Outer Wilds bug makes face of studio founder (and Heroes star) accidentally appear in the game
“Oh man, that’s not where he’s supposed to be”, the studio said
A newly released patch for Outer Wilds appears to have added a new bug featuring the face of the development studio’s owner.
Patch 16 was recently released on Steam, and is described by studio Mobius Digital as a “minor patch” which will be rolling out to all other platforms (except Switch) in late May,
The studio has assured non-Steam players that they’re “not missing out” by not having the patch yet because it’s only intended to fix two PC-only bugs and for “adding a couple folks to the credits”.
It would appear that the patch has accidentally credited someone more than intended, however – the studio’s founder and Outer Wilds producer, Masi Oka.
One player (as spotted by Automaton) noted that a photo of Oka – who also played Hiro Nakamura in NBC’s show Heroes – now appears in one of the windows of the player’s ship.
After asking the studio if the photo of Oka was always there and perhaps they’d only just noticed it, the game’s official X account replied: “Oh man that’s a bug, that’s NOT where he’s supposed to be, lol. Thank you for calling this out!”
The studio didn’t confirm how the bug happened, nor did it reveal where the photo of Oka is “supposed to be”, if it was indeed added as a hidden easter egg.
Oh man that’s a bug that’s NOT where he’s supposed to be lol. Thank you for calling this out!
— Mobius Digital Games (@Mobius_Games) May 7, 2025
The game’s latest patch will not be coming to Switch because Mobius is currently being “risk averse” with its updates due to most of its resources being allocated to its as-yet unannounced next game.
“Why stagger the [patch] releases like this? It’s to increase the chance that, if any bad bugs on Steam slipped through testing, they’ll get caught and fixed before the release of the other platforms,” the studio said. “This is no shade to our QA testers, we’re just trying to be extra risk averse and conservative with the resources we put toward Outer Wilds since our new game is our priority.
“This is also why we’re not bringing the patch to the Switch for the time being: it’s a risky platform for us to touch and the most important of these bug fixes don’t even apply to the Switch. We plan to reconsider once we decide if we’re going to bring Outer Wilds to Switch 2.”
Last year former Nintendo artist Takaya Imamura, who designed the Zelda character Tingle, told VGC he would love to see the character appearing in the upcoming live-action Zelda movie, and that Oka was his preferred choice to play him.
