It is very safe to say that fans, players, and the people overseeing the organization of the NBA have not had a good start to the year. On top of the tragic death of Kobe Bryant in a helicopter crash earlier this year, the ongoing danger of the coronavirus epidemic has caused a major shutdown of the NBA, and now, a major problem for NBA 2K20 as well.
The NBA video game series has faithfully followed the professional seasons with regard to who is available for players to use in each game, as well as what teams are active at the time of the game. The professional season has been faithfully incorporated into the game with regularity for fans of basketball, but now, an unforeseen problem has arisen that is ensuring players will not be able to begin their NBA fantasy season at home.
The current NBA season has been suspended indefinitely due to the ongoing coronavirus kerfuffle, and with the season ground to a halt, there are no new stats appearing for teams or players. This has inadvertently affected NBA 2K20 in a way that no one could have predicted, but has essentially shut down one of the game's options entirely for the foreseeable future.
One of the game modes in NBA 2K20 is Start Today, which begins a run in Career mode beginning in the current state of the NBA season, which updates as the season progresses. However, with the season ground on an indefinite hiatus, there are is no official state of the season to go off of, causing a glitch that crashes the game when a player attempts to use Start Today.
To be clear, this does not seem to be a bug that is directly tied in with a faulty aspect of the game or an overlooked design flaw, everything works the way it is supposed to. It just so happens that the data that NBA 2K20 is reaching for does not exist, a situation that the game was never designed to handle, which has led to the crashes players have been experiencing. It was likely a situation the designers never thought would occur, as almost no one thought the NBA season would be suspended, even pro basketball players.
The good news is that NBA 2K20 can still be updated manually with relative ease, so the Start Today mode will likely be locked via a patch in the near future until it can function properly. The devs have been good with adding things, including an in-game memorial to Kobe Bryant, so adding a feature lock like this should be no problem.
In the meantime, players will have to make do with other modes of the game, which is not the worst way to spend time while waiting for the overall Coronavirus situation to get better. Fortunately one of the most important parts of the game, the ability to customize a Jump-Shot, is completely unaffected.
NBA 2K20 is available for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and iOS.
Source: Comic Book