A reader is frustrated by the persistently poor quality of recent big-budget PC games, including the port of The last of us Part 1.
PC gamers seem to have a bad reputation among console gamers as they have a certain snobbery about their size. That and so much online cheating that people don’t want to play with it. I can understand that, the format sometimes seems to attract the wrong kind of person, but I’ve been a PC gamer all my life and have rarely owned a console.
I do this for a few reasons, including the superior graphics, but I also appreciate the modding and indie scene, as well as the fact that I’ve basically been using the same game machine for 25 years and, most of those same games still work today always on.
After a few difficult years, some ten years ago, PC gaming is supposedly going through a golden age right now, with more people playing than ever before and almost all console games making their way to PC sooner or later (get Nintendo on board and pretty much everyone is). So why is it that almost every PC game from a major publisher has been so absolutely awful lately?
At first I thought these were just Japanese developers having trouble adapting to the format as they are not used to it and as I understand it is not widely used in their home country. But it’s not just them. I intended to list recent big-budget PC games that have launched filled with bugs, terrible interfaces, and missing features, but it would be easier to list those that didn’t.
The last of us part 1 certainly not one of them, I can tell you. It’s basically a PlayStation 3 game and yet it’s so buggy that I honestly think it was worse than Cyberpunk 2077 at launch. The lack of reviews was a huge red flag and Sony was indeed hiding something as the screenshots and memes showed a game that was clearly unfinished and clearly rushed out to capitalize on the popularity of the show.
It’s such a shock now to find a big budget PC game that works at launch that I’ve assumed is broken until proven otherwise. From the GTA remasters to Battlefield 2042, Call Of Duty, Returnal and Hogwarts Legacy, if a game isn’t so broken as to be virtually unplayable, it’s still riddled with distracting graphical issues.
And why does it always stutter? All of these games seem to have similar problems, even though they are from completely different companies. I think that has something to do with recent graphics cards or something, but if the problem is so widespread, surely that should mean there are even more people working to fix the same problem? Instead, it feels like no one is.
The most frustrating thing is that there is such a simple solution to all this: just delay the game for a month or two and add some polish. It shouldn’t even be a question. PC versions often come out at different times for consoles, so no one would mind.
We need to go back to the days when releasing a game meant finishing it. You can add whatever content you want after launch, but if I’m paying for that download I expect it to work. Doesn’t work with a few issues and doesn’t do everything it’s supposed to do until six months after launch.
Developers apologizing to fans on Twitter and Reddit have become like all those streamers who howl and howl at the fans they ripped off, sitting in their $5 million mansion with their dog. Don’t apologize, just don’t. It’s so easy to avoid that there’s no excuse.
And of course I know it’s the publishers who make these decisions (note that indie games almost never have the same problems), but I don’t really care. I’ve paid my money and I expect my game to be more than a work in progress.
For a supposedly golden era, I never knew PC gaming was as bad as this and I’m fed up with it. Nor am I confident that anything will change, not as long as people keep putting up with it.
By reader Diceman
The reader post does not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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