Why do you release a game when it has bugs?

[Crazywabbit]

Why make players suffer through bugs also when they are reported depending on the person or persons fixing them, why do they take their time or not at all?

I am starting to think maybe best not to buy games when they are released, but even older games still have bugs that developers stop fixing.

[Crazywabbit]

How about when a game gets old and few years have gone by, then the developer does not even read the bug reports cause they have moved on and made their cash. @deathwish try to grow up and stop using profanity. Talk like others in a civil manner.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Crazywabbit:

How about when a game gets old and few years have gone by, then the developer does not even read the bug reports cause they have moved on and made their cash. @deathwish try to grow up and stop using profanity. Talk like others in a civil manner.

I mean that isn't specific to consoles, PC, Indie, or AAA. I've yet to personally however ever see a game where its bugs make it unplayable. I mean in the old days before updates whatever bugs a game had at launch were unfixable.

Even some of the highest rated games of all times contain game breaking bugs that were never fixed to this day because there was no method for fixing them

[Rexali_]

Not just bugs, in recent years, we have had a much lower amount of games, much less variation of games, much less quality of games, and much more repetitive and early access games while we have many more gaming companies and developers compared to the past. It doesn't make any sense; can someone solve it with math?

Go and fetch a list from every game released in the 6th generation and even the 7th generation, like years 2000 to 2010, and compare it with the list of games released between 2020 and 2024 and see how we are in a downfall.
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Speaking of variations of games, many genres and types of games were totally forgotten and destroyed:

• We had many arcade racing games aside from Forza and NFS, like Midnight Club, Blur, Test Drive, Midtown Madness, etc.
  
  
• We had many superhero games like Deadpool, X-Men Origins, Hulk, Iron Man, Ultimate Alliance, and PS2 Jet Li.
  
  
• We had many point-and-click games like Syberia, Still Life 2005, and Paradise 2006.
  
  
• We had many more realistic first-person shooter games aside from Call of Duty, like Delta Force, Black, I.G.I., The Sum of All Fears, SAS, Rogue Warrior, Raven Squad, Global Operations, etc.
  
  
• We had many unique games with total innovation, like Wanted: Weapons of Fate, Pepsiman, Mirrors Edge, Plants Vs Zombies, Crazy Taxi, Getting Up, Made Man, 25 to Life (this one presented a great atmosphere of living in a thug hood and gave you the role of playing as a cop and a thug at the same time), etc.
  
  
• We had many games based on movies and animations like The Matrix, James Bond, Die Hard, Bad Boys, Ice Age, Kung Fu Panda, Cars, Madagascar, The Incredibles, Pink Panther, etc. They were mostly created by THQ and Activision. Where are they now?

The number of variations and genres that have been forgotten is much more compared to the genres that are currently trending and producing. So you still believe people aged up or gaming sucks now? We've lost too many games and genres, instead receiving battle royale skins day by day.
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Personally, the last rich years of gaming were 2016-2018. I was busy with many games, mostly from Ubisoft, Hitman, Rockstar, etc. After that, every year is starving in terms of gaming. I have nothing to play anymore. I have played everything I wanted, and now I can't find anything else to play.

I'm thinking of reducing my gaming time a little and sticking to other hobbies like surfing outdoors or watching many movies I missed, like Fast X, Bad Boys Ride or Die, Beekeeper, Inside Out 2, Ralph 2, Wolves, Working Man, Squid Game 2, etc.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Crazywabbit:

I understand then why console games like the ones Nintendo releases have no bugs or less of it?

There's always bugs. Not every user experiences every bug. And it's easy to engage in confirmation biases. I love my Switch. I've had games crash on my switch, I've read plenty of bugs. Methinks you haven't done the research if you're making that claim.

And to answer your original post. If we could write perfect software we would. But perfection is untestable and we wouldn't know it if we saw it. And it would take too long to achieve before we could get some use out of it. So we release programs we know have bugs and try to fix them before anyone else finds them. It might sound crazy, but that's the state of the art.

Also bug fixes may fix a bug, and introduce a new bug. Granted some games are buggier than others. Lots of reasons for that. Not every game has the luxury of being released when the programmers are satisfied. Sometimes a deadline is a deadline and you release what you got and try to clean up as much as you can after launch.

Not everyone involved with a game is a programmer and programmers aren't running the show. Games are created to make money, a buggy game might be a better option than no game, especially if you can fix a lot of things with patches.

Programs are a lot more complicated now than they used to be too. More complexity often means more bugs. The megaphone of the Internet often magnifies things that have always happened, but were just less visible in days bygone.

[Tito Shivan]

Because there's no such thing as a game without bugs.

[Crazywabbit]

I guess your all, maybe AI will help filter out the bugs in future games.

[Satoru]

Note that many times developers know bugs exist. However the more complex a game the more you have to really prioritize what to fix.

Even the infamous bug from Outer Worlds where 'unkillable' companions would die randomly was known, but they were never able to replicate the issue. And they were trying a LOT of things to fix it. Eventually they had to abandon it as it seemed random, and also very rare. Once the game released the 'rare' bug become way more prevalent than they thought. They eventually figured out the rube golberg of circumstances and mechanics that caused the bug but it was not easy.

At some point you have to accept that a bug can't be fixed in a timely manner and that those resources would be better spent on other bugs. When your bug list is so large, then the bugs that "crash your computer" are going to take priority over "game breaking but rare/unreproducable". Devs dont have infinite resources.

Also while people keep saying 'old games don't have bugs'. If you've seen any Speedrun ANY % category, is full of essentially exploiting every possible bug imageable to get 0.1 seconds. Bugs in games can be found literally a decade later. The Metal Gear Solid Boba Skip being a semi-recent example of a door bug that shaves 2 minutes off most runs.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Crazywabbit:

I guess your all, maybe AI will help filter out the bugs in future games.

AI isn't a magic wand, its not going to fix complex bugs that exist buried in programming. Unfortunately people have no idea what AI is and just use it as a magic fix all solution

[The nameless Gamer]

If you had any idea how difficult bugs are sometimes to find, you would be singing a different tune. During my early access playing period of "Frontier Hunter: Erza's wheel of fortune", I have accidentally found a bug after SIX playthroughs of the available content. I did something slightly differently and fortunately knew what I did differently to report it. Bugs, more often than not, trigger in rather specific circumstances which then need to be recreated by the development team to find a solution for them.

[RedLightning]

I also think that, over the years, developers have been more concerned about graphics over substance and programming skills.

I mean for YEARS, all I saw was commercials for 'Graphics designers/artists'... zero for good programmers.

In my opinion.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by RedLightning:

I also think that, over the years, developers have been more concerned about graphics over substance and programming skills.

I mean for YEARS, all I saw was commercials for 'Graphics designers/artists'... zero for good programmers.

In my opinion.

The larger the game, the more than can go wrong.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by Satoru:

Note that many times developers know bugs exist. However the more complex a game the more you have to really prioritize what to fix.

Also launch windows are really important. Missing it can make the difference between success or failure.

Miss your launch date because 'ironing bugs' (and you'll NEVER fix them all) and by the time you launch people will be already busy playing other games. Or you've missed christmas season and now people aren't that interested in buying games.

And there goes all your money investment in the project... Down the drain.

All for a bug that could have been fixed live later. While people already play your game.

[BJWyler]

Originally posted by Crazywabbit:

How about when a game gets old and few years have gone by, then the developer does not even read the bug reports cause they have moved on and made their cash. @deathwish try to grow up and stop using profanity. Talk like others in a civil manner.

That's life. I have games from the 80's with bugs that never got fixed, and the studios are long since gone.

Like I said, some bugs just can't be fixed. And there's others where fixing isn't really worth the effort because the effects of the bug are negligible.

[BJWyler]

Originally posted by Brian9824:

Originally posted by Crazywabbit:

I guess your all, maybe AI will help filter out the bugs in future games.

AI isn't a magic wand, its not going to fix complex bugs that exist buried in programming. Unfortunately people have no idea what AI is and just use it as a magic fix all solution

A sonic screwdriver it will never be.

[Slender]

because people get pissed at the company and make them push the game out early and then the exact same people will get pissed because there's bugs, just how ♥♥♥♥ works