I have complained before. I will do it again. I will continue to do as such until either I am band or those from which I have (and will no longer) purchase remedy their faults.

I own every product one can imagine (nearly) from bethseda and the like dating back to the early 90s and possibly late 80s. Yes, Im stating this to show my lame dedication to great game creators, oh well. Take it however you wish.

What concerns me is this move towards a greed and frankly marketing driven ilk. Of the 60+ hours I have "used" Skrim a good 35 of them have been FIXING issues due to updates that delete, destroy and corrupt files. Yes, yes, yes... The first words out of the typical devoted fan mouth will be Im screwing up. If you mean having bought the game then you are 100% correct but the FACT is all I have done is followed the "requirements" to a T. When you install software and an update comes in after it having run for 20 hours non-stop without a hitch and the executable for the main game or a DLL for steam vanish off your hard drive. Its obviously NOT you but them. Additionally, NO OTHER BETH GAMES I HAVE DO THIS! Doubly additionally, NOT OTHER GAMES FROM ANYONE INCLUDING STEAM DO THIS!

Please for the love of whatever, STOP f'ing up your games because, even if you fix it now, Im one person (and I have stated this prior), will NEVER buy another product from you let along you are involved with. I might miss out on a cool story but you miss out on a part of your livlihood made by the likes of me. Plenty of other story tellers out there to listen to. Thanks in the years bygone. But now... its just good riddence.

Apparently you haven't played the un-patched version Morrowind... it was much worse.

How bad was it?

It never randomly destroyed files after a patch. Clearly you didnt read what I stated.

My installation and playing experience has been perfectly smooth. I suspect that the problem that you are experiencing affects very small portion of the customers. Perhaps it's something wrong with your system.

Have you tried turning the computer off and turning it back on?

Yeah, Morrowind was CTD happy--don't recall it being as buggy as this svcker though. I realize there's tons of code in here, and some "if","then", and "when"'s may be missing--but it's been out awhile. I beat the main quest some time ago, and "was" in the middle of Companion quests. Got sent to Four Skull Lookout to croak the head bandit--yep, he wasn't there because I stomped on him many levels back.

That bug shouldn't even be breathing at this point in time.

Meanwhile, a hard save is just too far back, and I can't do anything else for the Companions until this quest is done.

I followed the quest marker right to that point where the bandit leader should have been--only an iron dagger.

There may be a console fix for it--I'll look around first--then ask.

This stands true for me as well. I pre-ordered the game, so I've been playing off and on from day one. I have only experienced one minor graphics issue since November 12th and it was related to a video driver. (ATI, of course) So very much depends on how your system is built, what hardware you have, what programs you may have installed that load when your system starts, etc, etc... I pretty much figured that my everyday "work" computer probably wouldn't be the best choice for gaming, so I put together a "purpose-built" system strictly for gaming. While many people may not have the resources or patience (or both) to do what I (and quite a few others) did, you can still take a look at what hardware/software you have and fine tune it for better performance for both gaming as well as applications. There are literally thousands of sites containing hundreds of little things that you can do to improve what you already have. A good first step is to post your DxDiag results as well as a bit more of a detailed description of the problem, or problems, that your experiencing. As each computer is different, the reasons for your problems with the game may or may not be the same as the next person. Having CTD's is and always will be frustrating. I know, as I use an older version of a popular word processing software that does this quite often. Only if you can absolutely rule out any hardware/software/operating system issues will you truly be able to "blame the game", and then take steps to correct the issue.

Skyrim should not, and in my experience does not, destroy, delete, or otherwise corrupt files when it patches. I think you need to look into any firewall or anti-virus you may have running...I have heard of some particularly hyper-active and paranoid AVs deleting Steam dlls and game .exes because oh noes, one of them looked at the AV funny.

Additionally, assuming again that a runaway anti-virus isn't getting in the way, in the event you do find files missing or corrupt in your Skyrim install, you should be able to reacquire them by right-clicking on the game in Steam -> Properties -> Local Files tab -> click "verify integrity of the game cache" -> wait until verification is 100% complete. (This may take a while if your HDD is especially slow or fragmented, or if it has a lot of files to check.) Any files you're missing or that are corrupt should then be reacquired.

If verifying cache integrity fails to redownload missing/corrupt files, again, you need to look at what's going on on your system specifically.

It might be helpful if the OP was more detailed about his problem and the steps he attempted to fix it. All said, that would belong in another forum altogether. (Edit: Ah, it's already been moved!)

While I can certainly appreciate your frustration, OP, you really should come here asking for help, not lambasting what everyone knows to be a bit of a buggy game. These forums (and other non-Beth Skyrim forums) are chock full of folks who are willing to help you get your game running smoothly and figuring out your problems. Give THAT a try before you give up entirely. Please!

What files were destroyed?

I had AVG eat dead island and prevent me from downloading the files on my PC.. I got rid of AVG. Zombies may have viruses but they are a different kind lol.