<story><title>CD Projekt Red is under investigation</title><url>https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/cd-projekt-red-is-under-investigation-by-polands-office-of-competition-and-consumer-protection/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Sodman</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s fair to blame this on gamers. With all of the hyperbole over various games being &amp;quot;broken&amp;quot;, most people that are hyped about a specific game are just going to buy it and see for themselves. Unless it&amp;#x27;s literally unplayable (as may actually have been the case here), most people won&amp;#x27;t refund it.&lt;p&gt;This has been going on for years and years, it&amp;#x27;s just getting worse over time. It&amp;#x27;s always some variant of this conversation at $GAMEDEV_STUDIO:&lt;p&gt;Focus group feedback: Our test groups are noticing 10% of players are running into this bug&amp;#x2F;issue. It&amp;#x27;s frustrating them, but there are workarounds.&lt;p&gt;Management: All of our marketing materials target release date XX&amp;#x2F;XX&amp;#x2F;XXXX. If we try to fix this bug we&amp;#x27;ll have to push the release... How many people will _not_ buy the game because of this bug?&lt;p&gt;Focus group feedback: Nobody that would have otherwise bought this game would decide not to buy it over this issue.&lt;p&gt;Management: So we ship as planned, and fix the bugs in a patch.&lt;p&gt;Over time studios realized that you can get away with much bigger bugs affecting much larger portions of players. Ship sooner, start recognizing revenue, and push post-launch patches to fix the &amp;quot;really bad bugs&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s shocking how bad the quality has to get before it starts making headlines.</text></item><item><author>jgust</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a tragedy of the commons situation with gamer enthusiasts acting against their own best interest.&lt;p&gt;If people can&amp;#x27;t delay gratification for something as inconsequential as &amp;quot;non-broken video games&amp;quot;, I don&amp;#x27;t see how any personal responsibility campaign has any chance of working for things impacting society at large such as climate change, overfishing, public health, etc.</text></item><item><author>chundicus</author><text>I hope this will encourage big studios to stop releasing broken games, but I doubt it will. The incentives are just so broken due to ease of patching, a need&amp;#x2F;desire for cash after a drawn out dev process, and a general disrespect for their customers.&lt;p&gt;I think releasing a &amp;quot;broken&amp;quot; game in the form of &amp;quot;early access&amp;quot; from smaller studios can be good in terms of iterative and community development, but also that can be abused too. These bigger studios really don&amp;#x27;t have as much of an excuse in my opinion.&lt;p&gt;The only solution I see is to stop pre-ordering games and don&amp;#x27;t reward studios that do this, but easier said than done.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>incrudible</author><text>I disagree that this is getting worse. Every game of this magnitude of complexity has shipped broken, even way back in the nineties. The Elder Scrolls series in particular comes to mind. Back then, you&amp;#x27;d get patches from print media.&lt;p&gt;The games that didn&amp;#x27;t ship broken simply weren&amp;#x27;t that complex. Console games never were that complex. PC gamers gamers accepted this in order to be able to (sort of) play through an experience that was at the edge of what was possible. There was no Digital Foundry to count pixels and analyze frame drops. If you hit 20FPS most of the time, that was considered &amp;quot;playable&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If a game like Cyberpunk 2077 can&amp;#x27;t ship broken, then it can&amp;#x27;t ship at all. It can&amp;#x27;t even get produced. Nobody is going to put hundreds of millions of dollars on the line to &lt;i&gt;maybe&lt;/i&gt; ship next year, forever. Nobody except maybe the Star Citizen community.</text></comment>
<story><title>CD Projekt Red is under investigation</title><url>https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/cd-projekt-red-is-under-investigation-by-polands-office-of-competition-and-consumer-protection/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Sodman</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s fair to blame this on gamers. With all of the hyperbole over various games being &amp;quot;broken&amp;quot;, most people that are hyped about a specific game are just going to buy it and see for themselves. Unless it&amp;#x27;s literally unplayable (as may actually have been the case here), most people won&amp;#x27;t refund it.&lt;p&gt;This has been going on for years and years, it&amp;#x27;s just getting worse over time. It&amp;#x27;s always some variant of this conversation at $GAMEDEV_STUDIO:&lt;p&gt;Focus group feedback: Our test groups are noticing 10% of players are running into this bug&amp;#x2F;issue. It&amp;#x27;s frustrating them, but there are workarounds.&lt;p&gt;Management: All of our marketing materials target release date XX&amp;#x2F;XX&amp;#x2F;XXXX. If we try to fix this bug we&amp;#x27;ll have to push the release... How many people will _not_ buy the game because of this bug?&lt;p&gt;Focus group feedback: Nobody that would have otherwise bought this game would decide not to buy it over this issue.&lt;p&gt;Management: So we ship as planned, and fix the bugs in a patch.&lt;p&gt;Over time studios realized that you can get away with much bigger bugs affecting much larger portions of players. Ship sooner, start recognizing revenue, and push post-launch patches to fix the &amp;quot;really bad bugs&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s shocking how bad the quality has to get before it starts making headlines.</text></item><item><author>jgust</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a tragedy of the commons situation with gamer enthusiasts acting against their own best interest.&lt;p&gt;If people can&amp;#x27;t delay gratification for something as inconsequential as &amp;quot;non-broken video games&amp;quot;, I don&amp;#x27;t see how any personal responsibility campaign has any chance of working for things impacting society at large such as climate change, overfishing, public health, etc.</text></item><item><author>chundicus</author><text>I hope this will encourage big studios to stop releasing broken games, but I doubt it will. The incentives are just so broken due to ease of patching, a need&amp;#x2F;desire for cash after a drawn out dev process, and a general disrespect for their customers.&lt;p&gt;I think releasing a &amp;quot;broken&amp;quot; game in the form of &amp;quot;early access&amp;quot; from smaller studios can be good in terms of iterative and community development, but also that can be abused too. These bigger studios really don&amp;#x27;t have as much of an excuse in my opinion.&lt;p&gt;The only solution I see is to stop pre-ordering games and don&amp;#x27;t reward studios that do this, but easier said than done.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ROFISH</author><text>Without too much detail due to contracts&amp;#x2F;NDA&amp;#x2F;etc, slipping a release date is even worse of a bother for others down-chain also. There are planned times for manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, all that fun stuff for the physical versions of titles. All that would basically need to be re-dated from scratch. You can&amp;#x27;t slip one week, you have to slip at least a month. More for platforms that don&amp;#x27;t use standard disc formats which are not made locally. (Which hilariously, CP2077 already did slip a month before release.)&lt;p&gt;Even for digital games, there&amp;#x27;s still approval processes where the first parties would have to test the game out. This process involves scheduling people for it; you can&amp;#x27;t just go to the front of the line as there are other games that have been scheduled for certain slots. (Which hilariously, it was rumored that CP2077 was given the &amp;#x27;don&amp;#x27;t test, push live ASAP&amp;#x27; treatment.)&lt;p&gt;At lastly, all payments from the platforms and retailers are based on the actual release date. Unless there&amp;#x27;s a specific contract, games are not paid until months after release. Physical preorders don&amp;#x27;t pay the developers, they just help with preventing over&amp;#x2F;under stocking. (And digital preorders are... functionally worthless beyond the psychological value.) The release date starts the payment timer. When hurting for cash, releasing can start that timer.&lt;p&gt;The processes above can really benefit abusers who decide that &amp;quot;making street-date&amp;quot; is the most important thing above all other concerns.</text></comment>