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Gears of War 2 Patched To Fix Matchmaking Issues, Problems Persist
When Gears of War 2 was released, one of the biggest complaints about the game was that its matchmaking system didn't work properly for multi-player games, leading to unreasonably long wait times. After trying to placate players with mostly useless suggestions, Epic finally released a patch to address the matchmaking issues. Unfortunately, now that players have had a chance to try it out, it seems a large segment of the Gears 2 population is still having problems.
So they chose to release a patch that would lesson the problem while they work on a true solution, and people just bitch about it as if they did nothing. Seriously, they're working on it. Give them a break.
They get a break when they release software that does what it's meant to do out of the box.
They don't get a break during the interminable time it takes them to fix the problem, after that ship date. They shipped it, and it doesn't work. Any patience at all is a gift to them from the unnecessary goodness of our consumer hearts. Watching them meet us halfway is no satisfaction when they have ALL our money. Maybe if we got half of it back, we could talk patience. Good will is not owed to these people - they do what they do for a profit, and they fucked it up.
Just because there are a bunch of companies out there that would say 'Fuck the patch', take the money and run, does not mean that we should be grateful when a company doesn't do that, or that we owe them anything. We paid them for a complete, working product. They owe US. They have a responsibility to us, and they need to live up to that.
No, they make money fixing it. Gears of War 2 sold as well as it has because people like Gears of War 1. They supported the Gears of War 1 community, and those people were lined up to buy the sequel the day it came out, because they trusted the developer would give them another good experience. If they don't fix this, and say screw it, that community won't be there for their next game.
Theres a reason a lot of gamers will buy anything Blizzard puts out (well non-mmo related anyways). They still patch Starcraft, and Diablo 2, and Warcraft 3. They still keep battlenet up and running. Yeah to the first year business grad, that must look terrible on the books, a big expense with no financial reward. Yet they realize that expense will garuntee d3 and Starcraft 2 will sell a shitload of copies the first week.
Saying fuck it and moving on is how you become EA. Hated by gamers, who avoid their games like the plague. Sure they make their money off casual players who don't know EA from Valve, but as they have seen that's a fickle audience.
Theres 2 basic strategies in game development, community development (Valve, Blizzard, Epic, Bunjie) and shovelware development (EA, a ton of others). The difference is the former produces fewer games, but those games are almost always runaway successes. Shovelware devs make a ton of titles cheaply, test them poorly, and shove them out the door, hoping well-meaning parents will buy them for their kids. Considering the amount of money and time Epic puts into their games, and the huge size of CliffyB's ego, I think they want to be in the former category. If they want to do that, patching the game and fixing these issues IS mandatory.