Epic is making a pc exclusive, so I don't know where you seen that.

Epic statement directly on the Gear of War forums back with Gears 2. This was after they were slated for GFWL deleting people games saves and causing random CTD's due to the way it was implemented by Epic. That and the lack of chat features other than GFWL, which at the time did not support certain sound cards or specific peripherals outwith MS made ones. Its why Gears 3 never came to PC.

They also said that in future iterations of the unreal engine (ie Unreal 4) it would no longer be multi-platform as the statement said "It killed is to make it multi-platform, we wont be doing that again its not financially viable."

Well they must have changed there mind, as there new game Fortnight is a PC exclusive. Also Epic is not owned by MS, so they do not have to use GFWL... MS only has the publishing rights to Gears.

Edit: It also uses Unreal Engine 4.

I know but they were contracted to use it for gears 2 at the time, precisely because gears2 was supposed to sell big and sell GFWL to the PC crowd. MS expected people to pay for access to GFWL on PC at the time, so the game was a major flop for PC on top of the problems.

And by chat functions I mean basics like a chat window for text, nothing more. As it was you had to use the console to talk via text chat in the game, and some sound devices simply would not function with GFWL so those that didnt know to use the console had no way to communicate with others for online play.

This may or may not be true, mostly it is just me pulling out of my @$$ here, but I think that Bethesda may actually be holding off on some of the really big bug fixes until after or close to when they finish putting out DLC and expansions. Here's why I think that:

Each dlc adds new content that interacts with the original game world differently, depending on various factors such as whether it changes existing places or people/factions. Look at Dawnguard and Breezehome, two completely unrelated things. Some script in Dawnguard somehow interfered with Breezehome and broke it, an unintended side effect. So they release a patch that fixes a ton of bugs in the game, but the next DLC that they release breaks the patch, counter-acts it or just creates a ton of new bugs because of conflict with the bug fix. So they release a new one to fix the bugs created by the new dlc and the bug fix. But what if someone doesn't have DLC 1, just 2, then the bugfixes for 1 don't work and create more bugs because 2 is there but not 1.

My point is, this game is huge. One person may consistently experience the same bug on 20 different games, while another may never experience it out of 20 different games. I.E, I have never experienced any bugs with the Blood on Ice quest on 14 different characters, even though I see it as one of the biggest quest bugs in the game. We can't expect Bethesda to create a bug fix that will work in every possible scenario, especially when many bugs do not even occur consistently across the entire player base.

I have noticed that the GOTY editions of Morrowind and Oblivion were far more stable than the base game and even the version of the game from later patches. I honestly believe that bethesda has not been focusing on bug fixes because they have DLC planned, and see it as a waste of time to pump out bug fixes that will just be broken by new DLC. When they are all done and finished, and they release the final patch, the version that will become the GOTY version, I honestly believe that the game will be much, much more stable and most of the major bugs will be fixed.

Dammit, i was going to say that

But atleast this patch doesn't add features, so maybe it won't add bugs either?

Yeah, right

Yeap, this. For example, oblivion only had patches up to 1.2 or something. And that was that.

What about garrus, i mean.. erm.. guy from thieves guild journal. EVERYPLAY THROUGH it stays in my inventory unable to drop it. Why doesn't a simple thing like this get fixed?

Most developers aren't developing games for three platforms at once.

Many Patches, some introduced issues while other fixed issues and added free content -> Meh, I guess it's their work.

One small patch that does little -> "Bethesda's Patches are so Underwhelming..."

Brynjolf you mean? The only Garrus I know is from Mass Effect

It stays there because at any time you might want to join the guild. The way the games designed if you "dropped" it, it would either never work again if you wanted it to on that character or every time you entered town you would get again over and over.

This one definitely seems extremely sparse, especially when you consider the ever growing bug lists for the vanilla game and the newly released Dawnguard. I personally was hoping for the patch notes to read something like "cleaning house like a boss" instead of "heeeeey.... here's some stuff we were able to throw together last night". That is being under generous I know, but it is hard not to be.

Overall, I find I agree with those who say the level of support has been greater than it ever has been, and they are absolutely right. Bethesda is behind this game 100% and I am happy to see that. The problem is, the game is plagued with bugs, like 10 plauges of Egypt plagued. In the past, I used to play their games through a few times, and by the time I was on my third or fourth playthrough, I knew all the stuff to avoid or how to do things so I didn't inadvertently screw something up. I'm on like my 7th playthrough of Skyrim, and I am still running into bugs that either screw up my character or stick me with a quest item I can't drop or perma-glitch some part of my game world, etc. etc. THAT is the single most aggravating thing and I think it is the clearest indication of the situation we are in.

So, just to be clear, I am VERY happy that Bethesda is behind Skyrim. The overall game is amazing and this additional support makes it even better. Conversely, the game absolutely NEEDS this level of support, because it is a veritable quagmire of nasty loathesome soul svcking bugs that are just waiting to ruin your game. To that end, I try to remain positive, but Bethesda needs to start "cleaning house like a boss" before it gets to the point where they either burn the thing down or let the roaches rule the roost.

Bethesda didn't do new vegas.

They were still in charge of QA.

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But in any case, at least we're still getting patches. Even though I question why their attention is still on Kinect, hell at least we know they're still on board.

Could be a scary concept, if people fork out for lots of DLC's that bring extra bugs to the game and then Bethesda didn't patch any more.

Yeah, and they nearly went bankrupt for it. Redguard didn't sell well because people where tired of putting up with buggy, unfinished games. That made them take extra care and put a lot more effort when making Morrowind, and that hard work paid off, they made one of the best RPGs ever. I guess now that you can patch a game, you have an excuse for doing your work half-assed.