Gamers are busy enjoying the recently released Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain should be on alert. Players have discovered a bug that may corrupt your saved game file rendering it unusable.

The problem arises when you have the game's possible buddy characters - a female sniper specialist named 'Quiet' - accompany you in either mission 29 or 42. Bringing her along may result in you losing hours of progress so it's best to avoid doing so for now.

Developer Konami has issued an official statement on the issue, but has not mentioned when an update to remedy this potentially disastrous bug will be rolled out.

In "METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN" which was released on September 1st, 2015 there is a possibility that the game stops progress if having Quiet as a buddy while playing "Mission 29" or "Mission 42". This situation can be avoided by not using Quiet as a buddy while playing either "Mission 29" or "Mission 42".

We deeply apologize, and appreciate your patience for further announcements regarding this issue.

This issue is known to be present for Xbox360, XboxOne, PlayStation®3, PlayStation®4 and Steam®.

Konami community manager Robert Allen Peeler reiterated this on Twitter.

Getting your saved file corrupted would be an unfortunate occurence in an otherwise near perfect game. The Phantom Pain is one of the best reviewed games ever, sitting at a staggering 94/100 rating on game review site Metacritc.

The game's online multiplayer option titled Metal Gear Online will be rolling out to console gamers next month. PC players will unfortunately have to wait until January 2016 to try it out.