of the game on the PSN or the XBLA, but no dice. It turns out that this is a manifestation of one of the most popular computer bugs ever erred. Full details after the jump.

We recently had a rumor post reporting the sighting of what looked like a Grand theft Auto 2 countdown in the Rockstar site. We certainly had hopes that this might be a prelude to a release on the PlayStation Network or the Xbox Live Arcade, but the case doesn’t seem to be so,

According to IGN, this is a rare manifestation of the Y2K bug that had the world worried almost a decade ago. The source code of the countdown, the site says, is faulty and is actually pointing to the 1999 release of the said game.

“This code does not understand that the 21st century exists,” says IGN. “If you’ve been searching for a Y2K error, you’ve found one.”

Rockstar Games confirmed IGN’s explanation by acknowledging the error on their site. The dev site is expected to do some corrections soon.

Via IGN