CD Projekt: Badly polished games scare the market

The studio behind hotly anticipated next-gen title The Witcher III has delayed the game until next summer in light of recent outrage surrounding buggy and broken releases.

The game was originally due for release in February, but has been pushed back to May so the team has time to remove ‘small errors’, with CD Projekt Red admitting it ‘set the release date too hastily’, according to Eurogamer.

"Gamers took our decision very well," said Adam Kicinski, a member of the developer’s Board. "[The] market is afraid of badly polished games on next-gen platforms."

And that fear is understandable given the consumer upset that followed the releases of Assassin’s Creed Unity, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Driveclub, all of which launched with multiple bugs and other issues that hindered players or, on occasion, rendered the games unplayable.

Develop spoke to QA experts and developers about the pressures that studios face when it comes to ensuring final builds are as close to flawless as possible without missing a launch date.

In the case of the The Witcher III, Kicinski assured that the team only needs to remove ‘small errors’ that have come about because of the game’s size.

"We didn’t assume it will be this big," he explained. "Only after putting all the pieces together it turned out it’s bigger than the first two put together. Let remind you: it’s open and not linear. We are just learning how to play it and we have to catch the little pieces. We know what to do, we just have to do it. We don’t want to release the game with bugs that undermine the gameplay."