Stop Giving Your Money to Game Publishers That Sell Now, Patch Later

In recent years, it has become all too common for major video game publishers to release titles that are in incomplete or embarrassingly flawed states. The term “gold master” no longer means anything; in this digital age, a barely beta product can enter full production, with patches scheduled to fix what should have been coded and tested during the QA process. It’s a sad state of affairs when you’re better off ignoring games at launch, so you can pick them up after they’ve been fixed weeks or months later. However, it doesn’t need to be that way. If publishers are eager to release unfinished or unpolished titles, they should face the financial repercussions for their missteps. So, gamers, please stop buying broken video games.

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Launch Day Troubles 

Patches, which were once used to address bugs and balance issues, are now crutches that publishers leverage to finish deficient or defective games after they’ve shipped. We only need to look to EA’s Battlefield 2042 and CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 as examples. Those high-profile games were not anywhere near ready for release, but they still hit store shelves so that their publishers could snatch up easy holiday sales after months (or years) of hype. Cyberpunk 2077’s last-gen iterations were particularly egregious, as they were plagued with terribly choppy gameplay, random crashing, unloaded textures, distracting asset pop-in, bizarre physics bugs, and an atrocious AI.

Battlefield and Cyberpunk 2077 weren’t the only culprits. Fallout 76, No Man’s Sky, Anthem, Batman: Arkham Knight on PC, Assassin’s Creed Unity, Star Wars Battlefront 2, and the 2K WWE games represented some of the worst releases in recent memory. These games were horrifically buggy, terribly optimized, or utterly lacking in content, but sold at full retail price despite their shortcomings. Fixes came later in the form of incessant patches.

These situations were humorous at first; everyone had a good laugh at Assassin’s Creed Unity’s unloaded faces and Mass Effect: Andromeda‘s comically expressionless supporting cast. Many of these games eventually turned the ship around by correcting the issues that plagued them at launch. However, what was once viewed as an amusing curiosity has become the norm, and companies have embraced the games-as-a-service concept to further justify the need for always-online game sessions, season passes, boatloads of DLC, and, of course, a never-ending stream of bug fixes. And they’re starting to charge $70 for the privilege.

These games were horrifically buggy, terribly optimized, or utterly lacking in content, but sold at full retail price despite their shortcomings.

To compound this issue, video games have swelled significantly in size (50-100+ GB titles are commonplace), and their patches are substantial. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has about 20GBs of patches, for example. If you are fortunate enough to own a PS5 or Xbox Series X/S console, you’ll be lucky to download more than a dozen games without running low on storage space. It’s tiring to see massive, day-one patches that eat up precious storage space—and hours of installation time—to address issues that should’ve been handled before the game shipped.

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Diamonds in the Rough

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this perverse post-launch patch madness is watching other games utilize patching to great effect. While Dice feverishly crunches to improve Battlefield 2042 to meet the basic standards that its fan base expected at launch, other titles have delivered excellent experiences from the jump—and continue to improve upon them months, if not years afterwards. Capcom’s Monster Hunter series is a prime example of this consumer-friendly tactic. Sure, these games launch with a few issues, but they’re complete games that also receive long-term support in the form of free cosmetics, events, and story expansions.

For example, Capcom added The Witcher 3 and Final Fantasy XIV collaboration quests months after Monster Hunter World’s release. They gave Monster Hunter fans two wholly unique monsters and a beefy quest line featuring The Witcher’s protagonist Geralt of Rivia. These updates cost nothing; they were free to download and enjoy. In fact, it could be argued that Capcom did a better job of delivering a games-as-a-service title than games explicitly designed to go that route.

That’s not to say that service-oriented titles can’t also be great, either. Genshin Impact, despite its gambling-based character acquisition system, delivers a massive amount of free content on a near-monthly basis. From mini-games, to storyline expansions, to new bosses, and a constant influx of events, Genshin Impact is a shockingly polished game that delivers a tremendous amount of content in exchange for nothing but your time. 

Naturally, there are different systems at play when discussing examples such as Genshin Impact or Monster Hunter World. These titles are likely planned, developed, and managed quite differently from the annual holiday-season blockbusters. Plus, game development is a tremendously expensive undertaking, especially in the AAA space. Developing games at 4K resolution is even more costly, and bloats the titles’ file sizes. Still, this doesn’t address the core problem, which is the wide discrepancy in the quality of games on their launch days.

I can boot up my Nintendo Switch offline and enjoy a nostalgic romp through Metroid Dread right out of the box. On the flipside, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade suffered from a wildly inconsistent and jittery frame rate when it launched on PC, despite being available and performing better on PS4 and PS5 for nearly two years. This performance trouble has been largely addressed in a recent patch, but Square Enix likely rushed FFVII out the door to snag holiday season sales, performance be damned.

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Crunch, Greed, and Silence

So, why is this happening? It could be for many reasons, but video game development is shrouded by contracts and NDAs. Rarely do we hear about the goings-on at major studios, and when we do it’s generally bad news: layoffs, deadline crunching, toxic quid pro quo, consumer gaslighting, harassment, or worker abuse. Regardless, we can only speculate as to why games are released in subpar states, but I suspect it’s a combination of apathy for QA testing, corporate/investor-driven deadlines, and the always-online requirement thrust upon us during the last two gaming generations. 

With the internet serving as a convenient vehicle to deliver game content, publishers may not see the value in thorough QA testing prior to certification, since they can have the development team work on bug fixes after the fact. Of course, this is purely speculative. However, given the number of shoddy launches in recent years, and the extensive, often months-long process of patching broken games after their release, it’s hard to believe otherwise.

This practice is unacceptable. If you bought a DVD or Blu-ray movie that stuttered or didn’t play, you would return it to the vendor for a refund or exchange. If those disks were produced with faults, they would be recalled and replaced, much like what Criterion did with its recent Citizen Kane release. They would not remain on shelves for customers to buy, with the expectation that you’ll download and install a patch to “fix” the faulty product. Yet, this is standard practice in the video game world.

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Accept Nothing Less Than the Best

Worse still are the voices in the game and media industry that not only normalize this practice, but admonish you for complaining about it. You shouldn’t be expected to beta test a game that you bought for $60 or $70. There is an entire branch of gaming dedicated to playtesting in-development titles: Early Access. That said, there’s a stark difference between Early Access titles and the broken messes released by major developers. Early Access games are labeled as incomplete titles, while unfinished AAA releases are solid as full retail products. 

As a consumer, you must make a choice: You can keep sending your orders back to the kitchen in hopes that the cooks get it right the next time, or you can stop contributing to the problem by withholding your hard-earned cash until you receive a product that is worth the money.

The key here is patience. Resist the urge to reserve a game, or buy it on launch day. No preorders, no deluxe editions, nothing. There are many resources available, including previews and reviews, for you to peruse before putting cash on the table. We, of course, welcome you to take a look at PCMag’s catalog of game previews and reviews. If you’re a PC gamer, Steam’s user review section has colorful takes. Twitter is another fine reference; simply enter a game’s name into the search bar to see the chatter surrounding a title. Information is key, so be as informed as possible before giving away your money.

It’s not entitled to expect a finished game, and anyone who tells you otherwise is being willfully obtuse or outright disingenuous. The AAA gaming industry can do much, much better. Let’s push them in the right direction.