Open Letter to Developers

[Guest]

Broken games are unacceptable in 2015. We have been dealt bad hand after bad hand with nearly every game release: Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, Dragon Age Inquisition, Watch Dogs, Assassins Creed IV just to name a few and now Batman Arkham Knight. The console makers switched over to the x86 architecture and language in order to ensure that games were easy to develop and port. This coding language has been around for well over 20 years now and with consoles and PC closer than ever in terms of power there is no excuse for continually unoptimized and broken games. In no other medium is there an understanding that you will buy, on day one, for a higher price than any other medium, a broken or unusable product. When we purchase a movie we do not expect a scratch on the disk or that the media will be corrupted or that when we go the movies that the movie will simply "glitch" and skip around in the story. When we buy music we do not expect that CD will be scratched or that the music somehow will not play correctly or at all. We buy functioning products in every other medium. Why not video games?

 

It has been a trend ever since the first patches came to consoles that it seems acceptable to developers , if not monetarily advantageous, to release a partially functioning or even broken games for a full $60 price and just deal with the consequences later. The laundry list games is so exhaustive that I need not even delve into it knowing that the well of disappointing memories runs deep enough for everyone to remember at least one blockbuster game that could have been an experience to treasure, but was ruined by game glitches; and as we reflect on those memories a reality slowly seeps into our head. We are paying for games that do not work. Period. We are being taken advantage of, and frankly, there is no excuse. 

 

Batman Arkham Knight is just the latest example. As a huge Arkham fan, and a general fan of comics, I have always cherished my experiences in Rocksteady's take on the Batman Universe and the step forward in game play mechanics that they have blazed the way for all games to come. Batman Arkham Knight, simply from the reviews is going to be an outstanding masterpiece and a fine send off for our favorite caped crusader. But once again a lazy port has ruined the experience that I so deeply desired. A framerate capped at 30FPS on a PC... in 2015?! If we as PC gamers and loyal customers decide to spend, as I have, unwise amounts of money on a computer with thousands of CUDA cores and Stream Processors and high end CPUs, then we expect it, at the least, to not be capped at 30FPS. Seemingly, here was a simple port of the PS4 version of the game with the framerate cap left on, evidenced further by the fact that Arkham City had far more customizable details and graphics settings than Arkham Knight does, and crossed fingers that the game would be able to function on PC while they worked on a patch. Which is exactly what is happening as I am writing this. Contemplating the glitches, crushing framerate drops, and high memory usage, meanwhile smiling at us while you take our $60, knowing that the game is chugging along and it'll be weeks before a fix comes; the question comes to mind: Do you care about us at all? Or are we yet another line of revenue for your game's budget? Knowing that we'll bite yet again, and be the doting naive PC gamer who pre-orders or who buys on day one, and you'll have yet another few hundred million dollars to distribute to your share holder.

 

Then when reproached with this line of question developers reel on stage and react as though their deepest feelings are hurt, chastising the (often overzealous) forums for being "too hard" on them. To be frank, you have hundreds of millions of dollars and hurt feelings, meanwhile we as the gaming community have had our trust broken yet again and are out of money that we worked so hard for. Who is the victim or injured party here? Or even worse, we are then told that we are being "cry babies" when we complain that our $500 graphics cards cannot run an Unreal Engine 3 game (announced in 2004) on ANY setting without running at unacceptable framerates. 

 

This must end. The process of hyping up a game and then not having it run on a coding language well over 20 years old that is the easiest to develop and optimize for, must end. The gaming community is growing tired of paying full price for half or often none of a functioning game. The amount of loyalty and respect that we dote on you is unparalleled in any other industry and you have taken advantage one too many times in my taste. Do not allow console developers to determine how well or whether or not a game gets ported to PC, it should be a decision for the developer and the PC gaming community. Do not allow shoddy ports to continually be pushed out for full price. Do not allow this to happen again. 

[Aytex]

bf3  was broken?

[Damikiller37]

bf3  was broken?

At first it was almost as bad as BF4 but they fixed it much quicker.

[Aytex]

At first it was almost as bad as BF4 but they fixed it much quicker.

oh.

[brownninja97]

it is a problem, definitely. Hopefully this wave of buggy stuff ends

[Snickerzz]

Most of the time it isn't the developers fault. Just about every developer wants to see their project succeed and be great. But when there is a release date set by a publisher to meet fiscal year profits to make the ancient men in suits happy, things get rushed and cut.

[NinerL]

After buying Battlefield 4 on release for the Xbox One, several months later the game was still broken I'll never buy another Battlefield title again that's for sure. The only game I've never had any serious issues with on console is Call of Duty their games just work.

[Sauron]

This is all well and good, but we all know how we can end this: stop preordering and only buy the game after multiple reviewers agree it is worthy of your time and money. If you jumped on last week's gmg "deal" for preordering the game, you asked for it. You allowed this to happen. And you enabled other developers to think it is acceptable and they will get a lot of money anyway. If you want things to change, vote with your wallet, because that's the only way they are going to. Nothing scares publishers more than not making their money back. They don't care if people complain later as long as they have cash in their pockets, and right now they have it.

 

So if you gave them your money without knowing what you were getting, sorry to say it, but suck it up, because this is partly your fault. Maybe next time you'll think twice about paying for something you know nothing about.

[DigitalHermit]

@MarxistPC

Now, shall we fight against the bondage of the developer bourgeoisie?

 

bf3  was broken?

There's a bug in the campaign where a key character can be killed by enemy fire and not trigger a game over/mission failure...

 

and that's just one bug I've encountered...

 

Can't really say much about multiplayer since we get shit connection here... (150ms ping is normal)

 

edit: also level design... the destructible environment is nice and all.. but when you spawn lots of enemies, all with grenade launchers... at least leave some indestructible rocks...

[Guest]

This is all well and good, but we all know how we can end this: stop preordering and only buy the game after multiple reviewers agree it is worthy of your time and money. If you jumped on last week's gmg "deal" for preordering the game, you asked for it. You allowed this to happen. And you enabled other developers to think it is acceptable and they will get a lot of money anyway. If you want things to change, vote with your wallet, because that's the only way they are going to. Nothing scares publishers more than not making their money back. They don't care if people complain later as long as they have cash in their pockets, and right now they have it.

 

So if you gave them your money without knowing what you were getting, sorry to say it, but suck it up, because this is partly your fault. Maybe next time you'll think twice about paying for something you know nothing about.

The issue is becoming that they are allowing reviewers now, more and more often, to have the review up a week or so before the game comes out. Just speaking on Batman Arkman Knight, the reviews were released last Friday, and as far as I could see, not a single mention of frame rate issues or glitches or slowdowns came up once in any review that I read of watched. 

[Guest]

@MarxistPC

Now, shall we fight against the bondage of the developer bourgeoisie?

 

There's a bug in the campaign where a key character can be killed by enemy fire and not trigger a game over/mission failure...

 

and that's just one bug I've encountered...

 

Can't really say much about multiplayer since we get shit connection here... (150ms ping is normal)

 

edit: also level design... the destructible environment is nice and all.. but when you spawn lots of enemies, all with grenade launchers... at least leave some indestructible rocks...

"Developer bourgeoisie" , funny. But if anyone in this circumstances were the "bourgeoisie" it would be the publisher who exploit both us and the developer for faster and faster game rollouts.  

[Sauron]

The issue is becoming that they are allowing reviewers now, more and more often, to have the review up a week or so before the game comes out. Just speaking on Batman Arkman Knight, the reviews were released last Friday, and as far as I could see, not a single mention of frame rate issues or glitches or slowdowns came up once in any review that I read of watched. 

 

I'm going to bet that all those reviews come from the console version. Usually I wait for totalbiscuit to know how good the port is.

[DigitalHermit]

"Developer bourgeoisie" , funny. But if anyone in this circumstances were the "bourgeoisie" it would be the publisher who exploit both us and the developer for faster and faster game rollouts.  

^THIS^

 

I miss the time when a game gets expansion packs that actually makes the game feel like new (saves on dev costs)... Like Brood Wars and Frozen Throne...

 

yes, we get DLCs now, but how many of them are not features that should've been originally included in the base game?

 

I'm going to bet that all those reviews come from the console version. Usually I wait for totalbiscuit to know how good the port is.

 

We need more people to do stuff similar to Port Report...

[MeesterJackson]

While I do obviously agree, keep in mind that Batman: Arkham Knight is fully playable on consoles. The PC version is the gimped version of the game because they left it to some no named developer to work on the PC port. 

 

http://community.wbgames.com/t5/Support-for-PC/PC-Performance-issues-we-hear-you/m-p/571341