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Warner Bros. Halts Sales of AAA Batman PC Game Over Technical Problems
An anonymous reader writes: The Batman: Arkham series of video games has been quite popular over the past several years. But when the most recent iteration, Batman: Arkham Knight, was released a couple days ago, users who bought the PC version of the game found it suffered from crippling performance issues. Now, publisher Warner Bros. made an official statement in the community forums saying they were discontinuing sales of the PC version until quality issues can be sorted out. Gamers and journalists are using it as a rallying point to encourage people to stop preordering games, as it rewards studios for releasing broken content.
Its funny but people who wait are the real winners. Wait until after the game is out and hits a sale. You get the game at a cheaper price AND you get the bug fixes that came out since then. The only thing it cost you, was waiting to play it a bit, and you get a better product for less. How is that not winning?
But, as you say, with Indie games, small studios.... its a different story. Hell, I will pay for early access if I like a game, I don't even mind that its buggy because I know I chose that AND I know I am supporting an indie developer who might not otherwise even be able to produce the game.
The big boys who can afford advertising campaigns and multiple major releases per year? Feel free to hold them to a high standard, they should be setting the standard not be rewarded resting on their laurels.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Yep, back before consoles could be expected to have local storage and a persistent Internet connection, the inability to patch games after release made QA a critically important part of development. Now the balance has shifted to rushing the game out ASAP, and only devoting resources to fixing bugs if the early buyers complain loudly enough to dissuade other potential customers.
Though I prefer the way Yahtzee put it: "You couldn't get away with releasing a buggy game in the cartridge and cassette days; you'd be trampled under the company Brontosaurus."