DaGaffer
Down With That Sorta Thing
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2003
- Messages
- 18,516
Not really, it's costing the publishers money. Developers get paid anyway. You need top level games to get any kind of sales back to the devs
Developers get paid this time. If they keep punting out shoddy work publishers will move elsewhere. The attitude "I'll get paid anyway" is written on the headstones of failed businesses right through history.
You should consider the tribulations though, you are never promised a perfect product and by now people should know it.
Actually rules about about merchantable quality apply to games just as much as they do to toasters or frozen calamari; if you put out something that doesn't actually work, customers have the right to get their money back.
Especially since we're talking about unreasonable expectations.
How is "it should fucking work" an unreasonable expectation?
Just to clarify on your original post; a company releases a game buggy because they have to, not because they want to and if they spend more money in the next 6 months to fix those bugs then it's a -good- thing. They can't turn into money/extra workers to "fix what should've been fixed" because they -can't-.
Then they need to get better developers and they need to factor in support into their business model. The idea that you have to put something crap out and the customer can just live with it is ludicrous, and the games industry only gets away with that shit because of the historic tolerance of its audience, not because its the right way to do business. This is an area where gaming still shows its immaturity as an industry. Unfortunately, the audience for games is no longer fellow programmers loading up Jet-Set Willy on tape; its 30-something adults who don't have the time to deal with bullshit excuses and don't give a flying fuck about the business models, any more than they give a fuck about Toyota's supply-chain problems if their Prius sets on fire, they just want what they paid for to work.