GSC Explains Why It Couldn’t Delay S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Any Longer to Fix Bugs: “You’re So Tired That You Would Just Die”

Tsing

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, the first-person shooter survival horror sequel that finally launched on Windows PCs, Xbox Series X|S, and Game Pass this month following many years of development, released in what some critics have described as an "unplayable state" because its developer was too "tired" and "broken" to delay the game anymore, according to new comments shared by GSC Game World studio CEO Ievgen Grygorovych.

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So, to be fair I only played through the prologue to test performance, but the prologue is quite playable IMHO.

I think some of these "unplayable" comments are overblown.

The game is in a WAY better state than Cyberpunk was at launch in 2020. (but that maybe doesn't say much)
 
They've already released 3 patches since launch, and it just launched, so I'm not worried, quite impressed with the patch releases to be honest. Could have been worse, and let a lot of time elapse between patches, or not fix things at all, heh.
 
Is there ever going to be discipline among developers as not to do this?
Meh most likely AI will fix this situation.
 
Zarathustra said:
So, to be fair I only played through the prologue to test performance, but the prologue is quite playable IMHO.

I think some of these "unplayable" comments are overblown.

The game is in a WAY better state than Cyberpunk was at launch in 2020. (but that maybe doesn't say much)
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From what I've seen in videos it looks worse or at least as bad as CP2077 was. But its hard to tell how often the bugs appear from videos focusing on the bugs.
 
MadMummy76 said:
From what I've seen in videos it looks worse or at least as bad as CP2077 was. But its hard to tell how often the bugs appear from videos focusing on the bugs.
Click to expand...

Well, I played through maybe 2.5 hours in total, repeating the prologue a couple of times, in an attempt to optimize settings to make it playable.

In the end I decided I needed to upgrade my desktop first before playing this title, so I requested a Steam refund.

In that time - however - I only ran into one very minor bug, and that was the binding of the direction and numpad keys, which didn't adhere to the settings menu settings in actual game.

(Climbing a ladder uses W for up and S for down, regardless of what you bind your direction keys to. Additionally, nothing bound to numpad keys works, instead just moving the camera around.)

Other than that, and the shockingly high CPU use, the game ran absolutely perfectly for me.
 
Uvilla said:
Is there ever going to be discipline among developers as not to do this?
Meh most likely AI will fix this situation.
Click to expand...

No, no software is perfect, at some point you have to make a decision to release the thing and accept the bugs it has, and hope you can fix some of them later. If you held it indefinitely, until it is all fixed, it would never be released. Deadlines do have to be met.

This even happens with reviews, if I were to make a review "perfect" I would release maybe 1 every couple of months, heh. At some point, you have to release it with an acceptable amount of workability, and just patch stuff after the fact.

This also happens with hardware, more often than not there are hardware bugs in silicon that at the end of the day you have to just spin, and release, and hope you can fix some things in software. Sometimes you see new revisions of silicon, but sometimes you don't, and you just have to live with what is broken and patch it in software if possible, this notably happened with RDNA 3 GPUs, they never got that silicon exactly up to par with what they had intended, but at the end of the day, they just had to run with it and make the best of it.

Every programmer knows there are always bugs, the trick is making them as less apparent as possible on release.
 
Brent_Justice said:
No, no software is perfect, at some point you have to make a decision to release the thing and accept the bugs it has, and hope you can fix some of them later. If you held it indefinitely, until it is all fixed, it would never be released. Deadlines do have to be met.
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Case in point Star Citizen.
 
Brent_Justice said:
No, no software is perfect, at some point you have to make a decision to release the thing and accept the bugs it has, and hope you can fix some of them later. If you held it indefinitely, until it is all fixed, it would never be released. Deadlines do have to be met.
Click to expand...

They release the game because they are "tired", but they basically have to continue at the same pace currently to cranck out patches, they could have delayd the game a couple weeks to fix the most glaring bugs they fixed now in the same time frame, only the reception of the game would be a lot better.
 
Grimlakin said:
Case in point Star Citizen.
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They don't even want to release, they are comfortable with the perpetual alpha situation while the income from sold jpgs outweigh their operating costs. When that's no longer the case assuming that ever happens they'll just put out a "final" version that still will be a buggy mess.
 
Denpepe said:
They release the game because they are "tired", but they basically have to continue at the same pace currently to cranck out patches, they could have delayd the game a couple weeks to fix the most glaring bugs they fixed now in the same time frame, only the reception of the game would be a lot better.
Click to expand...
No, they hit the pause sleep for a few days then start on fixing the bugs at a regular non-crunch pace. Pushing the deadline forward is not always an option.

Why don't they set a release date that is comfortable to begin with? Because no matter how much time you allow for this type of project you'll always end up scrambling in the last few weeks / months depending on the scale. The more you keep digging the more skeletons you find, at some point you just have to stop looking for them and hope nobody else digs that deep.

Yeah, I'm talking from experience, even though I didn't deliver videogames, but different projects, but the work culture and crunch is very similar in my line of work to game development.
 
I don't get the reasoning for people thinking that just because a game launches, they are obligated to purchase it immediately or play it immediately.

You can always practice a self-imposed delay, and just not buy the game for several weeks, or months. Or, you can buy it, and wait to play it later.

If you truly feel, and are not happy with bugs at launch, then just wait? /shrug

I still haven't played Cyberpunk 2077 all the way through yet. But I tell you what, my gameplay experience playing it now, will sure be a heck of a lot better than it would have been at launch day, so now I can experience it in all its patched glory, later on. I have no problem waiting to play games. Case in point, Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition on PC was released this past March, but I am only now (for the last 2 months), been playing the game, and get to experience it with all the patches that came out after launch.
 
What I don't get is why do people think there is a right and a wrong choice on when to play a game. Everyone is free to choose.

I played Cyberpunk 2077 when it launched and I don't regret it. Someone else deciding to wait however long did not bother me, unless they were trying to convince me I did something wrong and their way is the right way. Which was quite a few people actually. Like they were seeking validation for their choice by arguing with those who choose a different approach.
 
MadMummy76 said:
What I don't get is why do people think there is a right and a wrong choice on when to play a game. Everyone is free to choose.

I played Cyberpunk 2077 when it launched and I don't regret it. Someone else deciding to wait however long did not bother me, unless they were trying to convince me I did something wrong and their way is the right way. Which was quite a few people actually. Like they were seeking validation for their choice by arguing with those who choose a different approach.
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I think the point is that if your concern is that games need patching you can simply not.play wje the game drops and wait for a couple major patches. Not that it is wrong to do one or the other.
 
Well I guess its about it being a for profit product and all that, one still expects a working product , perhaps even a brilliant one. Sure reality is consistently otherwise, so theres that. Sure complicated things is complicated, I do wonder how much time is wasted in meeting and feelings culture though. What kind of game would come out of a culture of 40 plus aged lets get this done group I wonder.
 
Uvilla said:
Well I guess its about it being a for profit product and all that, one still expects a working product , perhaps even a brilliant one. Sure reality is consistently otherwise, so theres that. Sure complicated things is complicated, I do wonder how much time is wasted in meeting and feelings culture though. What kind of game would come out of a culture of 40 plus aged lets get this done group I wonder.
Click to expand...
That team wouldn't get picked to write a game. They are too busy making enterprise software that makes a game.making a hundred million or single billion seem.cheap. ;)
 
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