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Does any other publisher constantly release broken games like ZeniMax/Bethesda?

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Member
Here's a list of Bethesda's output this generation. Every game on this list either suffered from technical launch issues on one platform or another or was a poorly designed mess. I've bolded the most notable fuck-ups.

-Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (2005)
-Star Trek: Legacy (2006)
-Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow (2006)
-The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)
-Fallout 3 (2008)
-Rogue Warrior (2009)
-WET (2009)
-Fallout: New Vegas (2010)
-Brink (2011)
-Hunted: The Demon's Forge (2011)
-RAGE (2011)
-The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)

Every game they've published in 2011 was broken one way or another.

Is any other publisher this consistent when it comes to broken games? Should all blame be put on Bethesda as a publisher and not on the individual studios? id - a studio known for its pioneer work in the industry and being a technical powerhouse - was even screwed over so that should tell you a lot about Bethesda Publishing.
 
Wait, what does RAGE being messed up have to do with Bethesda? That's all id's fault as far as I have heard. If your talking about bugs and such then it's the dev team and QA, so maybe you could partly blame Bethesda if they did QA for Rage and id didn't have much to do with that, not sure if anyone really knows though the credits may give it away.
 
Linkup said:
Wait, what does RAGE being messed up have to do with Bethesda? That's all id's fault as far as I have heard. If your talking about bugs and such then it's the dev team and QA, so maybe you could partly blame Bethesda if they did QA for Rage and id didn't have much to do with that, not sure if anyone really knows though the credits may give it away.
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The OP means Bethesda the publishing label, not Bethesda the developer.
 
I personally have never encountered problems with Bethesda games (granted I only own Oblivion, Fallout 3, RAGE & Skyrim), aside from the odd glitch.
 
Games using the same engine or a modification of that engine generally will have to deal with the same issues as each other. It doesn't excuse it, but it explains why some of them share problems.

They've also got some of the most complicated games in existence. If, say, Nintendo made a Mario game with a huge realistic world with a million realistic objects scattered across it that interact with realistic physics and can be picked up and dropped anywhere else, along with a million triggers for specific situations like quests and whatnot...well, I don't think they'd make that game to begin with, because they know what kind of a mess that would be. It'd be in development for ten years because they'd want to squeeze every bug out of it.

And another problem Bethesda's had most recently is that the most popular consoles simply can't handle their game. The trouble with the PS3 release of Skyrim is pretty well documented as being a RAM issue, and rightly so. Yet people still want their new games and they don't want them downgraded.
 
I'm of the minority that remembers the fact that DA2 was broken straight out of the box, and didn't get patched for a month. Which offends me far worse than the deliberate creative choices Bioware took. This is right after DA: Awakenings, which remains unplayable to this day without consulting an online road map of how to avoid all the game breaking bugs. They never even bothered to fix that one.

I'm speaking of the console versions. And really, Origins never truly got 100% ironed out. And Mass Effect 2 (PS3) had a showstopper, too, which they dragged their feet to patch. God help anyone who isn't forum savvy, or worse, doesn't have their console online. They've basically just bought broken products. So, I'd say Bioware is right up there with them.

I hear Obsidian is just as bad, too, but really I'm done with all of these PC-centric Westen devs until they decide to start doing some QA.
 
Rage is a fucking polished game. It had some issues on PC when released that a vocal minority raged about, making it look worse and bigger than it was.
 
I've updated the title since people don't seem to understand the Bethesda Softworks vs. Bethesda Game Studios thing despite it being like 15 years now.
 
Something broke with Skyrim the past week or two. My girlfriend can't load any of her saves without the game freezing now. Googling around, it looks like a decent amount of people are having the same problem.

Buggy mess.
 
At least their games have ambition. These guys are worse:

200px-Deep_Silver_Black_Logo.png
 
You would think that with their horrible track record, they would be under more scrutiny during certification.
 
flintstryker said:
At some point a guy is gonna come in here an tell us that ambitious games have bug, and I am gonna proceed to not care.
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Yeah, well, I don't care. I play their games on PC so I hope they continue this route. I'd vastly prefer allocating limited resources to the ambitious elements, rather than polishing up turds like EA and Activision do.
 
I have a bad feeling that this comment will come back to haunt me as I am currently playing Skyrim, but I have not really had any problems with any Bethesda game I have played.
 
Cthulhu is one of my all time favorites, it had technical issues? I can't really recall anything. And yeah, Obsidian still holds the broken/buggy throne.
 
They obviously don't give a damn about any quality standards at all. If only a series like the Elder Scrolls were actually developed by a developer that feels any sort of shame or embarrassment when their game is broken on a whole fucking platform, screwing over milllons.
 
Western RPGs and Open World games in general. There are exceptions, but those two genres blaze fantastic new trails in QA mediocrity. It's ok though, because they've managed to convince people that because they are "expansive", they should be always forgiven.
 
I have a quad core and Fallout: New Vegas will crash every 10-20 minutes if I don't add a line to the .ini file restricting it to using only 2 cores. It's that kind of issue which really perplexes me in how it got through any kind of Q&A process at all.
 
Phonomezer said:
I personally have never encountered problems with Bethesda games (granted I only own Oblivion, Fallout 3, RAGE & Skyrim), aside from the odd glitch.
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Same here. Brink had online issues, but that is the only one. I have both Fallouts, Brink, Skyrim, Oblivion, etc.
 
flintstryker said:
At some point a guy is gonna come in here an tell us that ambitious games have bug, and I am gonna proceed to not care.
Click to expand...

There's always some people that will defend anything. Either to rile people up or they honestly feel that way. With these guys though, it has to be just to rile people up. Even "IF YOU" didn't experience said problems, it's been thoroughly documented enough and well known that there are problems with basically everything their name on.

Now, the thread should be about so called "AAA-Dev/Publishers" before people start rattling off small obscure names that nobody would recognize.

Shame on me though, I should have known not to buy Skyrim on track record, but reviews misled me on the whole about the game (since the vast majority didn't mention a thing about fatal bugs). I have the PC version and it's completely unacceptable, let alone what PS3 users have to deal with. I know now to never-ever buy anything with those names on the cover ever again.
 
Yesterday i've found that i'm stuck in Fallout 3 in the Jefferson Memorial. After i turn off the flood control pump, the game refuse to load when i'm trying to return at a upper floor. I hope that i have a save game not to far and everything will be ok after that.

What i don't like about this game is every time i found a new location, i'm not sure if i visit the new building i'll not break a future quest.

I think i have not play any other game with these amount of bugs.

I fear to buy Skyrim and having the same problem.
 
Twilight Princess, Other M, and Skyward Sword all have game breaking bugs. Which actually means Nintendo games are some of the most broken games.
 
It's the price paid for the types of games they make. People who can't take it shouldn't buy their games. Sorry.
 
Cheech said:
It's the price paid for the types of games they make. People who can't take it shouldn't buy their games. Sorry.
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i normally agree with this but releasing a product that stops working for 1/3 of the playerbase is stepping a wee bit over the line.
 
Billychu said:
Twilight Princess, Other M, and Skyward Sword all have game breaking bugs. Which actually means Nintendo games are some of the most broken games.
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Those are single bugs that can threaten your progress in edge cases. Bethesda's games are buggy from start to finish.
 
Cheech said:
It's the price paid for the types of games they make. People who can't take it shouldn't buy their games. Sorry.
Click to expand...

Nonsense. They're not doing you a favor by releasing these games. They're making thoroughly broken products and asking 60 dollars for them. It's only the price paid because gamers let them get away with it. The fact that modders sitting in front of their computers at home can come up with fixes that Bethesda can't is damning.
 
Billychu said:
Twilight Princess, Other M, and Skyward Sword all have game breaking bugs. Which actually means Nintendo games are some of the most broken games.
Click to expand...

Beaten, but yeah, what HTown said. All three of those affect an extremely low amount of players if they happen fulfill a certain series of events, not 100% like Skyrim PS3.

Not that I'm excusing Nintendo either, but those really were a case of a single obscure bug getting through, not a broken product knowingly being sold, the way BOB* does it.

*Bethesda, Obsidian and Bioware
 
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