Hello all,

Like many people here I enjoy games... a lot, however like many; I get frustrated (pee'd off) with games released with so many bugs.

Bethesdas Elder Scrolls games from Daggerfall and up had lots of bugs (didn't play Arena on release), so did Fallout 3 and it's DLCs. Rocksteady Studios Batman: Arkham city lost my save game and many others as well as suffering poor performance. Creative Assemblys The Total War series often release games that are poorly balanced with crappy AI and poor performance. Every game by Obsidian who seem to be the masters of releasing buggy games. IDs Rage performs poorly despite it is trying to show case a new engine. Troika couldn't release a stable game, ever, it seems. Blizzard don't seem to be to bad when compared to the above and neither does Bioware, however their games have had their fair share of bugs and patches.

I've owned many games by these developers and I constantly am dealing with bugs, bugs and more bugs. Since developers seem to be perfectly content with releasing unstable games, taking our money and maybe patching them later (still waiting on the save game fix Rocksteady), what can we do as customers? Whinge and complain or is there something we can actually do, does anyone here have a suggestion?

Well for me I have stopped with pre-orders and I've decided recently not to purchase games just after the release date. I really want to play Mass Effect 3 after completing the previous two games, however I am not purchasing it until I am convinced it is in a working state. I'll probably get it 3 months or so if I am convinced that it is stable, or I may hold out until even later. However the game developers often give you bonuses if you pre-order, so you can feel like you are losing something by waiting. I feel that it's worth it to wait though. If enough people do it, it will send a sign to the developers/publishers to release games in a better condition and also I don't have to suffer the head aches of a poorly released title, looking for patches, optimising ini files or downloading mods with fixes in,

I am happy with Bethesda and its handling of Skyrim, it was released with bugs and performed poorly on the PC but they have been dillegent with patches. Even though they should have released it in a more stable condition, however I was able to complete the main quest before the big patches came in. I'm also impressed they are releasing new features in 1.5. Not every game developer does that... Unreal do though.

Guess you have a bad luck. Skyrim works very good for me, just as Fallout 3 did. The only dlc i encountered problem with was Mother-ship Zeta. Hell, even FNV worked good for me!

It's not bad luck, it is the games. Despite being able to play and complete the games main quest on release date without patches, I and many other are experiencing problems during the play through. My PC is a high spec machine and it is always looked after, Windows is legitimate and up to date. I do clean uninstalls of drivers before updating them and I do not have tweaked drivers. I keep the amount of software running on my games machine to a minimum, I have another computer for experimenting.

- Fallout 3 had 5 official patches that fixed bugs, 2 other patches that allowed for DLC's. However after those patches an unofficial patch is available by Quarn that fixes many many bugs that were still left over... in the hundreds.
- For the PC Fallout New Vegas has had 7 official patches, and it still has problems and the fixes by users prove this. F:NV patches also includes a patch that has 200+ quest and scripting issues, so the game was released with many bugs.
- Skyrim has had 11 patches for the PC so far, some which have caused more problems and they are planning on releasing at least one other patch. It is good that they are making such an effort to fix the game and I acknowledge that a game of that size will have problems on release and they will have to stop releasing patches before every bug is fixed. Skyrim however had poor CPU and memory optimisation which a patched fixed, I feel that the game should not have been released without those optimisations. Also the patch that created problems such as Dragon flying backwards was embarrasing for Bethesda but funny for me.
- Arkham Aslyum has had many people complain about losing their save games, on the consoles too. Which they have not released a fix for and has been going on for months. It appears that a 'crack' that is used for pirating the game actually fixes the problem for the PC. Which is embarassing if true, I have not tested this.
- Rage is game developed by iD to encourage game developers to use their engine, however the game has very bad performance and doesn't look that great either. Unreal 3 has been around for ages and did have problems on release but developers are using that engine on mass because it does work very well and is very versatile.
- Total War games usually have many problems, which Creative Assembly do fix up. They are not perfect after their patches but they play very well, however it takes months before they get to that condition.

I can go on for so many of the games that I love, however my point is that it is not bad luck that I have experienced these problems. It is the game itself. Surely if you play Skyrim you have journal entries that are corrupt?

People complain about bugs all the time, some of the "bugs" they say they incountered aren't really even bugs but rather just poor ingame choices or ignorance.
Only games I've owned on release day are the Call of Duty titles and they've not been bugged for me, course there is glitches like the Javelin one in MW2 and the unbalanced weapons in MW3 and a few map glitches in MW1 and WaW but nothing majorly painstaking.

Creating a piece of software that will work for everyone is next to impossible. I've created and released some programs and tools in the past and I've probably spent about 2x the time it took to develop it on fixing bugs and making sure it's compatible with all systems.

Debugging a game of that size is tremendous work. Even smaller games usually have plenty of bugs when they are released.

Yup. It's not just your hardware that can cause issues, it's also the software you personally have installed (on PC's), and it's pretty hard/impossible to account for all combos of everything for everyone.

It's been like this for years...Myst, Doom, Baldur's Gate, Tombraider...haven't met a game yet that didn't have at least a few not-inconsequential bugs or quirks for some. I think "we" just hear about it more because at some point the internet seriously exploded and now "everyone" can jump online and communicate their ire on popular game forums, rather than suffering in unheard silence whilst torturing game CD's in our toasters.

I don't really mind technical issues that much. Of course it's better if they aren't there, but they will not stop me from enjoying the game (unless it's a bug that make it impossible to finish the game). Alpha Protocol is hardly a game that can be called polished, it's full with technical issues and quirks, but I still consider it to be the best game of 2010.

And I'm currently enjoying The Last Story on the Wii a great deal, even though it got one of the worst framerates I ever experienced on a console game, pretty much only Steambot Chronicles for the PS2 have a worse framerate and I enjoyed that one greatly too.

As for Fallout 3 and Skyrim, I didn't experience anything major in those either.

I had 2 bugs playing alpha protocol. One was it froze in the train level in taipei. The other was Brayko didnt move during his bossfight. The latter was a godsend however.
That knife.

Maybe Obsidian stealth patched it (I didnt DL any patches) but it ran fine for me. DOnt see how people complaiend so much.
If only it got a sequal.

Best bug i had was the game wouldnt initiate, hit the icon to run it, went through everything game wouldnt run, read the game forums for the game, and it seemed like a common bug, but FO3 just crashed all the time for me, same with my freind crashed and crashed, was barely stable enough to play till i found a link to a person who suggested changing the config file to make it read only a dual core chip, seemed to work alot better after that, same fix doesnt work on win 7.

Not technically a bug, but Bastion was a pain to get working. You had to download .net frameworks and X, Y, Z... But it was well worth the effort, so I'm not complaining.

There have been some silly cases that just shouldn't have happened. Like a http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112801-Dead-Island-Dev-Could-Have-Released-Wrong-Version-to-Steam getting released instead of the release build, or devs http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/15/magickas-buggy-launch-we-didnt-know-the-game-was-being-released/

But in the end as long as the problems get solved I don't mind issues.

A few bugs I do accept, however some games are released in a terrible condition and often enough bugs are not fixed with a patch. I am tired of dealing with the bugs, downloading patches, trying betas, tweaking ini files, that is why I am chosing to not buy games at release any more. 3-6 months down the line I get a game that has usually multiple patches, alternative fixes are well documented and I also show the game developers that I am not willing to accept poor standards.

- If software and hardware configurations are the problem then why do consoles get the problems also? Skyrim has had many patches on both XBox360 and Playstation 3. The PS3 version was in a pretty poor condition on release.
- Why are game breaking/save file destroying bugs not fixed months after they are identified?
- Why do developers/publishers often not acknowledge problems for a long time or sometimes ever?
- Why do developers not give reports on the status of their patching process?

It's because people are still willing to buy games and their DLC's despite these problems.

The last 2 questions/statements/whinges above, are actually being done by Bethesda on Skyrim and I am very happy to see it. Nothing is perfect and Skyrim's release isn't (freaking awesome though), but them acknowledging problems and giving plans on fixing them are very welcome. If all game developers took such an attitude I wouldn't be feeling so annoyed (nicer word than the one I want to use) about this situation.

-Edit-
I never was able to complete Daggerfall's main quest due to a bug in the game. At the time I didn't have internet access so no patch could help me, so I bought a game that I could not complete. I've got the patch now, but I don't play that game any more. After recommendations I might start torturing CD's in toasters.

I don't think anybody expects something to be perfectly bug-free (well, some might, but it's an unrealistic expectation) but it does seem that quite a number of games are released with bugs that are real show-stoppers for which the fix is technically fairly straightforward, Oblivion's infamous "a-bomb bug" being a good example: PC players can use a user-made mod to fix it but without a Bethesda fix that was never forthcoming, console players are SOL. Then there's the likes of the memory management bug that plagued Morrowind, Oblivion, FO3 and Skyrim and was only "fixed" in the latter due to eventually allowing it to use more memory: though that one's more complicated, nearly a decade is more than enough to get it sorted out, so I think it's not unreasonable that players get a bit arsey about it still being a problem.

100%

Funny, if I didn't like something in a book or film I'd be much less open to the criticism that I was doing it wrong - why are games more able to get away with this? Surely if the player isn't supposed to be doing something they should actually be stopped from it?

Not that I'm saying there shouldn't be a balance. But then, that's often entirely what it's about: balancing issues. Something which a lot of games seem to have little interest in...

I can see the debate from both sides. On the one hand, it seems lazy and irresponsible to release an obviously inadequate game, and some devs seem to get away with it and regularly take home awards for games with which there are (or were on release) a lot of major issues. Not to mention that it's a massive bummer for people with slow (or expensive, or non-existent) internet connections. But on the other hand, no one can expect games to be perfect, and patches are not only an inevitability, but also a massive boon when compared to the days when a problem with a game was stuck there forever (anyone remember Space Station: Silicon Valley for the N64? Awesome game, but uncompleteable without a Gameshark).

Plus, though I'm wary of the attitude, I do think often people are too fussy about bugs. I've been lucky enough not to hit any of the major issues that Skyrim had (perhaps then I have no right to discuss them? Sorry ) but that's not to say I haven't experienced other bugs, sometimes minor ones and sometimes terrible ones that have forced me to reload from my last save, and to be honest I think all of those are forgiveable in a game so big and so detailed. Morrowind used to crash to the desktop every 30 minutes, but that's not what I remember it for whenever I think of the two years where I played it almost every day...

I read this but it didn't register, you think Alpha Protocol is the best game of 2010? I bought that pretty much fresh and I can't get more than an hour or so into it. I've tried the unofficial tweaks and fixes but it is too buggy, my problem is that the gameplay performance is poor. I'll be in combat and it will jerk or not move correctly and I am dead. Where is the 2nd patch for that game? When I know of a way to play the game I will try it again.

I realised I had bought NWN 2 just after the release date and put it down before getting to far into it as it was too buggy, I think it was 3 patches later they claimed some effective fixes and they were right, I really enjoyed the game... 3 months after I had purchased it. If I had waited 3 months, I would have saved a few bucks and a few grey hairs.

Why would I buy another Obsidian game on day 1? Alpha Protocol is the game that really started me thinking about this situation.

I'd like to state that Skyrim isn't a really buggy game for me, crashes to desktop more frequently now that my progress is high, but I can deal with it. My problem with Skyrim is the optimisation for the PC and the terrible condition for those on the PS3... which I didn't play but read about.

Obviously you guys haven't played the FIFA series. Me and millions of others love the series but it's so damn buggy and glitchy every single year, sometimes I wonder if they even test play it before release. Too often the game fails on us, wheter it's offline or online, and there's a lot of raging going on in the FIFA community because EA Sports won't sort out their game.

I've always been under the impression that the Maddens and FIFAs didn't have (m)any bugs. Considering how long the series has existed, and that every new installment is really just an iteration with little to no update in terms of gameplay or graphics, you'd think they'd have it together by now. Huh.

EA Sports? Gave up on those games when I realised that each year they practically released the same game with a different number representing a year.

-edit-

I got beaten to it.

I don't really fault beth for releasing bugs in their games, they are so huge and full of content and vast numbers of variables that even through hundreds of hours of playtesting they still wont identify as many as the bugs as the millions of hours collectively put in by the fans, as stated by Todd Howard in the Keynotes at DICE2012. However, more linear rigid games such as Call of Duty, Hunted: DF, WET, Medal of Honour, Battlefield Badcompany etc etc have less of an excuse since their play through's would almost be identical considering the linearity of the games.



Being a PS3 user I was disappointed to hear about this after the release, which put me off buying it all together, but after the temptation grew too great I decided I'd rent instead to test it. After a two week rental with zero bug encounters I went out and bought the game, still not encountered any bugs that I'm aware of.

Oh no they don't, there's an abundance of weird glitches and physics fails, not to mention the unstable menues and game freezes.

I don't mind, I love football and enjoy being a part of the FIFA community, even though it means buying a new game every year.

Solidor
- Glad the PS3 version worked for you, did you get it soon after release or was it after a few patches?

Eginho
- Yeah, I loved FIFA. But it lacks dragons and magic.

FIFA and its type really should be lacking bugs more than any others as its a closed game enviroment and its built upon a game released only a year earlier.

FIFA's never really appealed to me, but if they replaced the football with swords and cheese wheels I could probably get into it.

I too get a bit annoyed at the amount of bugs that are in Beth games (Including New Vegas) at launch. With the exception of Fallout 3, I find the GOTY/Ultimate Editions are much more stable. I've gotten in 60 hours with the New Vegas Ultimate Edition on 360 and I've had no freezes and only typical gamebyro issues (Stuff falling through floor, Textures not loading properly,etc). Fallout 3's GOTY edition still gives me problems although it's much better then the regular copy. When I played Kingdoms Of Amalur Reckoning last month, in terms of game stability it was night and day in comparasion to Beth. Hardly any issues in my 107 hours of play in comparasion to 14 freezes in +350 hours with Skyrim. Maybe Beth should take notes or hire a better Debugging staff.

vote with your wallet -
1) NEVER PRE-ORDER a game
2) Wait until the forums say the game is fairly stable and well patched
3) Following # 2 will usually lead to paying lower prices for a game