Delays, day-one patches and developer apologies. Over the past several years, gamers have grown increasingly accustomed to these announcements from video game developers and publishers. It is silently understood now – the vast majority of the time – that the first release date presented to the public is hardly ever the “real” one. However, even with delays, too many video games are hitting the shelves in a half-finished, half-broken (or completely broken) state. So, the Internet does what the Internet does and copes with disappointment through humor. Now, what exactly is the story behind the developer apology wall?
Several users across a variety of social media platforms – particularly Twitter and Reddit – have come together to gather a handful of these aforementioned “apology statements” from several video game developers and publishers, in the wake of their games being launched in a less than stellar condition, into a sort of “wall of shame.”
And it continues to grow with every apology.
The majority of the titles featured in this apology wall were released earlier this year. And 2023 is barely halfway over.
The Writing Is On The Wall
Respawn Entertainment’s “Star Wars Jedi: Survivor” and Naughty Dog’s PC port of “The Last of Us” initially launched with performance quality issues and struggling frame rates. “Forespoken,” from the now-defunct Luminous Productions, received generally unfavorable reception on account of technical issues and dialogue that became the subject of memes. Despite taking place in one of the most well-known fantasy worlds of all time, that still couldn’t save Daedalic Entertainment’s “The Lord of the Rings: Gollum” from everything that went wrong there.
Some of these broken, buggy states of highly-anticipated games have permanently tarnished the reputations of many well-respected developers and publishers.
“Cyberpunk 2077,” the long-awaited role-playing game that had already received delays, launched in 2020 in a state that many even considered “unplayable.” Sony even had to remove the game entirely from the PlayStation Store and offered refunds to anyone who had purchased it digitally. Since then, CD Projekt Red has patched the game numerous times and even has future plans for it with an expansion titled “Phantom Liberty” slated for release on Sept. 26, 2023.
Though, for “Cyberpunk 2077” as a game along with CD Projekt Red as a developer, the damage is already done.
Similarly, “Fallout 76” had a disastrous initial launch in 2018 that left fans calling into question the beloved franchise and Bethesda Game Studios as a developer.
Underneath the several paragraph mask identifying the issues that prompted the apology in the first place is the fated question: why do these public statements have to exist at all? What is the root cause of this issue? Why are so many big-name, AAA games released in these conditions, even with delays?
It Wasn’t Always Like This
It can be difficult to believe nowadays what with post-launch content, updates and patches being the status-quo and the “norm” for a long time now, but there was a time in gaming where what was released on day one was all there was to it. Gamers could pop a disc or cartridge into their consoles and receive the full, intended experience of a video game. Once the game was out there in the world, developers and publishers couldn’t do anything about their product.
Now, a common mentality seems to be “ship it now, fix it later.”
There is not one main culprit behind these recurring situations and there is not a single person that be blamed.
From meeting tight deadlines, ever-increasing development costs, a necessity to remain competitive with other studios, internal and external pressures, an all-too-common practice of “crunch culture” making headlines and behind-the-scenes factors that the public may never hear about – video game development is not easy by any stretch of the imagination.
It is important that, the majority of the time, developers do take action on the apologies that end up on the apology wall: attempt to make amends, fix what is broken and squash some bugs along the way. “Better late than never,” as they say. Though, a little more patience from all sides of the equation – producer and consumer – might be better, too.
Featured Image from Twitter.
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