IMO, CDPR deserved to get burned on 20% of their market share.

[Beriallord]

I've been telling people for years that the gaming community needs to stop tolerating and accepting rushed out buggy messes from development studios. And now, finally, a big studio pays the price for doing exactly that. The cost was 20% of their market share, or around a billion dollars.

 

But the reason I made this topic is to ask the question of, do you believe this is going to change the dynamic in any way for how developers and publishers rush games out? Because CDPR just took an enormously costly hit. And they took a hit because enough customers complained about it. Enough consumers standing up and demanding product quality standards. To me, excuses from developers and publishers are cheap. At the end of the day a product was rushed out that clearly wasn't ready. I hope this motivates studios to err on the side of caution next time they think about rushing a game out, because I'd rather they delay the game for another 6 months than release a game in this state. And not its precedence that not doing so might cost your company a billion dollars. Sure, they might take a small hit from a delay on a major project, but it would be much better PR for them to give an honest answer and say that the game just isn't ready, and is going to take longer for us to ensure the game is of adequate quality on release. People will understand that.

[HeyYou]

What game, or games... brought this on? (this is the first I have heard of it, but then, I don't play their games either... so don't really pay much attention.)

 

That said, I believe that is the ONLY way the players can get the developers attention. Hit 'em in the wallet. If you get the shareholders attention, you will very shortly have the attention of management, and, as feces rolls downhill..... likely someone (or several someones) will get fired, and they may actually change the way they do things. They can't afford that kind of dent in their bottom line very often. I am thinkin' a second time, and the company would be pretty much done.

[Ethreon]

Lol no

 

Didn't change it before, won't change it now. You act as if this is some novel thing and didn't happen for decades already.

[Beriallord]

I have noticed more games getting utterly eviscerated in reviews on both steam and on metacritic that are buggy/rushed launches than in previous years. I think what happened to CDPR is just a consequence of the increasing lack of tolerance for this type of stuff from developers, and the big, hyped AAA game that was supposed to blow everyone's mind turns out to be one of the biggest launch dumpster fires in video game history.

 

I've seen every type of bug you could imagine in this game, along with many that you can't. Crafting/item exploits, figured them out by accident. Disassemble s*** that didn't go away, so you could keep doing it. Fall deaths by hopping down 2-3 feet drop, full HP to dead (many spots in the game did this). Broken quests that cannot be completed (several), invincible enemies, I became invincible a few times myself after taking damage? Run into a big truck riding a motorcycle going 150mph, should be obvious how that's supposed to turn out, but the truck flies and flips into a barrel roll, and me on the bike acts as an immovable object that doesn't take a scratch. Random buttons stop working at random times, this can even cause me to have to tab out and close the game losing my progress, rebooting the game always fixes this. Seen it happen on K/M and on controller. Never seen inputs in a game just randomly stop working at random times, so this is a first for me. Certain functions/animations/sounds would also randomly quit working, such as pulling the pistol up to aim down the scope, sometimes it wouldn't go into the aim position, but the crosshair would be forward and still fire. Sometimes the sound from car or bike engines would just go away, but some of the misc effects associated with their operation would still work. Sometimes voice overs would stop working, and also the radio. One quest I completed disabled my option to save the game after finishing it, and I had to reload an autosave from before I started the quest to fix this. Lots of places I got stuck in terrain, on foot and in vehicles. I got stuck in vehicles a couple times, and it wouldn't even let me exit the vehicle, so I had to tab out and close the game. I got stuck in one spot in a vehicle, and I kept revving the engine up, and it finally moved, and I got slung like I was launched from a cannon for a huge distance, and when the vehicle finally landed, it blew up with me in it. I got stuck on a set of stairs one time, and I tried shooting, jumping, running and some combo of misc buttons, and I ended up super jumping like 500ft in the air, like I got launched by a cannon and turned into hamburger meat on the pavement. + others. But I think that's enough to make a point, and I could probably write a 5000 word essay about all the weird bugs and stuff that I saw in this game, but I'll leave it at this. I don't mind the small bugs, but the bugs that make me lose progress, or bar me from progress are the ones I take the most issue with, and there are way too many of those.

Edited December 20, 2020 by Beriallord

[Gracinfields]

@Heyyou OP is talking about CD Projekt Red's latest game Cyberpunk 2077 which I have heard has been buggy. However, this is kind of expected from the team as this is their second "AAA" game in total their first being Witcher III. Their first game being the First witcher game back in 2007 was often called Eurojank till the Enhanced Edition came out in 2008 and fixed most of the games bugs and brought up the games graphical fidelity to a late 2000 standard. As for Cyberpunk it has been in development before Witcher III was released has been hyped up way to much by the fans and a bit from the studio itself. Furthermore, fans and game journos were pushing hard and criticizing CDPR over delays, crunch time (heavily by Journalist) these factors likely lead to any investors in the company to put pressure on the studio to get the game out, and finish the polishing and bug fixing in patches over time.

[Ethreon]

What happens is that a large swath of the gamer population that used to be all-accepting kids are now adults who no longer take just any garbage companies are willing to shell at them. We no longer have time to deal with "play it in one run or f*#@ off" kind of games. No more ass looking games with barely anything interesting past just poorly built platform levels. No more of the same idiotic "save the princess" plot, same multitude of bugs and issues. When your game glitches out it's not longer funny, it's frustrating cause it takes away from the enjoyment of the game and wastes your time trying to work around it, time that's already limited.

[Aurielius]

CD Projekt Red has a reasonable track record of fixing their bugs, just not all at once or at the initial release date. That is why I never buy a game in new release, wait a year and it will be worth the money. Witcher 3 had copious bugs that were sorted out to eventually make a classic game. Patience my friend, we don't have anywhere to go at the moment, neither does the Projekt Red crew..

[MrJoseCuervo]

I look forward to purchasing and playing Cyberpunk 2077 when the bugs are fixed. 2077?

[Striker879]

CD Projekt Red has a reasonable track record of fixing their bugs, just not all at once or at the initial release date. That is why I never buy a game in new release, wait a year and it will be worth the money. Witcher 3 had copious bugs that were sorted out to eventually make a classic game. Patience my friend, we don't have anywhere to go at the moment, neither does the Projekt Red crew..

 

In my opinion (so neither right nor wrong) this leads to few (if any) game releases.

 

OK ... here's why.

 

Time is money, and game developers need things like groceries and clothes and cars and houses and stuff like that same as you and me, so wages need to be paid today not some day named tomorrow (that actually never arrives anyway). So the business models for the industry have "expectations" and at some point the value of expectations exceeds the value of "quality work" and we get what we get shipped in those virtual game boxes so widely used these days.

 

From the moment the game devs are bludgeoned into submission by the game publisher (those would be the guys who brought those "expectations" to the process) and release day becomes engraved in stone it is handed to a group known collectively as "Marketing", and that particular brand of people have some common characteristics. Top of that list is "what sells more copies is good, what sells fewer is bad".

 

Did you notice any mention of anything resembling the common understanding of "truth" in those quoted words? In the world of marketing that is truth ... the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

 

So why does this lead to few or no games ever released?

 

If John Q Public's universal expection is a complex fufilling and satisfying game experience (and it goes without saying that this is delivered at a reasonable cost, if not lower price than that) from every game released the game devs will need to ramp their lifestyle expectations back to "living in an abandoned van" levels (or perhaps camping out in the company washroom while not chained to their workstation). I dare say even those game publisher execs may need to shop around for a discarded fridge box or two to call "the manor".

 

What I'm saying is the business plan crumbles and we are left with games developed by a handful of people with the appitude and skillset required, in their spare time after a long day at their real job. We do already have that today ... we just call them Indie Devs and in some cases Modders.

 

And full disclosure ... I personally up your game by an order of magnitude. I wait for a decade after release, and then try out a game (OK, that may not be entirely true, the last game I bought that I actually play is Oblivion, and I owned it for a couple of years before I installed it in 2010, so it was maybe six years old when I bought it ... but I am older and slower now).

[Saxhleel26]

The developers didn't rush the game on their own initiative and they're not making "excuses." They're getting a lot of flak over what they can't control and they were probably pressured by management to meet the expectations of their shareholders. The game had been in development for several years and was delayed multiple times. Whoever makes the executive decisions in that company (and that's not the people who made the game), they most likely wanted to meet a December deadline to reach those holiday sales and please their investors. It's a tale as old as time itself: greed and the incompetence that sometimes breeds. One only has to look at Fallout 76, itself a shining example of corporate greed, abuse of its own employees, and a blatant indifference towards its consumer base. CDPR looks to have made that same error. Hopefully, they aren't so foolish or reckless to keep it up. Hopefully, whoever is looking down at the chaos their choices have made will learn from their own mistakes, as well as Zenimax's example which just seemed intent on completely tarnishing Bethesda's reputation. But despite the harm to their once illustrious image and the legal fallout sure to ensue, there's still a chance at redemption here.

 

But again, please don't blame the Devs. because they are just as pissed and outraged as the fans of this game are. They're the ones that have to deal with this bull. and the resulting PR storm. They worked hard on Cyberpunk; they don't deserve to have this happen to them. And it always seems like they get the blunt of the blame for decisions that they had no say in. I have no sympathies for their management, and they deserve what's coming to them, but unfortunately, what hurts them is going to hurt everyone.

 

I feel for the Devs. They gave us the Witcher series. It's clear they're a passionate and hardworking bunch and to have this happen to them because of circumstances largely outside of their control is very unfortunate on their part. If I were them, I'd put in my two weeks and seek employment elsewhere.

Edited December 22, 2020 by Saxhleel26