Why Do Games Developers Release Broken Games?

The gaming industry is without doubt one of the largest growing sectors with the industry pulling in a whopping $21.53 Billion from the sale of games and hardware in 2013. The game industry is growing at a rapid rate, the amount of gamers grows daily and the amount of sales of games and hardware is growing at a phenomenal rate. Game budgets are also getting bigger with games like GTA V costing a whopping $265,000,000 to build and launch. The cost of building and marketing a high end game ranges from $50,000 - $250,000 on average, so why are we seeing so many broken games on launch?

Some of the biggest AAA titles of 2014 have been broken on launch and patched up with a series of updates and hot-fixes post launch.

Battlefield 4 is one such game that felt as if it was rushed out and patched later at the expense of the gamers with almost 200 updates since its release. Unfortunately this isn't an isolated incident, in fact it seems to be more of a trend now than ever to release broken games and fix them in a live environment.

Grand Theft Auto V is another example of the new 'Release now, Fix later' mentality that seems to be trending among game developers. With one of the biggest budgets of the year, the online portion of the game was unplayable at launch and its taken the Rockstar almost 8 months of patches to get the game to a working state.

Recently Halo: The Master Chief Collection released with server issues that prevented gamers from matchmaking, also problems with unlocking achievements were reported. A massive 20GB patch was needed to make the game somewhat playable, however some gamers are still reporting issues with matchmaking.

Assassins Creed: Unity is a fine example of poor or rushed development. The game has a whole host of issues, that many in fact that Ubisoft has released a blog for gamers to report the issues experienced in the game. So far a whole host of issues have been reported such as Arno ( the main character) falling through the ground, game crashing when joining co-op sessions, Arno being trapped inside hay carts, loading screen delays, these are to name but a few.

These are just a few examples of recent games that have been broken on release by the developers, they are by no means the only games that are released in such states, it seems to be the new norm to release a rushed out broken game and patch it up at a later date.

With the price of games at an all time high do we think its acceptable to have a game rushed out to meet a release date and then patched at leisure? Wouldn't it be better that the developers follow the example of 'From Software' and if a games just not ready, delay it! Thats exactly what they have done with Bloodborne, and hopefully the game will at least be playable on release.

Surely it is better to have more beta testing and delays and have a fully functioning game on release, than to follow the recent trend of release now fix later?

What do you think, have you had enough of all these broken games being released now and patched up later? Maybe you are happy for games to patched up after release? Whatever your view, we would like to hear from you in the comments below.