I just wanna throw some numbers out there to put this in perspective. According to this website(http://www.vgchartz.com/charts/weekly.php) Bethesda has sold 6,828,676 units of Skyrim so far, that's a global figure. That's including Xbox/PS3/ and PC combined). In 5 weeks. That means that at 60 bucks a pop, Bethesda has already netted in the ballpark of $409,720,560. Think about that for a second. Over 400 million dollars for one game. 409 MILLION dollars to be exact.

Now I'm sure you gotta take off a fair chunk for taxes, paying back investment capital, CEO salaries, payroll, development etc. So I'll be generous, I'll knock off half. Let's assume, which is crazy, the game cost $204,860,880 to make. I doubt that's true, but let'd be generous. And just for kicks, let's assume that publishing / printing, cost another half. $102,430,440. And just for giggles, let's factor in legal fees, and advertising. I'm gonna get real here and say, legal fees were 2 million, and ads... let's say ads were 20 million. I'm being VERY generous here. That leaves us with $80,430,440 left over for the Bethesda coffers. Just think about THAT number for a minute. 80 million. I can't even imagine that much money, let alone 400 million.

You're telling me, that a company who's just sitting on 80 million can't hire some programmers to fix some bugs, lag and crashing? You expect me to believe that 80 million wouldn't get the best programmers in the world on board to fix this lagging / crashing in a timely fashion? Heck, if you offered 3 million dollars as a REWARD to any tech wiz to solve this mess of a game it'd be fixed in a day. At least spend SOME of that chedder on PR! At least pay the forum mods!

Now ask yourself if we're wrong to be disgruntled. In this economy. I don't know about you guys but I earn peanuts, so when I pony up 60 bucks I expect a little common kindness from a company sitting on 400 mil in global revenue.

P.S. The tax / payroll numbers are rough estimations, and if someone with more info or an insider's breakdown of costs incurred wants to get more specific I'd be delighted to see those figures.

I paid $200.00 AUD for the Collector's Edition, at that time the Aussie dollar was higher than the ol' US greenback and those editions sold like hotcakes.

But alas, what more can we do? These forums arent getting me anywhere so I guess I need to take much more care in my future purchases

Well, big business there. What do you expect? You already paid for the game, and can't do anything anymore. As long as people don't react here as they would have bought a toaster or a hairdryer, nothing will change. If your toaster does not work as advertised, you bring it back, full stop. And gamers? Just like sheep they sit at home, hoping that some omnipotent gaming god will come out of their ISP connection and magically fix their game instead of bringing it back to the store or shelling the company with complaints. And that is not a problem of this game, that is with all games nowadays. The real problem are passive customers behaving like solicitors asking nicely for a patch.

@aaronobst: I just watched your video - and I like you and your video. I know these feelings you have :toughninja:

The game was in developement for five years, three of which were likely full production. That's a lot of developer and producer salaries - if the average person at Bethesda makes 100k a year then the developer salaries alone would be about fifty million dollars, and that doesn't include licensing technology, hardware, rent, or the entire publishing half of things. They also need to build capital for the next project. Bethesda is the publisher as well as the developer and if they only broke even they'd be out of buisness.

Advertising is also pretty expensive. This not only includes print and web advertisemants but multiple shows and expos, the staff to produce/run all of this.

Unless you have experience in the industry I think it would be worth researching these expenses instead of just throwing estimates out there.

Are you forgetting how cheap games in America are? 60 Dollars??? Here the minimum for ANY new release is 90 dollars. And some retailers only sell collecters editions to make more money (EB games anyone?)

I don't care if they made hardly anything selling a game and making people pay for a game in this condition should be against the law down right illegal.

Yeah and us svckers across the ditch pay 120-130

If a game sells for $60 do you really think that 100% of that goes directly to Bethesda? Doesn't the retailer (Gamestop, etc) get a chunk of that? Also, isn't the point of this, or any business, to make money? I don't fault them for being successful.

The retailer gets a chunk, Sony gets a chunk, and then you have a huge development team to pay for several years as well. A game of this scope could easily cost millions to produce.

That's not me in that video pal, but I do share his opinion and feelings too

Maggotbrain's point is that Bethesda must have a tremendous amount of free money floating around, and as such they can hire more people to work on patches.

I'm just saying that there are many factors he didn't take into consideration and, as far as I can tell, his estimates are all shots in the dark. Even if his numbers are correct I doubt these are the sorts of problems Bethesda can just throw more programmers at to fix. Any new hires would be unfamiliar with the engine and I doubt they could be brought up to speed in a matter of weeks.

Do I feel that Bethesda shouldn't be working on these problems? Of course not. Do I feel that Bethesda is making money on Skyrim? Certainly. Do I disagree with the suggestion that mods get paid? Absolutely not! However I do think if we're going to try and break down numbers we should be more careful about it.

I disagree. The uproar on these forums over patch 1.2, for instance, was astounding. I would counter that the people at Bethesda just don't care. They don't come on these forums, they don't care what you say. They don't care about your feedback, really. But they make a good show of it. My two septims on the matter.

Forum Community - "Here are our complaints/input."

Tod Howard - "100, 200, 300, 400 dollars... Someone turn that damn computer off, the glow from the monitor is distracting me while I count this money."