What was the last game you bought that seemed unfinished and broken? For me it was the recently releeased Titan Quest from THQ. This game has horrible performance issues and lots of game crashing bugs. Even on very high-end rigs the game still runs choppy, I wonder what the devs used to test the game. What's even worse is the game effecting bugs. I have encountered numerous crashing and even graphical glitches. I read somewhere on the Titan Quest forums that one person experienced somewhere in the range of 200+ crashes before finishing the game. It is so bad that even people's saved characters are being corrupted and rendered unplayable.
I remember when I bought Battlefield 2 the game had many many bugs. It has had lots of performance issues as well. Performance issues really effect a FPS, so I was extremely unpleased with the result. PC Developers take for granted the ease of patching and bug fixing on their platform. If a game like Battlefield 2 was released to a console in such a state, the game would be a total failure. The problem is many devs see the ease of patching as a reason to release a non-finished game. I personally feel that if I am paying for a game, it should be solid out of the box. I ended up returning Titan Quest because I feel a dev that releases a flawed product should not be supported.
The PC gaming industry is constantly complaining about piracy and thinking of new ways to combat it. One of the reasons piracy is so rampant is because of the release of non-finished titles. The market is so flooded with so-so games that people become cautious about purchasing, maybe even resorting to bittorrent or other p2p for games. I believe the best anti-piracy measure is to release an excellent completed game. If a game is great people will buy it. Look at Oblivion, it has pretty much no copy-protection, yet it sold very very well. This is due to what a great game it turned out to be. Even with some bugs and gameplay glitches it still seemed like a complete product. With a vastly open-ended game like Oblivion a few bugs are going to be commonplace too, I am willing to live with that in exchange for free-form gameplay.
I urge everyone to think about which games they spend their money on. I am not saying kill the industry by not supporting companies, but there are way too many broken games out there. If the industry wants to expand, it should prove itself with quality titles, because as of right now it should be stripped of all the crappy games lining the store shelves.
I remember when I bought Battlefield 2 the game had many many bugs. It has had lots of performance issues as well. Performance issues really effect a FPS, so I was extremely unpleased with the result. PC Developers take for granted the ease of patching and bug fixing on their platform. If a game like Battlefield 2 was released to a console in such a state, the game would be a total failure. The problem is many devs see the ease of patching as a reason to release a non-finished game. I personally feel that if I am paying for a game, it should be solid out of the box. I ended up returning Titan Quest because I feel a dev that releases a flawed product should not be supported.
The PC gaming industry is constantly complaining about piracy and thinking of new ways to combat it. One of the reasons piracy is so rampant is because of the release of non-finished titles. The market is so flooded with so-so games that people become cautious about purchasing, maybe even resorting to bittorrent or other p2p for games. I believe the best anti-piracy measure is to release an excellent completed game. If a game is great people will buy it. Look at Oblivion, it has pretty much no copy-protection, yet it sold very very well. This is due to what a great game it turned out to be. Even with some bugs and gameplay glitches it still seemed like a complete product. With a vastly open-ended game like Oblivion a few bugs are going to be commonplace too, I am willing to live with that in exchange for free-form gameplay.
I urge everyone to think about which games they spend their money on. I am not saying kill the industry by not supporting companies, but there are way too many broken games out there. If the industry wants to expand, it should prove itself with quality titles, because as of right now it should be stripped of all the crappy games lining the store shelves.