So I am making this topic today because I am extremely sad at the way the video game industry is handling the video games that they develop and publish today. Here will be some examples.

My brother purchased the PC version of Battlefield 4 it is still plagued with crashes and freezes each new patch that DICE releases fixes a crash but introduces a new crash. Today the China Rising DLC released and 1 out of every 5 games I crash when I play on my brothers Origin account. This stuff is getting me angry.

The PlayStation 4 (PS4) and Xbox One versions of Battlefield 4 are also getting lots of crashes. Today the PlayStation 4 (PS4) version of Battlefield 4 was supposed to get a patch but DICE is delaying it to further test it.

So here is my support suggestions.

Would anyone be happy if Bethesda Softworks supported the video games that they publish for years to come not 1 year, 1 year and a half or 2 years but for years and years.

Epic Games released Unreal Engine 3 in 2006 with Gears of War. In 2011 Epic Games added support for DirectX 11 for the PC version of Unreal Engine 3. The PC version of Unreal Engine 3 gets a Software Development Kit (SDK) which they name Unreal Development Kit which gets support to updated it with fixing bugs, etc about every month if it doesn't get updated every month then it gets updated about every 6 months or something like that. Epic Games started developing Unreal Engine 4 in 2003 Unreal Engine 4 will be released sometime in 2014 with the first video games that are being developed to run on Unreal Engine 4. Epic Games said that they plan on supporting Unreal Engine 3 and unreal Engine 4 for another 10+ years. So 10+ years support for Unreal Engine 3 will mean Epic Games has supported it for about 16+ years or so. Support for Unreal Engine 4 10+ years from now will mean Epic Games will have developed and supported Unreal Engine for 20+ years.

VALVe still updates their Source Engine which released with Half-Life 2 in 2004. The Source Engine and the video games developed by VALVe that run on the Source Engine still get constant patches like about 1 patch to 2 patches a month to a few patches every 2 months or 3 months.

Here are some examples.

Half-Life 2 patch November 13th, 2013.

Half-Life 2 Beta Updated

-Support has been fixed for resolutions other than 1280x800

Head-and-neck model has been fixed. It was often moving the camera along axes that should have been unchanged, such as moving the camera forward and backward when it rolled from side to side

So as you can see Half-Life 2 entered a beta phase for releasing patches and testing patches on November 8th, 2013 this is for both regular and Virtual Reality (VR). Half-Life 2 and the Source Engine still gets updates since 2004.

I don't know how long VALVe plans on supporting the Source Engine but VALVe said they want to support the Source Engine 2 far more longer than any video game engine than they have ever developed before and the Source Engine 2 to be as customizable as possible to keep adding new Windows Operating System's (OS's), and DirectX versions in the future so if DirectX 12 comes out it will have DirectX 12 support then DirectX 13, etc as well as Linux, MAC, and SteamOS support with that and bug, clipping, exploit, and glitch fixes.

CD Projekt RED developed their own brand new video game engine in their studio which they name the REDengine 3 and plan on supporting the REDengine 3, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and so on for years to come. In 2016 CD Projekt RED will license the REDengine 3.

Now that AAA video game publishing companies and AAA video game development companies don't have to pay Microsoft for patches on the Xbox One and SONY for patches on the PlayStation 4 (PS4) I think that Bethesda Softworks needs to support the video games that they publish for many many years to come on PC, PlayStation 4 (PS4), and Xbox One. So each and every single bug, clipping, exploit, and glitch that people report to every 7 video game development companies about the video games that those 7 video game development companies developed that Bethesda Softworks owns should take them seriously fix them and releases it as a patch.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim still has that lip sync bug or whatever it was.

BioShock 2 released in 2010. 2K Games, 2K Australlia, 2K China, Marin, and Digital Extremes released a patch for the PC version of BioShock 2 a month ago or so that gets rid of Games for Windows Live (GFWL) and moves it to Steam Works and added full controller support it never had controller support before.

Imagine Wolfenstein: The New Order getting patches to fix broken stuff 5 years from now then 10 years from now on PC, PlayStation 4 (PS4), and Xbox One and then the PC version of Wolfenstein: The New Order getting support for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows DirectX 11.1, DirectX 11.2, DirectX 11.3, DirectX 12, DirectX 13 and so on and so on.

The Evil Within same thing, The Elder Scrolls: Online same thing, and every single video game that will be released by Bethesda Softworks from now on in the future.

Bethesda Softworks is licensing CryEngine from Crytek. Even Crytek is gonna support their CryEngine for ever now they dropped the number 3 from CryEngine 3 and they now name it just CryEngine every new update to CryEngine will add lots of new stuff and fix bugs. The best thing about this new CryEngine is that every single previous version of CryEngine and CryEngine 3 will work with your video games.

So take the PC version of Crysis 3 which released this year on CryEngine 3 if you want to make mods or add support for other things the new CryEngine you can use for Crysis 3 each time. Same thing goes for Crysis 2 I believe I need to look into that one more though.

So Crysis 3 40 years from now you can use the CryEngine update 40 years from now on Crysis 3 if Crytek still sticks to that. They said it will be extremely customizable and moddable and all the bug fixes that come with the newer versions of CryEngine that fix engine problems and then you can also do it yourself to fix problems in Crysis 3.

Anyways this is my idea. Imagine Bethesda Game Studios fixing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 10 years from now or The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and releasing that patches for PC. No idea how likely they will release those 2 video games for PlayStation 4 (PS4) and Xbox One but since they are PC architecture it should be easy to port and keep support for years.

Each of the 7 video game development companies owned by Bethesda Softworks does not have to move the whole entire team to fix a old video game they can have anywhere from 1 person to 5 people working on fixing old video games every now and then or when they are free in the studio and not working on developing future video games or on their free spare time at home.

The BioShock 2 guys worked a few weekends to fix the PC version of BioShock 2 like add full controller support.

Long list. But you guys get the point I am trying to make.

Not sure what support they would need to provide? Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, FO3 and FNV are stable games and they work. The fact that they are sandbox and people can do things that they never thought of to mess things up is one thing, but I have played every Bethesda game patch free (other than the day 1 Skyrim patch) and never had an issue that did not require restarting a quest. These issues would go away with subsequent patches, but I never experienced them in the first place.

Well, there was one in Oblivion where you had to stand in a certain place to talk to a Daedra statue, but that's all that I can remember from a game bug that I could not get past.

I see some clipping bugs if I stare closely to every detail for armor, clothes, weapons, etc for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion once in a while. I mean I can download mods that fix them or fix them myself but patches would be nice so I don't have to download those types of mods. It would also be nice to add more DirectX versions support. The GameBryo Engine supports DirectX 11 now Bethesda Game Studios can also add it themselves if they want and 64 bit support so modders can go crazy and ports to PlayStation 4 (PS4) and Xbox One for those who don't play on PC and ports won't take months anymore.

GameBryo Engine features.

The Gamebryo engine currently supports several recent gaming platforms including http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL),

Well, of course the longer and more detailed the support the better.
But for every studio that sticks with a game and continues to fix bugs over a long time, there are 10 others that do not.

I think the fact that Bethesda gives us the tools to fix most problems also helps them move on to new projects.

Those people have more important jobs to do on future projects. (and more important things to do at home after work)

Clipping is not a bug.

They would need to rewrite the game for both DX11 and 64-bit support. This has been discussed numerous times in the past.

I know they have important things to do at home after work but I am saying whenever they can. As I mentioned the BioShock 2 guys when they were updating the PC version of BioShock 2. They were patching the video game at home on the weekends not all weekends but once in a while I think it was about 4 weekends only 2 Saturdays and 2 Sundays. Until the patch finally released on Steam.

Oh I know clipping is not a bug it just annoys me when I see myself holding a sword and the thumb clips through the handle or if I wear pants and look and see a part missing that I can see the sky through my torso. So I consider it a bug LOL.

actually FO3 has huge issues with systems post vista, unable to run for longer than 30 minutes with out crashing most times. None of the suggested tweaks fix it either for me and several other people.

I know there's quite a few PC versions of video games that support DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11 and both 32 bit and 64 bit.

Again: to add support after the fact would require a complete and total rewrite of the game. Not possible after the fact.

64-bit support would require renegotiation of licenses and other things including rewriting the game to work with the new memory addresses available.

All of this for what? To add new features. It's not necessary at all for either one. DX11 is pretty much eye-candy. 64-bit support would up the RAM limit. The limit is fine for the majority of people and there is no reason at all why they should spend the resources on those two things when it's not necessary for the games. Especially after the fact. That's just throwing money away when they're already working on the next game.

First, we can't compare apples and oranges. Specifically, we cannot compare support for game engines and the games created on them. Engines are productivity software while games made to run on specific engines are end products (i.e., the results of using a piece of productivity software). As an anology, engines are like packages such as MS Word or Adobe Photoshop while games are like documents made in Word or images made in Photoshop.

Having said that (and in reply to CCNA's question), Bethesda (and other companies with long-lasting products) needs to support new OSes that are released because they are making products that continue to sell well several years after they were originally designed. Companies like Bethesda need to do this because they continue offering the products for sale (and making profit from those sales) despite OSes being discontinued, including discontinued support by the companies that create the OSes.

Bethesda and other companies need to do this, or they need to stop selling products with specifications that require outdated, discontinued OSes (and hardware, if applicable).

To offer examples, CCNA says that FO3, FONV, Morrowind, and Oblivion are stable. No, they are not stable on current OSes. They do not even support Large Address Aware and this causes constant crashing as the games run out of memory and don't know how to handle requests to access memory when such requests were nonexistent during their original design. This is basic support for a product that continues to be sold when people cannot acquire the required specs from the general marketplace and/or companies making the required specs no longer support those specs. MS has tried to discontinue support for XP for years and will finally stop next spring, but that isn't really the point when people don't get XP when they buy a new computer system in the current marketplace.

If a company wants to sell a product, support for the currently available platforms must be offered. Otherwise, do not sell the product.

With respect to deaths_soul's assertion that it requires complete rewrite of the games, no, it does not, as the post-release patch of Skyrim showed (not to mention that Bethesda's games are using the same basic engine since Morrowind). Regardless, even if such a rewrite was required, my statement stands: companies must do the support work when offering an end product with required specs or they must not offer the product. Companies cannot claim that users must get the required specs when such specs are no longer supported in the general marketplace. That's a problem that companies have to address because they are industry insiders and customers are not, for the most part.

They are stable. LAA has nothing to do with not being stable on newer operating systems. I ran all of the games just fine on Windows 7 without enabling the flag and had sessions multiple hours in length.

So why does the PC version of Metro 2033, Red Faction: Armageddon, Saints Row: The Third, and Metro: Last Light have DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and DirectX 11 support? Better yet why did they add support for all 3 DirectX versions in the first place? The Metro: Last Light video game developers 4A Games added Linux support not to long ago and they said they will add both 32 bit and 64 bit support Metro: Last Light right now supports 32 bit only I believe. At least that's what I see on the Steam store page and friends on my friends list telling me.

And also it's to add support for all these + for the new consoles so people can play them on there as well. Sure they can do emulators I hate those though and I hate the no backwards comparability thing.

Different games, different situations. In all cases, they were either built in or planned from the start and the code designed as such.

Beth did neither. Beth's games don't need either one.

I can't see how Oblivion, with a game ruining bug like the A-bomb can be considered stable. Nor is it acceptable to not have released a fix for it.

Well Fallout 3 is not stable on Windows 7 it's not optimized at all Bethesda Game Studios needs to fix that.

Oh and there was a video game about a 2 years ago that released that had DirectX 9 only and the video game developers added DirectX 10 a year later. Don't remember name though. It was a moddb something.

It is stable. I run it fine without issue.

My PC doesn't I have 4GB of RAM, quad core and a Radeon HD 5770 HD series I am upgrading to 8GB of RAM or 12GB of RAM next year my brother has 12GB of RAM and a Nvidia GTX 580 and 8 cores and he crashes as well. It's not stable for everyone only some people. As AiTenshi1 said it's not stable on current Operating System's (OS's) for some people.

Of course you risk a game not being stable if you are under specced. It's like saying it's not stable when you're trying to play it on a C64.

In any case, I don't have a beefy system and it's fine for me. I call that stable. With all software, you're going to get a lot of folks with no issues and a lot with a ton of issues. Just because the latter group is the most vocal doesn't mean that the software is incredibly broken.

Under specced what? 12GB of RAM a Nvidia GTX 580 and 8 cores is enough for Fallout 3 let alone 4GB of RAM and 4 cores and a Radeon HD 5770. I can play Metro 2033 on ultra settings on my PC without PhysX of course with 0 problems on DirectX 11 but not Fallout 3? I can also play Batman: Arkham City with max settings and Battlefield 3.

I can also play Fallout: New Vegas on max which is the same engine as Fallout 3.

You missed the point. Trying to say how the beefier system has no issues when yours does does not imply the game is broken. It implies Beth screwed up the requirements.

I run it on a GTX 260, 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, and an old Core 2 Duo. I have no issues whatsoever.

Ok I forgot to mention. I just logged into World of Warcraft I am playing it right now.

World of Warcraft released in 2004. DirectX 11 did not exist in 2004 only in 2009 when Microsoft released Windows 7. Blizzard Entertainment added DirectX 11 support in 2010 before that it was DirectX 9 only since 2004 Blizzard Entertainment also added 64 bit executable support it was only 32 bit executable before that.

Bliz has less projects that they need to spread the money around on. Right now, there's really only 3 - 4, with WoW being one of their big money makers. Beth, the publisher, has a crapload of studios under their umbrella. They are in a completely different position.

What about Epic Games? They will support Unreal Engine 3 for another 10+ years and Unreal Engine 4. Epic Games is developing Fortnite on Unreal Engine 4 and another 2 smaller video games. What about VALVe with Source Engine and Source Engine 2? VALVe said they plan on doing stuff with Source Engine 2 more than they have ever done with GoldSource and Source Engine before. Then there is Crytek with CryEngine which they said is the video game engine that they will support and update for a long long time. Then CD Projekt RED with REDengine 3 probably.

What the hell does that have to do with supporting a game? You're now talking two completely different things and a completely different business. They may be tied together but they're completely different markets.

The new updated version of CryEngine each time Crytek updates it you can use it on Crysis 3. Chris Roberts is doing this for Star Citizen as well so if CryEngine x gets released in 2030 you can use Crysis 3 on it to mod it and run on whatever Operating System (OS) is out at that time. No idea how to explain there are some video game developers who are developing video games on CryEngine on the crydev.net website who can explain better than I. I also use the CryEngine.