http://kotaku.com/5422990/saboteur-pc-not-working-with-ati-graphics-cards
If you have an ATI 3k, 4k, or 5k card, Saboteur will not work on your computer. Makes perfect sense, especially since they've been advertising the game with a lean towards the ATI brand! They're even giving away desktops with ATI cards and the game, so they'd better do something fast, before it gets any worse.

Wow. Just... Wow. Talk about neglecting testing your software before going gold.

Here is the workaround for this problem.
http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/346070.page

Well that's a shitty workaround, you have to disable any extra cores completely? Instead of just specifying the affinity for that one process?

Talk about desperately shoving stuff out the door before your company goes completely tits up

Talk about having your publisher shove your game out the door right before shutting you down.

From Impulse store
http://impulsedriven.com/saboteur
"Important Notice: Windows 7, Vista and XP users with ATI 3K, 4K and 5K series graphics cards may temporarily experience compatibility issues. Thank you for you patience while this issue is resolved."

it's Stubbs The Zombie all over again.

I called it. I knew this shit would happen. Hell, it would have happened even if Pandemic were still in business. These kinds of games have a shitty time on PC. Hopefully Mafia 2 will change that.

Probably not. Forum support staff in damage control mode tend to blindly copy whatever solutions people say are working rather than actually investigating the problem themselves. Disabling cores is only one of various pitfalls if you attempt to follow support "solutions". In the case of a game that fails to run with normal user permissions some support solutions will suggest disabling UAC altogether (despite process-specific "run as administrator" elevation achieving the same result without screwing up other programs). These are things most PC gamers have learned about at some point, but don't expect support to. Having advanced knowledge of the subject matter (or even any knowledge at all) is wholly unnecessary for a job in tech support.
In most cases you can ignore support's contrived solution and go with the easier one you know will achieve the same result, but good luck convincing them that your solution is the same but better (if you are lucky they might add it alongside their "tried and true" fix).

That's a shame, because Saboteur is an excellent game and works perfectly on my PC (nVidia). I wonder if this would have gotten ironed out if Pandemic wasn't crushed a few weeks before release.

What is it with games and ATI not working well together? Do we know why there are so many problems like this?

The other way around does happen as well, though to a lesser extent.

I've used several bits from amd/ati and they've always felt like an "also ran". No excuse for this sort of shit happening though, they still WORK after all

I was thinking of going ATI in January due to the lack of an nVidia DX11 card, but wow... stuff like this really makes me wonder if I want to jump to the minority card base.
It is sad as well that this is overshadowing The Saboteur, because I bought it based on some reviews and walkthroughs and I am loving the game. Like Assassin's Creed with shooting and very, very cool atmosphere. Rough around the edges but a great time.
I am sure the issue will be fixed, Pandemic actually wasn't outright killed they confirmed a lot of the staff was moved to EA LA and is still working on Pandemic games.