Borderlands 2 Graveyard.sav Virus Ruins Your Save File Forever

A new virus is making its way around the community called Graveyard. The virus does a rather unwelcoming thing of humping your Borderlands 2 save file and then dumps a lot of the data so that once you die you lose your character, stats and everything else, forever. There is no way to recover your data but some modders might be able to cure your save file if you're willing to take a few steps to let them remedy the problem.

The Better Gaming Bureau (and I really like that name. I hope they live up to it!) has done gaming a great service today of announcing that the Graveyard virus is spreading like wildfire. The reports confirm that save files for PC and Xbox 360 are converted to Graveyard.sav files and will ruin your stats for good once you die. So your choice is either to never die or get your save file fixed by a modder. The upside is that PS3 gamers have not encountered this virus, yet.

As noted on GameFaqs by user Dranaxscas...

What is graveyard.sav? What does this have to do with me?
When you get hit by the glitch that turns your save into graveyard.sav, upon entering FFYL and then subsequently dying for whatever reason, you will never respawn. You die and go into a free roam camera. If you try to load another character, dashboard, restart your xbox, etc, your save data is completely gone and there is no hope of recovering it at that point, as it is renamed graveyard.sav and is missing the majority of the data it once had.

What?! How did I get this?
The glitch originated with the modding community and may or may not have been accidental. It spread from there, and it passes from the infected player to all other players in the game with said infected player. At this point, it’s a terrible chain, and chances are it passed to you through some randoms.

Oh snap...that is some righteous fail pie right there and a whole bunch of people just chomped down on a big 'ole slice of it.

Gearbox hasn't made mention of this yet and there's no telling if the virus was deliberate (given the name “Graveyard” it kind of hints at it being deliberate) but this case here will sadly be used by a lot of publishers to further move away from mod support.

Nevertheless, if you value your savegame be sure to make a backup copy on a USB stick or something. And if your save file was penetrated by that pesky Graveyard violator, well...it's best to just put your save file out of its misery by taking it out behind the shed.