The nature of the video game business lies in creating new games as soon as possible. Hence, most of the time, games are released before they are fully ready. Due to this, we tend to have games that are still packed with bugs out in the market. In this article, we consider five examples of game releases plagued by bugs and tell you more about each of them.
Cyberpunk 2077
CD Projekt Red’s long-awaited sci-fi RPG rolled out in December 2020 with many technical problems, especially in the last-gen consoles. It got so bad that, at one time, Sony had to pull the game from the PlayStation Store for a while. Players encountered various problems, ranging from minor graphic issues to game-stopping glitches and constant crashes. Players experienced issues like:
Pop-in
Textures and objects load late, creating a jarring visual experience.
Quest Bugs
Essential quests are becoming almost impossible to complete due to glitches.
Disappearing Loot
Valuable items vanishing after being acquired.
Assassin’s Creed: Unity
In 2014, Ubisoft released the famous Assassin’s Creed. This release, however, was marred by numerous graphical glitches. This includes the infamous ‘no-face’ bug, where the character’s face disappears, leaving only eyes and teeth floating around. These lags and crashes only added salt to the injuries of many gamers in such situations, dampening their experiences. The online multiplayer mode, a major selling point, also suffered from stability issues and connection problems.
Fallout 76
Bethesda’s online multiplayer take on the Fallout series launched in 2018 was full of technical problems. Players reported problems such as
- Server Instability: Frequent server disconnects and crashes plagued the online experience.
- Inventory bugs: Items disappearing from player inventories, causing frustration and loss of progress.
- Exploits and Security Vulnerabilities: These issues allowed players to gain unfair advantages, disrupting the online balance and raising security concerns.
- Performance Issues: Frame rate drops and stuttering hampered gameplay across different platforms.
The combination of these bugs created a sense of incompleteness and disorganization, and many members of the Fallout community were dismayed by the game’s broken launch.
Batman: Arkham Knight (PC Version)
The issues were not as noticeable in the console versions of the 2015 release. However, the PC port had so many critical performance problems that it could not go unnoticed.
Many players said they had to deal with low frame rates even on high-end hardware, crashes, and graphical problems. The issues were so widespread that Warner Bros temporarily halted sales of the PC version to resolve them. This shows the importance of optimizing games for different platforms.
No Man’s Sky
When this game was released in 2016, it was filled with bugs, crashes, and performance issues despite being developed by Hello Games. However, the game was not without controversy regarding missing key features.
Although the developers had promised several major features, they could not deliver, leading to accusations of false advertising. The lesson from this is that developers should be cautious about hyping features that have not been thoroughly tested.
With later patches, the game became much better. But they say a bad name can never be completely erased. Therefore, the launch version is still a good example of how not to do it in the industry.
Lessons Learned
These examples demonstrate why testing is crucial and what a game developer faces if they try to release the game without proper testing. As one might know, patching is possible after release, but a full mess at the start can harm the game and the relations between the creators and consumers.
Just as the gaming industry’s volume keeps increasing, so do game complexity and player expectations. However, the quality of the product being shipped to the market remains one of the biggest concerns of developers and publishers.