How hard is a glitch/bug to fix...I mean, really?

There are so many bugs/glitches in games nowadays that could easily be fixed with a patch (at least I think so, I don't know), but they don't fix these bugs for a really long time. Why does it take so long? It seems like they are leaving it there for a reason...and then there are classic games that had cheat codes, like GTA3.

One that immediately comes to mind because I am into the game right now, is the M26 Dart glitch in BF3. It's a glitch that with the right setup, you can basically one shot anyone from any distance. You also see plenty of glitches/bugs in MMOs like WoW or Rift. I forget the instance in WoW but in one in ICC sometimes you would have to re-enter the dungeon or something because the boss doesn't drop anything or something like that, can't remember.

And then there were the cheat codes available for A LOT of games on the classic consoles like N64 or PS2. Grand Theft Auto 3 had tons of cheat codes which gave you unlimited weapons or bullets and stuff like that. I think I also remember some in Banjo Kazooie and Mario 64. And then the Missing No. glitch in the original Poke'mons.

So, my question is: do developers know of these glitches/bugs/cheat codes? I understand how fixing bugs on the classic consoles and handhelds isn't possible because they aren't internet capable, so they can't patch and whatnot. But what about games today? Like in BF3, how hard is it for them to fix this glitch? It seems like they could do it pretty easily, but don't for some reason. Same with WoW. Why would they let these mistakes go or provide cheat codes. I mean, how could someone just figure out to push all those buttons randomly in GTA3 and get all the weapons and stuff?

http://www.gamespot.com/news/blizzard-outlines-massive-effort-behind-world-of-warcraft-6228615

"The programming team is responsible for updating and maintaining 5.5 million lines of code."

There is your answer regarding WoW.

Well a glitch doesn't just show up in the code, regardless of how blatent it is in the gameplay. And there are millions of lines of code for each game. So first they have to find the offending line of code that causes the glitch, once that is done the programers cannot simply remove that line of code, as doing that would cause far more damage to the game at large than the glitch ever did on its own. So they have to tweak the line, trying - sometimes - thousands of different variations to find a fix that works. And 9 times out of 10 THAT change also causes a glitch - so they then have to fix that.

And as if all that didn't take a long time to begin with, if the patch is for a console game it THEN has to go through a Microsoft or Sony "Certification" process to makes sure that the patch doesn't do something besides what it is designed to do like.. oh I don't know... brick the consoles? Then you also have to remember that Microsoft's and Sony's Certification department often times has a dozen different items in it's work log to go through - including full games. So the entire process to recieve certification can take WEEKS to get approval - even if there is a "rush" order attached to the patch because it is supposed to be fixing a major Triple AAA game release.

So now, hopefully, you can see that it is more than a simple matter of just turning off the offending glitch - there is a massive amount of work that programers must undergo to fix that problem that seems so simple on your television screen.

There is also a little known "surcharge" that Sony and Microsoft charge for the "Certification" process. And we're not talking about a $10 charge per certification. No we are talking about charges that can go upwards of $10,000 to get a patch released onto consoles.

Because of this fee - a LOT of developers do actually wait until they have a bunch of "fixes" in their "patch" so that ONE patch actually takes care of dozens of problems. They don't want to pay ten grand just to fix one small issue that isn't stopping people from finishing the games. It is because of the certification fee that developers tend to leave one or two small issues alone without a fix - especially if these glitches are found months after release.

There is also a little known "surcharge" that Sony and Microsoft charge for the "Certification" process. And we're not talking about a $10 charge per certification. No we are talking about charges that can go upwards of $10,000 to get a patch released onto consoles.

Because of this fee - a LOT of developers do actually wait until they have a bunch of "fixes" in their "patch" so that ONE patch actually takes care of dozens of problems. They don't want to pay ten grand just to fix one small issue that isn't stopping people from finishing the games. It is because of the certification fee that developers tend to leave one or two small issues alone without a fix - especially if these glitches are found months after release.

CrimsonpugTwo

Is it doable? Yes. Is it a lot of hard work? Also yes.

Bugs are not intentional. Even if the devs are aware of a bug, they may not fix it due to lack of time, or because it's not a high priority to fix. Bugs are rated in order of priority; showstoppers are rated the highest, meaning they need to be taken care of ASAP.

The platforrm holders have their own QA to make sure the games function as intended, and not crash due to memory leaks and things of that nature. It's not their place to check the quality of the gameplay; you might end up with a crappy, bug-infested game, but at least it'll run every time you start it up.

It depends. Some bugs are easy fixes. Some bugs come from something systemic, and fixing it would requiring rewriting large amounts of functionality. Some bugs are hard to reproduce and take a really long time just to track down and figure out why it's broken.

Ultimately any studio has limited manpower (especially post-release), so you take all known bugs and you rank them based on how severe they are. A bug where you press a button and a game crashes...that's pretty severe. A bug where you do some rare combination of actions and you get a little visual glitch...that's not so bad. Then you classify the bugs again based on how much time they take to fix. Then as you get closer to relase you start drawing lines, and dropping off the bugs that have little negative impact and that take too long to fix.

These days patches aren't something you can just throw out really quickly. If you're going to make a bunch of changes, you need to spend a lot of time making sure that you don't break everything due to new bugs introduced from other bug fixes. For consoles you also have to go through a certification process in order to get your patch up on PSN or XBL. Spending too much time on this stuff means taking resources away from unreleased games in development, so again you have to draw the line somewhere.

Bugs are not something a dev team can just comb over in mere minutes. Takes a lot of time to figure these things out. Look at Uncharted 3 or Bioshock 2. With Uncharted 3, the finished product had motion blur, but once the game was shipped and had gone through the printing process all of the release copies did not have motion blur.

Bioshock 2 went gold, the game was complete. However players began to notice that one of the vending machines (The Circus Of Values) did not have the jingle play when you interacted with it. Although it was on the gold version of the game but once again the printing process caused some sort of error. One piece of code in a completely different section of a game can affect code somewhere else in the game for pretty much no reason.

You can create a game, have 99% of the game complete, add in the finishing details which cause a glitch somewhere else in the game that was already complete. This sort of thing happens all the time. Once the game ships, if there is a glitch/bug then team members will have to sift through millions of lines of code, try to re-enact it and figure out exactly how to go about fixing it and so on. Games are tough to make... really tough. Sometimes I think we forget this and judge games too harshly.

All you're doing when making games is manipulating software and tricking it into doing what you want. Problems will arise lol.

Not sure how they could fix it

First of all, there are more categories to this:

Cheat: A cheat is given intentional from the developer side and it's up to you if you want to play with or without it, they're completely legal and wanted.

Bug: Unintentional behavior of something, the developers didn't want it but under certain circumstances it will happen

Debug: Programmers when they test their games and don't need to play fair or it would be too time consuming use the so called Debug Mode in which they then can set up the situation as they need it. In some games you can enable this experience yourself if you want, for example Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, which Debug Mode could be accessed when you changed a line in the .ini.file. Of course you should play like that only offline.

Crack: The criminal brother of the cheat, unwanted and not allowed, except we talk about single player only games, with them you can do as you like. (Not taking the issue of DRM in account here because differents countries hand it different about if bypassing DRM is legal or not.)

About your question:

It depends on how the coding is and how the program is set up. As written before, with fixing some you have to be careful, changing one line of code (amongst BILLIONS of them) and everything is ready for the trashcan, so there is the risk issue, better have a small malfunctiion than a whole game that doesn't work anymore.

Second you have to find the line of code that is causing the issue at all, and amongst billions of lines of code this also can take and require some time.

There is also a little known "surcharge" that Sony and Microsoft charge for the "Certification" process. And we're not talking about a $10 charge per certification. No we are talking about charges that can go upwards of $10,000 to get a patch released onto consoles.

Because of this fee - a LOT of developers do actually wait until they have a bunch of "fixes" in their "patch" so that ONE patch actually takes care of dozens of problems. They don't want to pay ten grand just to fix one small issue that isn't stopping people from finishing the games. It is because of the certification fee that developers tend to leave one or two small issues alone without a fix - especially if these glitches are found months after release.

CrimsonpugTwo