When did we start to accept broken singleplayer games on release?

Speak for yourself, I don't accept it. I won't buy CP until it's fixed, I won't pre-order games and I'll only buy from somewhere that does refunds, I've refunded loads of games on Steam.

Before CP was released it was all talk about how the developer was great and deserved pre-order confidence. Now it's a mess the internet is full of threads like this. Game reviews are online hours after release and it's not like you have to wait days for a disc to be delivered, so there's really no excuse to get landed with a broken game.
 
I have yet to play a game which doesn't have issues of one kind or another. It's a consequence of games becoming increasingly bigger and more complex, with so many moving parts that it's a miracle they work at all.
 
Around the same time that developers started to realise that the idiot generation will be happy to pay full price for 'Early Access' in order to alpha/beta test their game for them. I mean, why employ your own testers to makes sure all the bugs are ironed out if there's an army of idiots freely available that seem to be happy to pay you to do the job?
 
In the vast majority of cases I buy games once their significantly reduced with multiple patches fixing most problems for a fraction of the RRP. Many triple a games are less than a quarter of their release price from earlier this year.

To be fair, games are far more complex than 20+ years ago and that comes with a lot more bugs, problems and people involved. From developers, management and corporate where each part of the business has to be aligned before we receive a finished product. A lot of people and posts above focus on individual points talking like it's an individual part that's the problem for everything that's gone wrong for them personally, and the games company. If things were so simple you'd have thought at least one of them would have figured it out by now.

Not ALL games have tons of bugs, Final Fantasy Remake for example hasn't had too many issues besides the Unreal Engine limitation, and IIRC they haven't had any patches since release. Look at Final Fantasy 7 from 1997, that game has so many bugs, glitches and problems it's amazing most didn't notice until many years later.
 
There's always been broken games as far back as I can remember. At least they can fix them now.

Part of the problem now is that games are infinitely more complicated than 20 or 30 years ago. Simplest thing to do is not buy it on day 1, and have a bit of patience.

Does anyone remember Ultima Ascension? It's still broken to this day I believe, but damn... It was a fine game. I remember one area was filled with invisible walls everywhere. Took me hours to navigate through. :D
 
Is the OP 12 ?

I can't think of one game that has not required a patch to fix something since release from the past 10 years.

The industry is not some niche rebellion army from 1985 where killing llama's for 20mins was enough to satisfy you. It's a cash cow for developers using the hype formula Hollywood has been using for decades.
 
- pre-order
- people having no will power or standards
- stake holders/management wanting to rush something out as MVP to get sales in as soon as possible
 
When we purchased Shiny AAA Game 2 - The Shiny Sequel on launch day despise the original Shiny AAA Game being a buggy mess that was had to be patched multiple times in the first few weeks after launch before it was playable.

When we pre-ordered Shiny AAA Game 3 - More Shiny Than A Very Shiny Thing despite The Shiny Sequel being another buggy mess on launch and half of the game appearing later as DLC that we swallowed as eagerly as a wino would free booze.
 
weldon855 said:
This is a bit of a strange one and with the release of Cyberpunk 2077 as the latest game in a long list with a multitude of problems on release I thought the question might be interesting. I'm unsure whether to post this in the console or PC section as the experience can be quite different for some titles.

Historically speaking many singleplayer only(based on my experience anyway) games never really required much attention after the initial release.

Multiplayer/CO-OP games were a bit different in that they generally required continuous attention throughout the games life and many more modes/variables/content were added to the base game.

Today everyone(almost) has access to the internet and the ability to push updates to games is much easier.

However, I think somewhere along the line we (the consumer/gamers) allowed the publishers/developers to get lazy and release unfinished broken games.

I have some really old disc games on PC that probably only had 1 or 2 small updates for example through its life and probably were not essential. Original Mafia on pc was a great game and I can't remember needing a major update to play it (could be wrong).

From the console side of things I played every single PS2 game I owned (GTA 3,Vice city,san andreas MGS2 + 3 etc) without an internet connection so I had no access to updates. Now I expect these games did has some issues but not to the extreme we get now.

So the question really is when did we start to accept broken/incomplete singleplayer games or what was your first really unplayable title on release(and the platform)?

And the next question is how do we fix(patch) it?

Reviewers were not allowed access to the console version of cyberpunk before release and were not allowed to show in game footage on PC. Their review scores glossed over any issue as irrelevant.

The days of actually reading gaming magazines and getting demo disks are long gone. The replacement should be far superior but it is actually more controlled and influenced by the developers.

Note: this thread isn't to hate on cyberpunk
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Didn't play Skyrim on release? It's a complex RPG not an on rails shooter where the developers can reliably predict the users play patterns. I'm onto act 2 and nothing really major has cropped up apart from weird stuff happening with npc path finding.

Millions of people have entered a big sandbox its inevitable some of them might overturn grains sand that the developers haven't.
 
SPG said:
Is the OP 12 ?

I can't think of one game that has not required a patch to fix something since release from the past 10 years.

The industry is not some niche rebellion army from 1985 where killing llama's for 20mins was enough to satisfy you. It's a cash cow for developers using the hype formula Hollywood has been using for decades.
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No I am not 12.....

Did games in the past have bugs? of course they did. But now it seems post release fixes are part of the development cycle rather than some minor things that were missed before release.

The requirement of maybe needing a patch or 2 post release has turned into months/years of post release fixes for a lot of games.


If you don't think it's worth discussing then don't come in here and direct a personal comment at me.

This wasn't a rant thread I was just interested in people's experience of the shift in expectations on release of a game over the 20+ years. And some notable differences between games released on console and pc before they relied on connectivity.

The band aid fix is simply don't play games until X months after release. This mentality allows you to get around the problem but doesn't really solve it.
 
kitch9 said:
Didn't play Skyrim on release? It's a complex RPG not an on rails shooter where the developers can reliably predict the users play patterns. I'm onto act 2 and nothing really major has cropped up apart from weird stuff happening with npc path finding.

Millions of people have entered a big sandbox its inevitable some of them might overturn grains sand that the developers haven't.
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The original post wasnt specifically about cyberpunk.
Maybe I played too many games before I had internet.
 
I don't buy games on release and although I really want cyberpunk I'm more than willing to wait until it's fixed because I know that most if not all games these days are released with bugs that ruin the experience

It seems crazy to me that people are so impatient that they can't wait and have the better experience rather than a tainted one
 
Relentless81 said:
I don't buy games on release and although I really want cyberpunk I'm more than willing to wait until it's fixed because I know that most if not all games these days are released with bugs that ruin the experience

It seems crazy to me that people are so impatient that they can't wait and have the better experience rather than a tainted one
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See comments above. I don't disagree with you but again that just allows you to avoid the problems.

If everybody waited before purchasing then it's also possible a game would flop on release and support would be pulled and it never gets fixed.

In cyberpunks case they probably opted against closed play testing for fear of footage being leaked.
 
All started with people jumping on the beta testing bandwagon years ago. Now that's changed to kickstarter early access, alpha 1-100, beta 1-100 and full release as soon as they think they've got something half playable and post release fixing keeps them all in a job longer. Updates are fine but paying for a game on release just to be a bug hunter is bloody annoying. I now usually wait 6 months, wait for bugs to be ironed out and get the game for half of the initial release price.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
Years ago and people defend these shoddy practices for some reason. To top it off, games have never been more expensive!
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online games are a joke unlocking things for fun, oh we can monetise that.

when was the last triple AAA game where you can make your own server with full control over it? didn't they force people to have to rent servers.

creativity and freedom died a long time ago, which is why you don't get all the cool total conversion mods for BF games etc any more.

it used to be mods are great they sell our games and keep them relevant for years, mods are evil we can release dlc instead


this forced the old people who did mods in to making their own games in early access on steam instead, then big companies realised you don't even have to finish a game anymore
 
Very few developers have good names due to getting in bed with the devil (publishers etc etc)

Hype sells and to the fools who actually pay for early access, Kickstarter and pre-order your actually killing games in the long-term.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
Years ago and people defend these shoddy practices for some reason. To top it off, games have never been more expensive!
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It's because people don't have any self-respect. They sold that for an abusive relationship with corporations and publishers (see people actually defending NV last week), a truly mystifying modern phenomenom.
 
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