Chilla’s Art removes The Bathhouse from sale due to game-breaking bug

Chilla’s Art has announced that sales of The Bathhouse are being discontinued. Although the game’s Steam page is still live as of the time of writing, it is no longer possible to purchase it. The reason that the game has been removed from sale is a bug that prevents the player from entering room 203, which first began being reported by players around December last year.

“Hello Everyone.

We apologize to everyone that is experiencing the game-breaking bug.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find out what is causing the 203 bug. We thought we had fixed the issue, but all of a sudden, it appeared again.

We don’t want to cause any more trouble for you guys, so we decided to remove The Bathhouse from Steam.

Again, we apologize for all the trouble.”

Chilla’s Art is a Japanese game development team composed of two brothers who create horror games. They have released many short horror titles, such as The Convenience Store, The Closing Shift, and The Karaoke.

The Bathhouse is a psychological horror game that was released in October 2022. It is set in a Japanese bathhouse and features a protagonist who gets mixed up in some kind of paranormal phenomenon that occurs there. Towards the beginning of the game, the player must use a key to enter apartment room 203, but sometime last December, a great number of players began reporting that they were unable to enter the room.

Chilla’s Art released a notice acknowledging the issue to players on January 30. A short extract can be seen below:

“To give an overview of what happened to the game: We did not update the game in anyway since October 8th 2022. The game was fully functional until, as far as we know, when the bug started to occur around December 30th 2022. We are thinking the issue is caused by a software update of both or either Windows or Nvidia drivers. The game uses HDRP on the Unity engine which utilizes FSR (framerate-boosting technology by AMD), and we are thinking that that is the cause.”

Following this, Chilla’s Art temporarily removed the game from sale on February 6, before resuming sales on February 24 alongside the release of Update 2.00. This update was supposed to have resolved the issue of players not being able to enter room 203, but players continued to encounter the bug even after the update. The game later received a number of further updates, but Chilla’s Art were unable to pin down the underlying cause, and the decision was made to discontinue sales on March 17.

お知らせ | Notice

バグによる不具合のため『地獄銭湯』の発売を一時的に中断させていただきます。ご迷惑をおかけして申し訳ございません。
Due to a game-breaking bug, we are temporarily halting the sale of The Bathhouse while we work on a fix. We apologize for the inconvenience.

— Chilla's Art｜チラズアート (@ChillasArt) February 6, 2023

I (the original author of this article) have confirmed that in the latest version of The Bathhouse, you are unable to enter room 203 if you play it while the save data folder for the game exists on your system. As previously explained by Chilla’s Art, there is a workaround where deleting your old save data and then starting the game anew will give you the option to enter room 203 and thus advance past this point. Those who have already purchased The Bathhouse and want to play it may be able to avoid the bug by deleting their save file.

Written by. Marco Farinaccia based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-03-18 18:53 JST)