Why does Bethesda get a free pass?

Due to a recent article on the site about the next patch for Fallout 4, i feel the need to discuss this further.

Bethesda's support for F4 since launch has been abysmal!

3 months on and we are only on the second patch...as of this typing its not even out on consoles yet!

Now i like F4, but there's no denying it has a multitude of game breaking bugs and glitches that, simply put, should not have been there at launch and definitely shouldn't still be there now!

Its due to all these issues i keep hearing about that im even afraid to play the game further for fear of my save getting corrupt or some quest line becoming impossible to complete.

If a game makes a player feel like they cant play it because its so broken, something is badly wrong!

This is a problem with all Bethesda games however, hell my wife is playing through Skyrim on the Xbox 360 for the first time and even after FIVE YEARS that game stillhas bugged and broken quests which she cant complete because Bethesda refused to fix their broken game.

She just spent 100+s of hours with the game and now no longer feels like playing it because of this bugged quest she spent countless hours on.

Thanks Bethesda!

What im wondering is: Wheres the outcry? Wheres all the angry gamers with their pitchforks, demanding they pull their fingers out and actually talk to and support the very people that keep them in business?

When EA or Ubisoft or pretty much any other publisher or developer release a game in a similar state the internet explodes with legions of (rightfully so) angry gamers demanding they, for lack of a better word "fix their shit!".

I see no such outcry in this situation, and never have regarding the typical, broken big Bethesda release.

Infact, more times than not i see people defending Bethesda, with nonsensical arguments such as "they are a small studio" or "stop whining you little self entitled cry baby" etc etc.

Why?

Why does Bethesda, who have not been transparent with their player base, has refused to keep us informed on the status of upcoming patches, refuses to fulfill its obligation to give us a quality product after we gave them our money and has so far barely been able to push out two patches since the games launch last November not receive the same level of well deserved criticism?

Now im under no delusions Bethesda are the only people who pull this kind of shit, many many other AAA developers/publishers do the same but they more often than not always receive their just desserts as far as criticism goes.

However, some actually do the right thing and go above and beyond to fix the situation, one of the best examples of this is CD Projekt RED with The Witcher 3.

The game had many issues at launch but within the first couple of months they had release MULTIPLE large patches to fix the issues and continued to support it for months on months afterwards and as far as im aware, continue to do so.

They actually communicated with their players, kept them updated regularly on the status of upcoming patches and what issues they were going to fix, and as soon as they released one patch they got started on the next and they keep everyone in the loop!

THAT'S what i call support, THAT'S how every developer should do it and many other developers, including Bethesda, should follow suit.

Its not only the right thing to do, but its their OBLIGATION to do so!

We have after all, paid full price for their product, earned them millions so why shouldn't we expect some level of quality and support in return?

This is the only industry where you can pay full price for something and if its broken or not to your satisfaction theres nothing you can do about it.

In any other consumer industry it is your RIGHT as a consumer to expect a certain level of quality and satisfaction. The second you hand over your money you have a right to a full refund or a replacement, its the law, no arguing, no exceptions!

You don't buy a toaster that doesn't toast bread and go "oh, its ok, i'll wait for it to get better", no you take it back to the store and demand a refund or a replacement!!

You have a rightto hold the manufacturer or the seller to fulfill their obligation to you!

You don't sit there and defend it with nonsensical, illogical arguments like "stop whining and wait" or "your just being a self entitled cry baby about it" like many do when talking about broken and buggy games!!

So, in conclusion i ask once more:

Why does Bethesda get, and always has got a free pass?

I have well over 150 hours into Fallout 4 and didn't encounter a single game breaking bug or glitch and neither have the 5 or 6 friends I know that have also put at least 100 hours into it. Not being able to finish a side quest that has zero impact on the rest of the game is not considered a "game breaking bug" a game breaking bug or glitch is something that physically causes your game to crash or prevents you from finishing the games story. In my opinion, Fallout 4 is probably the most polished Bethesda game to date.

@capri2s: welcome to forum. i'm not that big a fan of f4 but just to play devil's advocate for a moment, there's a couple of things you can't help but notice from your post.

1. you sound like a massive drama queen. i'm too afraid to play any more of f4 because i've heard the game has issues. little bit embarrassing that pal.

2. despite you saying twice you anticipate people saying you sound self entitled, to complain that your poor wife no longer feels like playing skyrim after sinking 100s of hours into it because of a few bugs and then sarcastically saying thanks to bethesda, is practically the definition of self entitlement. my heart bleeds for her.

considering you've not mentioned any issues you've personally experienced with f4 i can't understand why you'd feel the need to write out a massive rant against issues you've only heard about. how about just play the game and complain only when / if you encounter something game breaking, which you probably won't

@capri2s: I'm 100 hours into Fallout 4 and I haven't encountered a single game-breaking bug. A few minor ones, yes, but nothing bad.

I'm the same. Played a lot, not sure of the exact time, and the only glitches I found both involve Brahmin and my house, once when it got stuck inside the house and once when it got stuck on the roof. Both gave me a good laugh and neither broke the game. The only issue I really have with F4 is that compared to F3 and NV, it's boring and doesn't really offer up anything new.

Well I didn't buy Fallout 4 and don't plan to, so I guess I'm helping.

Maybe since CD Projekt Red basically just b**** slapped Bethesda last year with their game, Bethesda will feel compelled to step up their game. They were completely outclassed.

So you haven't experienced these glitches yourself but only heard about them?

And it's funny you mentioned Witcher 3 cause granted they have released a fair amount of patches, I still am able to meet the same siamese merchant as I did when I played the game the first time.

Now this isn't really a big deal as it's not a game breaking bug, and every game will have some minor bugs and glitches regardless of how many times one patch the game. As far as I know Fallout 4 does have some minor bugs but I can't say I've encountered anything game breaking bug or glitch.

But by all means I do agree that if one isn't satisfied with a purchase then you are entitled to a refund, which is why I'm kinda happy Steam implemented the two hour playtime refund, though I think it ought to have been five days after the purchase, and GoG.Com now implementing a refund system of their own.

OP is dumb as rocks. The scope and scale of Bethesda games are beyond huge of that which no other game has even attempted. If that doesn't make it understandable why their games have to release in the state they do, then you're as dumb as the OP.

@Ross_the_Boss6: I preferred Fallout 4 over Witcher 3

@isaacfalls: None of us are perfect.

Yeah, just like the Witcher 3 was far less than perfect

This comment is dumb. Period. Thats not the discussion either, the discussion is about why some people get away with releasing buggy products, and others do not.

Only responding to the "self entitlement" issue here, because you are utterly misguided on that one.

Self entitlement is expecting something for free, or expecting to get something with little to no effort because you feel like the world owes you. That, pretty much is the baseline definition of the word.

When you pay full price for a product and are not satisfied with it, for one reason or another (lets forget this is about F4 for a moment and just apply it to literally anything) if you complain about that then that is not self entitlement, that is consumer rights.

Any time you hand over your money to a retailer or whoever for a product and you aren't satisfied with it in any way (be it defective or just poor quality) you have a right to be unsatisfied, you have a right to complain, and you have a right to some sort of refund or replacement, or in this case, Bethesda has an obligation to fix the game, or at least improve it by releasing patches faster and more frequently.

That isn't self entitlement, its common friggin sense! Hell its retail law in some parts of the world!

People need to stop mistaking peoples rights and their right to complain with being being self entitled.

People need to stop treating these publishers and developers like we are their friends and we should be nice to them and be understanding.

These are multi-million (in some cases billion) dollar corporations, not our friends. They are in the business of making money. To make that money they take ours, we hand it over and legally and morally in return they have an obligation to give us a quality product.

It really cant get any more simple than that.

Like i said, this industry is pretty much the only consumer industry i know of on earth which can get away with the sort of crap developers and publishers often pull, and instead of getting angry about it and holding these billion dollar corporations accountable, we brush it under the table like it never happened because "oh but i like the people who work there." or "oh but i liked their previous games they were ok", or even worse we turn on each other and call people with legitimate complaints "whiny, self entitled little cry babies".

That sort of attitude is toxic, its wrong, its stupid but not only that its detrimental to the industry we all apparently love so much and has been one of the major factors contributing to the state the industry is in today, which is an utter mess!

@capri2s: if you'd said she had to quit after a few hours because it was too broken to play i'd completely agree with you. but as she did quite the opposite and spent 100s of hours playing it - you can't spend even a fraction of that time playing a game if it isn't enjoyable (and most games at a maximum only provide a fraction of that playing time) - so to complain so vehemently about it despite that is self entitlement in my book

it's cheaper than hiring the kind of staff you'd need to effectively bug check a game of this size. Release the game, let the testers pay YOU, profit.

To be fair, Bethesda doesn't get away with it; the industry in general gets away with it. It's not so bad on consoles because of things like hardware standardization and actual third party quality control, but it can be the wild west on PC at times. I mean, all PC gamers have that game we love run by devs that can never quite get everything working, and we're probably a bit too tolerant at times. I dunno, I don't want to be too impatient, either, because this shit is legitimately hard and I don't want to encourage devs into conservative design practices.

As far as your skyrim on Xbox, you can probably thank Microsoft for your glitches because of the rules they had back then about updates. There's only one glitch that I run into with any consistency in PC Skyrim and avoiding it is easy. I have no idea about FO4 glitches, though, as these games are generally better if you wait and don't spoil yourself on the vanilla versions, so i'm still waiting to play it.

@capri2s: No, this thread is not about "some" developers. It's about one developer, Bethesda, getting away with releasing buggy games. Read the actual words on the page next time.

Funny how people give Bethesda shit for releasing buggy games, but those same window lickers ignore CDPR, Obsidian, Ubisoft and a few other devs when they release buggy games.

@Ballroompirate: except Ubisoft got crap for it as well. Don't you remember all the shit they got for the terrible release of Assassin's Creed Unity? Which I would argue was 5x more buggy than Fallout 4. Plus, there was that whole Batman: Arkham Knight fiasco for the PC version. It's not just Bethesda getting crap for this issue. You kinda have to expect some bugs in open-world games. They're so big you can't possibly account for every single problem before release (programming is kinda funny that way). At least nowadays it can be fixed as soon as they learn about it.

I don't think that Bethesda really "gets away with it" myself. Given the size and scope of their games I feel that they do pretty well with their support. Getting two patches in three months for a game like Fallout 4 seems pretty reasonable to me. Games can be very complex and bugs can be very difficult to track down and eliminate without breaking other things in the process. Personally I've played quite a bit of Fallout 4 and haven't come across anything game breaking myself, in fact I really haven't come across all that many bugs or glitches in general.

Your beloved Witcher will be forgotten soon, and people will enjoy FO4 in years to come.

Just because its "in your book" doesn't change the actual definition of something. Either case spending hours in a quest only to have it bug out is just bad game making.

Actually they don't, the point here is how those people always get their well deserved criticism yet Bethesda does the same things and does not.

lol, yes and all the people who voted it GOTY last year will soon forget it too. What a stupid statement to make.

@capri2s:\

Hey, thanks for kind words.

And yes, I have in mind exactly the unwashed masses that voted it for GotY.

They don't really get a pass. It is well known that most Bethesda games are buggy when released. They now have that reputation. That being said there is a hell of a lot of stuff going on in games like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls so some bugs are to be expected. I'm sure they are working on repairing the major ones first.

@capri2s: So you wanted to play Skyrim for its thousands of quests but you're mad because it means playing a game with bugs. What a prissy little privileged brat you are. You obviously have no idea what it takes to make a game of this scale.

I expect quality when i hand over cash to someone for something (as do you when you buy any other sort of product from a store, but you are too hypocritical and ignorant to realize it), like Ive been saying that's not being prissy or entitled, that's consumer rights, and to say otherwise shows just how misguided and uneducated in the matter you are. People like you need to put your fanboy ignorance aside and learn a thing or two about that. The industry would be in a far better place if more people did.

Lol, "unwashed masses", as ridiculous as your statement is, i found that hilarious.

@capri2s: So you expected Skyrim to deliver a game 50x times more massive than any other $60 AND be bug free. Do you live in a world of pure fiction?? Jesus Christ!!! Such an entitled prick! You want the whole world to bend over backwards for you! That makes zero sense! LOL

Sorry, when did this become about Skyrim? I know i mentioned it but i only used it as an example of Bethesda's inability to fix their games even after its been out for a very long time.

But yeah, if this was all about Skyrim and i bought the game at launch and saw dragons flying backwards when im supposed to be immersed or my game bugged out and corrupted my save multiple times (or any of the multitude of other serious bugs the game had which people experienced at launch or even after, take your pick there's plenty to choose from) yeah i would have been pissed.

Doesn't matter what game it is, when a company sells you a product it is their obligation to deliver a satisfying, quality product. Not sure why this is such a complicated thing for people to understand?

This isn't quantum theory after all, its mind-numbingly simple...let me try and explain it again:

Have you ever bought something that was defective? Yes. Did you take it back to the store and get either a replacement or a refund? Yes. That means you had an expectation of quality because you gave someone your hard earned money and you didn't get a quality product, so you were in your rights to expect or demand better. Why does the same not apply to video games?

Sounds very Hippocratic to me if you think its ok to buy a game that's broken or buggy or not up to standard and not expect better from the manufacturer (in this case developer or publisher) and then go out of your way to defend it, but then turn around and think the exact opposite for anything else you'd buy with your own money.

Where is the sense there?

I've played a lot of Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 (Before a lot of patches) and never experienced any game breaking bugs for either game. To be honest Fallout 4 ran pretty good for me. We do live in a world of release game now, fix later but very rarely have I come across anything game breaking.

Well Xenoblade X is more or less bug free. But hey, lets keep bringing up "it's an open world game", get some new material.

@capri2s: Bethesda has an obligation to you?? LOL What are you? God?? And everyone should come to give sacrificial offerings to you?? XD

Wow, the way you miss simplified, well explained points is astonishing. I think a brick wall is better at a debate than you are. Stop wasting my time and go away.

Oh and btw yes they do have an obligation to me, they took my money, they are obligated to everyone who bought their product but simple economics and consumer rights seem to be beyond you so im wasting my time even saying this.

Exactly, we do and im astonished that certain people are too oblivious or ignorant to see this, yet alone understand how they can willingly keep pumping money into these things and not expect some level of quality in return.

Yeah i don't buy the whole "its an open world game" argument either. Plenty of open world games release with very few issues....RDR springs to mind, if i recall GTA 4 was pretty polished, so was GTA 5 for that matter...at least the single player part was. Come to think of it, all made by Rockstar too...interesting.

I don't recall hearing of any major issues when Shadow Of Mordor was released either, and i played the XB1 version to completion and never experienced a single issue...i know not all of these are RPG's but that's not the silly argument keep throwing around, its the fact that they are open world games and somehow that means it's acceptable for a game to be buggy as hell or even broken to the point of being unplayable, like having an open world is somehow a "get out of jail free card" for either bad, or incompetent programming..

@capri2s: I get what you are saying about expecting quality but I've never played a game that I would consider broken by Bethesda. Maybe a few glitches and bugs but nothing to the magnitude that you are speaking to. Maybe I just got lucky.

Lucky for me I only had minor bugs if any, put maybe 130 or 140 hours into it. Actually there was that item duplication bug and I exploited the shit out of it.

yeah it's an opinion, which is what the definition of in my book is

@capri2s: They took your money? At gun point??? XD

@shrek: Dude was even wearing power armor.

Goty's don't mean jack shit, you think people still care about Journey?, Shadow of Mordor? (holy hell that was a waste of goty). Don't get me wrong I love TW3 but the amount of praised it had got out of control fast.

In what imaginary world does Bethesda get a free pass?

Fantasy land.

Back in reality, despite the bugs (that the overwhelming number of gamers will not have much issue with and are present in every game on the market) FO4 has given hundreds of hours of entertainment to people, and hundreds more when mods roll around. People will continue to get bethesda RPGs, including me, because they provided some of the best longevity and customization in the business.

Reminds me of the people who rage brigaded the steam vote system of Elite Dangerous, giving it thumbs down after thousands of hours played going "it's boring."

@Ballroompirate: I don't think goty awards mean nothing. Just like I don't think oscars mean nothing. The games that get the most goty awards are simply the most critically acclaimed games in the market. Actually I find user reviews are pretty useful in finding out whether a game is good. Atm witcher 3 is at a whopping 95% positive on steam.

Anyways getting goty and being remembered many years later are not necessarily the same thing. I agree Witcher 3 will be forgotten soon and fallout 4 will probably still be remembered just as skyrim is still remembered to this day but it doesn't necessarily mean it is a better game overall. I do love the mods aspect of bethesda games though its just awesome. Just because people forgot about Last of Us doesn't mean fallout 4 is better than last of us (imo last of us is better but that's just an opinion).

Anyways the game that will remain timeless for all eternity is and always will be tetris xD.

They are not getting a free pass. After Skyrim I am done with them. I did not buy ES Online and Fallout 4 and will not buy any future game if they keep dumbing down their franchise.

Just a quick heads up, Bethesda didn´t make Elder Scrolls Online. That was done by a outside studio.

Also this thread seems to be put the wrong place, this is not system wars and most of the conversation seems to be a CDPR Vs Bethesda. So maybe move it to the right forum.

@Jacanuk: This isn't a conversation about system wars. Developers aren't systems.

Different situation. This is a discussion about how they keep releasing buggy games (and despite what you claim, the facts don't change that many people have had serious, game breaking issues. Hell on the article i was referring to which this thread is all about alone, someone had their game break multiple times, corrupting their save, forcing them to restart from the begging about 6 or 7 times, and the game would constantly crash) and about how they, and developers in general shouldn't be encouraged to keep doing this just because people don't understand what their simple consumer rights are or what the word "quality" means.

The Elite Dangerous situation was just misguided idiots abusing a system. Fallout 4 isn't boring and we're not debating that, we're debating...or at least i was trying, to understand why they don't get as much hate as everyone else does when they release a buggy mess of a game.

"yes Bethesda does have an obligation to me! They stole my money!"

If the exact same game was released but had a EA, Activision or Ubisoft logo on the box, people would never let them live it down. But not only does Bethesda get praised for releasing games that are as big as an ocean but as deep as a puddle with shit gameplay systems but they also get a free pass when it comes to having the actual product work as intended. Don't get me started on how all the Bethesda FO games are nothing but glorified shooters with dialogue choices that don't really impact anything, the closest thing we have to the great FO games of old is Wasteland 2.