| It pretty much does ignore it, pinning backend service issues as at least the primary if not the only major issue: "So why does it keep happening? It comes down to the fact that most games are now online services, with updated content, special events, virtual economies, player interaction, etc" As someone who plays both online and offline AAA games on console (PS4, Xbox One) and PC, I haven't seen any evidence that online-heavy games are more likely to ship with major problems than offline games. For both types of games it is routine these days to get games on day one where you have the base game, you have the near obligatory multiple-gigabyte 0 day patch applied to deal with problems found between gold master and actual release, and then you still have obvious crash bugs, serious problems with animation systems, physics systems, etc. Connection issues with backend services are just one of a very long list of game breaking problems, many of which are seen in totally offline single-player games. The whole "preorder" culture for gaming is a large factor in this problem, IMO. There's not that much incentive to ship a product that is solid when you've already gotten a large amount of the money you will get on release before the product even ships. This is even more evident in all the failed kickstarters where people have paid for alpha-level games that were never released or evolved much past where they were at the time of fund raising. To a large degree the gamers are thus to blame for perpetuating this problem due to buying into the preorder culture (presumably in order to avoid loss aversion due to missing out on preorder bonuses). |