So just looking at news, seems that in the UK a group set up to represent gamers in the UK in regrads to media/government is attempting to bring the office of fair trading down on Activision for releasing (and still not fixing) buggy ports of Call of Duty Black Ops for the PC and PS3.

Link: http://pc.incgamers.com/News/26678/unfinished-black-ops-reported-for-government-investigation

Now Bethesda's past history of releases arent exsactly bug free......in short they are often fairly bug ridden and in the case of Oblivion, are still buggy even to this day. If this action in the UK is successful it mighten be good for bethesda if they dont get their act together and test more throughly before releasing. Now I know its a bit harder to make a RPG bug free then an FPS, but this action isnt about not making buggy games, its not supporting and fixes the bugs that are in the game, rather then just ignoring them because you already have the customer's money.

In other words: If you buy a TV buy one of the buttons on that model doesnt work correctly you would be well within your right to send it in for it to be fixed at no charge....how is a buggy game any different?


What are other people thoughts on the matter?

Lol, I love the self-entitled attitude of ignorant people.

All software in the entire world still has, and will ALWAYS HAVE. 10% of the amount of bugs it ever had. If you try to fix those 10% you actually wind up with more bugs than before. It's basic software engineering fact.

Deal with it.

They should test their games a lot more before release (Vegas and Oblivion were just ridicules). If you put in the extra two to three months for it to have little or no bugs I'd be fine with that... But they are on a new engine that should be able to do a lot more and have less bugs...

I think it'll be pretty hard, since games like this are so open and varied. There's just so much. I don't think there will be much of a problem in the UK, not for a TES game, at least. I think they're known to be buggy, but it's also pretty well-known that it's not because of laziness that it's like that, it's just that it'd take them another 5 years of fixing bugs if they went through this stuff every time they released a game.

I don't mind little things like the changing beggar voice in Oblivion, but if it's game-breaking like the Bloodgrass glitch in GOTY Oblivion for PS3, then it's just not acceptable.

Well, video games are ALWAYS going to have bugs, be they large or small.

So, unless the UK really wants video games to stop being sold there, then it's ridiculous and a complete waste of time to be taking initiative on a matter such as this.

I really do love the feeling of self-entitlement the newer generations of people have these days... :rolleyes:

New Vegas was done bi Obsidian Entertainment who had done much, much, much worse then NW in field of bugs.
And taking care of bugs in games, especially of this genre, is tougher then many people think.

The only reason activision is being cracked down on is because that is an online multiplayer game, and i think that TESV wont be. Bethesda has nothing to worry about, bugs will exist in a game as complicated as this.

Seems like another attempt from people who have no idea what they're doing trying to tell other people how to do their job. A buggy product isn't a defective product, it's just imperfect. Am I going to sue Microsoft because the Xbox controller they sold me has a slight bug with the control stick that occasionally makes it creep to the left?

Sometimes people just need to deal with the fact that life isn't perfect. Unless it's a bug that prevents the game from being played as advertised, I don't care. In fact, try playing WoW. Bugs have been constantly fixed for the entirety of its nearly 6 and 1/2 year lifespan. The problem is that half of the bugs fixed make new bugs anyways. Fixing every single bug is as impossible as fixing every imperfection in a person.

A developer will never be expected to release a bug-free game, but they can be expected to provide sufficient patch support that reproducible, game-breaking bugs don't affect any significant number of players.

In their position, Bethesda don't need to be heroically awesome at addressing bugs post-release, they just have to not be bad.

Seriously. The only reason their making a spat about Modern Warfare is because it is online, and so, for that reason, bugs negatively affect a large number of people due to exploits and downright glitching. Repaeat after me "IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO CHECK EVERY LOCATION, COMBINATION OF ITEMS, AND MESH IN A GAME THIS BIG FOR BUGS". Also, ALL of Bethesda's RPG's are released Buggy, then fixed. Not because they are not good at their job, but because they have a deadline to meet, and even extensive testing won't fix even half of the Bugs upon release.

You, sir, know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about game design. If anything, working with a new engine for its first game will ALWAYS, INFALLIBLY result in MORE Bugs, if anything. Its the cost of advancement.

Seriously, I think it applies. I also think that Bethesda already knows that there will be a few bugs they missed. I don't see anything on the level of Fallout New Vegas happening though.

Bethesda will most likely fix the bugs before hand. They got a fair warning last time from Oblivion and a bigger one from Obsidian's failure to fix the bugs in New Vegas. I have faith in bethesda.

I just wish they'd fix quest bugs, liek who has ownership of an object, etc. In SI, you can't even sit on the Throne of Mania after you were crowned. That was just laziness not fixing that. It was hardly a major engine rewrite required, and it was hardly going to create more bugs. The Unofficial Patch fixed it on PC, so it's hardly impossible to fix.

He does have a point.....fifa 11 has loads of bugs...AND EA dont care.
Its not just that there is bugs,it how sometimes it takes too long to fix or in some cases if at all.
It seems to be a trend at the minute,get it out quick,fix it later.....that [censored] doesn't rub with me.
People work their arses off to pay for these games etc......without us they wouldn't be making them full stop!
But i have faith skyrim will be more bug free this time.
I understand you'll get some bugs,but when a game is riddled with them.....well,you may as well put rushed on the box.
And this is not a pop at bethesda,but we are seeing this thing more and more.

Obviously, testing games before release is important, and trying to make the game as stable upon release as possible, but no matter how hard you test, sometimes, you can't stop some bugs from slipping by, very well, that sort of thing happens, but when it does happen, you can do something about it. Developers can patch games after release. I can accept getting a buggy game, as long as the developers make an effort to support it after release. I'm not expecting Bethesda to be supermen, I don't ask that they release games that are 100% bug free, but I don't think hoping for them to fix any problems that can have a large negative impact on the gaming experience, be they actually game breaking or just troublesome, but too much so to just think of them as a minor annoyance, through patches is too much to ask for.

Now, I'm not defending developers who release buggy games here. Obviously, in the most ideal situation, a game would not need patches, because it works exactly like intended from the start. Getting buggy games isn't something I WANT to do, but I understand at times it can't be avoided, that's what patches are for. I fully expect Skyrim to have its share of bugs, but I hope that Bethesda will make an effort to patch them.

Pretty sure every software product has in its disclaimer that the product may not be perfect.

Off course you can take action to pressure a company to do a better job, but you can't achieve anything by taking legal action.
Microsoft would have been bankrupt decades ago if that was possible.

Buggy Software?
If just ONE computer system runs the game flawlessly then the game works.
90% of game problems are user made.
I've had thousands of hours with Beth games and the only probs I have had are when I either update or mess around with the operating system.
Every computer is different once it has a user who installs different software/hardware and changes things around.
Blaming a developer is easier than trying to fix the problem.
Quest bugs are a different matter and ARE the developer's mistakes.

The user's computer setup is like DNA - only one in a billion could be the same

For anyone interested heres the unofficial patch changelog

http://baldurdash.org/TESOblivion/UOPFixList.html

Its impossible for 10-20 testers to find all of those obliviously

While that may be true for the PC version of the game, console users have much fewer options in terms of getting around glitches. I've never had a serious problem personally with the Oblivion glitches...in fact I find some of them rather amusing. The only one I really hate is the GOTY vampirism cure glitch, but I'm just super careful not to get vampirism if I don't want it. And at least there is a fix for it for the console, although you have to have the original disc in addition to the GOTY to fix it.

That said, I do think that game-breaking glitches should be addressed in a timely manner or customers should be allowed to get their money back or get some kind of compensation. Obsidian really screwed up with Fallout NV - it has now been months since its release and I still can't play it unless I want to get up every 30 minutes or so to restart the PS3 because it froze. That's just ridiculous...I wouldn't take it so far to sue Obsidian but I'll certainly think twice before ever buying a game developed by them again. But I have faith in BGS to fix major game-breaking glitches in a timely manner.

While, I think the idea of a Gamers Advocate group is awesome, and bring the hammer down on extremely bug-ridden games is beneficial, nothing about the bugs left in Oblivoin or any of their other games would be worthy of a court case.

Isn't this a really good reason to use Beta testing by the community? Which Bethesda, as I understand it, does not do? That would weed out tons of bugs, wouldn't it?

It's sad that people who, supposedly, know so much about game designs, and post here, apparently find it completely acceptable that an entire industry considers it the norm to release bugged products. I understand that there's a certain margin of error, which should be expected, and some companies are better than others at releasing patches to fix those issues. But to those people, who call those of us who feel that we should expect more, for ignorant idiots: Please....really?

There are laws which protect the consumers and secures us the right to a functional product. These laws also entitle the manufacturer to try and fix the issue before the consumer can ask for a refund. I'm not sure I even have the option of returning a bugged game, ever.

I can accept bugs, as long as I know the manufacturer has done their best to release a fully functional product, and guarantees to keep patching it until the issues have been resolved. I've seen LOTS of mods solving minor bugs that the manufacturer couldn't be bothered fixing, so don't tell me they simply just can't be fixed without causing more bugs. Sure, it's a game, it's not fatal if there's a bug, but I'm sure people would feel different about a $5 part in a car which makes the gas pedal stick and accelerate your car out of control. We should probably expect more, and thereby force the game design business to up the bar and aim for higher standards.

...or just shut up and pay for that bugged game and enjoy it =)

Not 100% on-topic, but a note to everybody claiming that fixing bugs tends to introduce new bugs:

This is not exactly correct. I have had some experience with (officially) bugfixing Nehrim and http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36373. When you fix a bug A and another bug B occurs, it is usually not a new bug, but one that has always been there and only bug A prevented this bug B from being noticed by players. For example, MPP (Morrowind Patch Project) fixed a syntax error in a Bloodmoon script, and as a result a certain NPC got lost. What happened? The command that was fixed by the MPP was the culprit (it made the NPC disappear). As long as the syntax error was there, it was "harmless", because it didn't get executed, but now that the syntax error bug got fixed, the true bug emerged. It wasn't a "new" bug. It was always there. There were similar stories with Nehrim.

You *can* introduce new bugs if you are fixing things the dirty way. But most can be fixed in the "right" way. One should attack the disease, not the symptoms. If you do this, the number of bugs in the software becomes smaller with each patch.

Alas, I fear that some software developers are unable to work this way because in order to fix something broken, one (often) must consult the person who is responsible for that. That person is often working on another project, fired, or just can't be bothered. But, well, this is a problem with your corporation and not a law of nature.

What about consoles?

Has anyone here ever seen Fight Club? Bug fixing games is much like applying "The Formula". In the movie it was car manufacturing and recalls and it goes like this. If the cost of a recall exceeds that of the cost of out of court settlements they don't do one. I'd imagine it much the same for gaming companies they have to decide if it's cost effective to make and release a patch and if that expense exceeds the projected loss in sales due to bugs then a patch is not released.

@ Jinix

Well yes it's true that PCs are very susceptible configuration issues but the true game bugs show themselves clearly on the consoles.

Fallout 3 caused a computer freeze the moment I left the vault the first time and tried to use VATS.... took a while for them to make a patch so I could actually play the game at ALL. At least I could play New Vegas through the end before any patches...even if quests were bugged.