Bethesda Criticized Over Buggy Releases

SSDNINJA writes "This editorial discusses the habit of Bethesda Softworks to release broken and buggy games with plans to just fix the problems later. Following a trend of similar issues coming up in their games, the author begs gamers to stop supporting buggy games and to spread the idea that games should be finished and quality controlled before release – not weeks after."

Comments

Re:Doesn't everybody do that?

[AdmiralXyz]

"Nowadays"? Penny Arcade was mocking this back in 1998. Hell, anyone remember Pac-Man for the Atari 2600? Game developers have been putting out buggy releases since time immaterial, I'm a little surprised that everyone angry at Bethesda thinks this is some emergent phenomenon.

And yet they never completely fix them.

[X3J11]

And yet Bethesda never completely fixes their games. Ever.

Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and now New Vegas (not to mention their old DOS TES games). They receive a handful of patches that mostly fix issues with scripts, leaving the game engine seemingly untouched. I remember being disappointed with FO3 when one of the patches was released where, according to the patch notes, all they did was add a few achievements!

They are great story tellers, and quite adept at crafting expansive and interesting worlds that draw you in, but their programmers certainly leave much to be desired.

I wonder how much blame can be placed upon the engine they license. I also wish that someone like Carmack offered some sort of consultation service to whip cappy code, and coders, into shape.

Re:My experiences of Fallout: New Vegas bugs

[ultranova]

The worst is that every Bethesda game (Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3) has had issues like this which shouldn't have made it past quality control.

To be fair, these are all massive sandbox games, which is likely the gametype most prone to bugs due to the possibility of sequence breaking and the sheer number of scripts you need to write. Add to this a complex, massive 3D world and the requirements of realtime, and it should come as no surprise that the end result is very fragile.

Bethesda's problem is having too much ambition and thus always biting more than they can chew. Which, I suppose, is preferable to the sad lack of ambition a typical game shows...