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Do you mind when a game is released broken or in a bad state?

Do you mind when a game is released broken/in a bad state?

  • Yes

    Votes: 226 89.0%
  • No

    Votes: 14 5.5%
  • No opinion

    Votes: 14 5.5%

  • Total voters
    254
Let's just say I won't be buying any more games on release day. For online games? Better to wait a few months down the line.
 

rapid32.5

Member
Why the fuck I wouldn’t mind? I like old GTA Trilogy, didn’t buy it and won’t, unless it’s patched and tested by every site. If it’s not fixed, GTAVI goes out of window, there are other games. I don’t keep loyalty to any dev, if they try to make shitty or cookie cutter remakes. I won’t buy their games.
 
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6502

Member
Mind?

They give us another reason not to buy at launch and flag themselves as a developer to avoid in future. In a way they are doing us all favour.

Shame about the impact on the wider industry, but that's up to them to regulate. As it has ever more crooks and "journo" shills I expect nothing to change. I will just have to suffer having more beer money...
 
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IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Yes.

I'm old and I remember the days when consoles weren't connected to the internet. Back then developers couldn't release broken games and patch them up later.
 

bad guy

as bad as Danny Zuko in gym knickers
Let people play broken games if they want to. It's a free country.

Doesn't affect me at all because nowadays it's sooo easy to inform oneself just one day after release. And the game market is enormous... well unless you have a new console and want to make use of the hardware while it is still "next gen".
 
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Woodchipper

Member
People who understand games are always at an unfinished state and don’t buy into release date purchases.
Yeah, I guess I don’t understand that games are always released in an unfinished state. Even if I did though, I would still mind. Why the fuck wouldn’t I?
 

b0uncyfr0

Member
Alil. I care more about when things are promised and bragged about - but are completely missing or downgraded in some way when released. That pisses me off more.
 

EekTheKat

Member
Nope, shit games are good for a laugh sometimes, but generally I just move on to something else. The next time a company ships a broken incomplete game they get to take their place at the back of line while I spend money elsewhere. For every shit AAA game shipped missing limbs or have parts attached backwards there's a fun, solid AA game that's often overlooked.

That being said, there's something beautiful about another gaming dumpster fire that makes it hard to take my eyes off of. A shit game can often offer hours and hours of endless amusement and drama that manifests in the form of vids and forum rantings.

Ultimately the only thing that sends a message that matters to publishers and developers is to vote with your wallet. Anything else is just background noise that often goes away when the news cycle moves on to the next gaming disaster.
 

Ellery

Member
Absolutely. I hate it.

There are only very few games I preorder (if ever). Even though I loved The Witcher 3 and had high hopes in Cyberpunk 2077 I never went to preorder or buy it.

I have zero acceptance for games that release in a technical broken state like Cyberpunk, Battlefield 2042, GTA Trilogy etc. The only reason why they are being released in that state is because of suits that force deadlines to make quarterly numbers look good thinking they can get away with patching the game later.
Given how many hours they work on those games they just have to know the absolute mess that they are releasing. There is no way the developers aren't communicating that to the suits or higher ups that are in charge of the rollout.
Minor things can always happen and no game is ever completely bug free and there might be server problems for capacity since it isn't so easy to perfectly predict the amount of users on the first day and you can't add servers in 5 minutes.

And that is how CD Projekt RED turned me into a 60$ day1 costumer for Cyberpunk into a "I might buy it for 10$ with all DLC and patches included 2 years later" costumer.

I get it that COVID was a surprise and life changer, but we see many examples of great games still being release in 2020 and 2021 that were impacted by COVID, but still managed to be in a good technical state. There is no excuse for a remaster of 20 year old games to be that faulty, or a game that has been worked on since 2013 to be an absolute mess after you've proven yourself with one of the best open world games of the last 10 years or a game that is basically the same every two years and only comes with a Multiplayer mode. At some point there are no excuses and games like that shouldn't be rewarded at all.

Gotta vote with your wallet and make your voice heard. Even if you feel like it doesn't change much it does.
 
Is it a rhetorical question? :pie_roffles:
I mean... I don't think there are many people happy to have paid for something that works halfway... to avoid getting pissed immediately on the first day many people no longer buy on day one.
 

Lunarorbit

Member
The last few years have become a joke with some of these titles. Fallout 76 was a disaster. Cyberpunk....

I pre-ordered mass effect Andromeda and decided after that I was done buying games early except for rare exceptions like tlou2.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Yeah for sure. I was all in on BF2042 but played 3 games on the free trial and hoped the fuck out. Moment has gone now as there’s negative publicity and it’ll take them months to get it to a decent state - people have already moved on.
 
Broken games shouldn't exist but some devs are so glued to deadlines that it became almost normal to release completely broken games. Not many devs are willing to forego profit today in order to release a better game tomorrow. The worst part is a lot of the games that release broken are never fully fixed before the devs abandon them when the sales dry up. I mostly stopped buying new games because of how often they were launched unfinished with massive band-aid patches on launch day. I'm finding even after five years a lot of these games are still not fully fixed because the devs just abandoned them when the sales dried up so I have to either find a community fix or figure one out myself.
 
I like how Bend Studio was mad at gamers saying it was the gamers' fault that a Days Gone sequel isn't in the works because not enough people bought the game at launch. Well, if I remember correctly, the game was really buggy and broken on launch so why would we want to play that mess? It's not our fault you released a broken, buggy game!
 
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EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Games today are plagued with connection problems, and the games receives patches which fixes the issues and everyone gets happy. One of the most annoying things in an online game like Battlefield 2042 is when the game lags or disconnects frequently. Why would you release a game with lingering bugs? Especially AAA big games, and btw what was the last big budget AAA game to launch without problems?
 
Games today are plagued with connection problems, and the games receives patches which fixes the issues and everyone gets happy. One of the most annoying things in an online game like Battlefield 2042 is when the game lags or disconnects frequently. Why would you release a game with lingering bugs? Especially AAA big games, and btw what was the last big budget AAA game to launch without problems?
TLOU2 had no issues on version 1.0

I think it was only missing Photo Mode

Also, I don't think the inability to turn off film grain was an "issue" with the game at launch, but they did make it possible to turn it off later on which sucks because I would've turned that off from the start, but oh well.
 
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MiguelItUp

Member
Depends on the level of "broken." If it's to the point where I can't even play or enjoy the game the game at all, then definitely.

If it has some minor bugs or jank, but the core gameplay and fun is there, then I'm fine.

That being said, games shouldn't be released with such crucial or obvious bugs. That's what QA is for. I don't think it's fair to cut games slack, especially when they're as pricey as they are.

I was able to play CP2077, and completed it. But it was a mess. I completely understood the flak it received.

BF2042 doesn't feel AS serious as CP2077 did/does to me. I mean, it can still be played and enjoyed, at least in my experience. But it still has a lot of fixing.

The GTA Definite Editions I think are the worst we've seen yet for a lot of reasons.
 
Thats a very very big YES. Thats why i buy a game NEVER on launch day. I wait always till the game is patched.
Then i buy it, saves a lot of fustration.
 
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RAIDEN1

Member
What a question to ask, I mean you are paying your hard-earned cash on a title, and at the very MINIMUM it should be of a triple-A quality especially if it is from an outstanding franchise - (I'm looking at you Mass Effect Andromeda and GTA..) or it is something with huge amount of hype.....you never used to get this 20 years ago....let alone in the 16 bit generation..
 

Wonko_C

Member
I wouldn't know, I don't always buy day one and when I do, it's a game I know won't have serious issues, (which are usually Japanese single-player games)

I have played two games which during launch were called "broken" or "incomplete": Which are Street Fighter V and New Genesis: PSO2. But I think people were unfair on them, these are service games and they are supossed to grow with time. And in the case of SFV, would people rather go back to the time were you had to buy an entire new version just because a few new characters were added?
 
The recent release of BF2042 has been...eventful to say the least.
But what's surprising me is the amount of people defending it with all their heart, and that bring a question: do you care when a game is released broken/unfinished?

I'm only talking about performance, bugs, netcode etc... Not counting missing features here, just the stability of the final product.
Cyberpunk 2077, GTA Trilogy, BF2042, AC Unity, Fallout 76 are all perfect example of this.

Do you think this trend will end? Is it even possible to release something like BF2042 in a solid and polished state day one in 2021?
Is there something we can do, as not buying doesn't seems to work?
Nobodies defending it. We don't want nit picky, childish, immature reviews without nuance...
 
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hemo memo

Gold Member
Yes.

I'm old and I remember the days when consoles weren't connected to the internet. Back then developers couldn't release broken games and patch them up later.
I mean generally yes as they can’t patch it online but they have the fix ready for the next physical shipment of cartridges/CDs. They were careful as it is not easy but today they just ship things broken because what are your options really? Refund? Good luck with that as platform holders have fucked up refund system. So yeah why not release broken games as publishers will do everything they can to get you to buy the games because they know you’ll be stuck with it. Remember the last time a publisher dared to offer refunds? Their game was removed from the platform holders stores. Don’t get fooled. It is not a quality control reason as they sell far more broken game than that one. The reason is how DARE you offer refunds.
 
I do not understand why games and other software get special treatment when it comes to quality.

The pass on product quality, eg "they will patch it later", or other excuses for problems that so many buyers swallow and move on. Not sure why anyone would shell out $70 for something with many problems or missing features and just not care. If it was a car or a washing machine they would be recalled in masse.

Bad analogy? OK, how about as entertainment. If it was a terrible movie or piece of music then critics would rightly give a bad score and warnings to avoid. But the games press seems to hand out 8 and above to anything from a big publisher, at least the outlets that anyone pays attention to. Also notice how none of the positive reviews ever mention any of the bugs that players get across the board on launch. Did their PC or Console have a really lucky day during the review or something? How a game is performing is pretty much all I need in reviews and so few actually cover performance in a meaningful way (I can judge how good or bad a story and voice acting is on my own).

Then you might think that user reviews would be a salvation. But no, it's "review bombing" and "unfair to the devs" when a pile of bad user reviews come in. Even if a game defender thinks it's a plot or engineered to look bad, it also means that the game has a problem and users want it addressed.

As for the devs feelings on the matter all I can say is it's tough being an artist and not everyone will approve of your vision. I would also point out that developing software is a team sport. It takes a large group of people a long time to create a buggy mess, not just one director making a questionable call one morning.
 

KyoZz

Tag, you're it.
Nobodies defending it. We don't want nit picky, childish, immature reviews without nuance...
Funny how you are responding to this but when I link you long reviews with TONS of legit points, you are not responding. And you talk about being picky?
 

KyoZz

Tag, you're it.
Why are you so aggressive? A story is one part of a game...there's multiple parts of a game... calm down its okay...
Playing the victim, ignoring the point. Yep that's what I expected.
Oh and by the way, the story is just one part of the game, but it is the most important thing for many players especially in a game like TLOU.

We'll keep it here since you don't have anything interesting to say, have a good day.
 
Playing the victim, ignoring the point. Yep that's what I expected.
Oh and by the way, the story is just one part of the game, but it is the most important thing for many players especially in a game like TLOU.

We'll keep it here since you don't have anything interesting to say, have a good day.
You don't review bomb a game and give a 0/10 for an opinion. The game is at least a 9/10 for technical achievement alone. You sound biased and angry...
 

PSlayer

Member
if a game is released unfinished or broken i won't buy it at full price, unless the devs dump a lot of cool content to compensate.

Most of the time i'll buy it at a bargain bin price in the long run though.
 
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KyoZz

Tag, you're it.
You don't review bomb a game and give a 0/10 for an opinion. The game is at least a 9/10 for technical achievement alone. You sound biased and angry...
Oh so for you a game is automatically an 9/10 (at least) if it's looking good and have solid animations? Well that explain a lot.

I don't care about people giving it 0/10, those are obviously trolls. In fact you bring TLOUII but I don't care about it too. You enjoyed it? Great, as much as I didn't liked the story I can understand other have and indeed it is a solid title on the technical side.
But no, you don't review games only on the technical aspect. Good graphics/technical side doesn't equal an automatic 9/10, and this is in fact a big problem in our industry since a few years.

Again, as I said in my post ABOUT BF2042 (really, read the full post not just what you want to pick):
"Some people here needs to learn and understand how Steam reviews is actually working. It is not rated on a range from 0 to 10. It's is it good or not. There is no middle ground.
You like the game, you recommend it. You don't like it, you don't recommend it, that's it. Then Steam is counting all those review and do a % of good vs bad.
So right now, only 24% of people that reviewed BF2042 recommend it. That's it."


So, again: NO, BF2042 wasn't review bombed (if that was the case Steam would have deleted them as they always do). It is fully deserved: 1 & 2.

And you can call me angry, biased (lmao coming from you that's some funny shit) or anything else, that won't change the truth.
 

DrAspirino

Banned
I no longer buy games on release date
THIS!!! SO MUCH THIS!!!

What I'm still trying to get my head around is why people here are so desperate to buy games exactly on release date and even pre-order them?

Because you have to a) be a moron or b) have no impulse control to buy (and even preorder paying more than full price) something you know full well it's gonna come full of bugs and errors.

IRRC, I have never in my life have purchased a game on release date, and that's why I don't mind about games being broken: when I purchase them, they're already patched and in working condition.

It pays to have patience, you know... ;)
 
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