‘Publishers are still not doing enough to end buggy games’

Major games publishers have not learnt their lesson from the slew of broken games released at the end of last year.

That’s according to QA and localisation experts who say that most games firms have not changed their approach to bug testing.

Titles such as Assassin’s Creed Unity, DriveClub, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Battlefield 4 have all struggled in recent years with bugs, connection issues and glitches. And the firms tasked with preventing these problems say publishers are still not devoting enough time or money to QA.

If anything, it’s gotten worse,” said Universally Speaking director Loreto Sanz Fueyo. Quality at the moment is determined by time and resources, including money. Very few developers seem to want to release the perfect product, especially not if it means delaying launch.

This will naturally have its consequences and we are likely to see again publishers, developers and games that will become ‘famous’ amongst the users for their sloppy work and cavalier attitude towards quality.”

Keywords localisation and QA director Thomas Barth added: QA and localisation is more visible in the development process and there are studios allocating more time for them. But in general not much has changed from my point of view, despite the internet being very vocal around those issues at the end of last year.”