I used to get excited for game releases. Like, genuinely excited. The kind of counting-down-the-days, checking-every-leak, obsessing-over-trailers excitement that made midnight launches feel like Christmas Eve. But at some point, the hype started feeling… pointless. Because now, instead of looking forward to playing a game, I spend launch week asking the same depressing question:
“Is it actually playable, or should I wait six months?”
Because let’s be real—AAA gaming has become a glorified early access scam.
Cyberpunk 2077. Battlefield 2042. Redfall. The Day Before. Gollum. Hell, even Star Wars Jedi: Survivor—a single-player game—launched as a technical disaster.
And we all know the pattern:
- Game drops in an unplayable state.
- Developers apologize.
- “We’re listening to feedback.”
- “A major patch is coming soon!”
- Six months later, the game is actually what it should have been at launch.
And for some reason, we keep putting up with it.
I Should Have Learned My Lesson With Cyberpunk—But I Didn’t
Cyberpunk 2077 was my personal breaking point. I pre-ordered it. I bought into the hype. I even ignored the weird delays because, you know, CD Projekt Red made The Witcher 3—how bad could it be?
Then launch day came.
It was bad.
Glitches. Broken AI. Crashes every 15 minutes. NPCs phasing through the floor like haunted marionettes. It didn’t even feel finished—it felt like someone had stitched together half a game and shoved it out the door while screaming “DAY ONE PATCH WILL FIX IT.”
I refunded it, re-bought it a year later when it was actually playable, and realized something:
This is just how AAA games work now.
They don’t launch finished. They launch as time bombs, with studios praying that we’ll tolerate the bugs long enough for them to fix their mess post-launch.
And it’s not just CD Projekt Red. It’s everyone.
Why Do Games Keep Launching Broken? Follow the Money.
The obvious excuse is “games are getting more complicated.” And yeah, sure—modern games are massive, open-world, photorealistic beasts running on hardware that should probably be a little stronger than a mid-range PC from 2013.
But that’s not the real reason.
The real reason games launch unfinished is corporate greed and investor pressure.
- Publishers set insane release deadlines to hit quarterly earnings.
- Studios are forced to crunch just to get something out the door, even if it’s not ready.
- Pre-orders and early access editions ensure they get paid before you even realize the game is broken.
- And once the game is out? They already have your money—so fixing it becomes a low-priority, long-term problem.
Think about it: if games were delayed until they were actually finished, executives wouldn’t be able to report record sales every year. And investors would lose their minds.
So instead, they ship half-finished games and let post-launch patches do the work that should’ve been done before release.
And the worst part? It works.
We’ve Trained Them to Treat Us Like Beta Testers
I say “they” a lot, like it’s some kind of corporate conspiracy, but let’s be honest—we did this to ourselves.
- We pre-order games we’ve never played.
- We buy expensive deluxe editions for “early access” (aka, paying extra to be a beta tester).
- We defend broken launches by saying “it’ll be fixed later.”
And publishers count on this.
They know that if they delay a game to polish it, investors will get mad. But if they release it broken? We’ll still buy it anyway.
Hell, even I’ve done it.
I told myself I wouldn’t buy Starfield at launch. I told myself I’d wait for the inevitable patches. I still bought it.
Was it fun? Yeah. Was it polished? Hell no. But by then, it didn’t matter. Bethesda already had my money.
And as long as people like me keep giving them money before a game is actually finished, nothing will ever change.
So What’s the Solution?
Honestly? There isn’t one—at least, not as long as the current system keeps making companies money.
But if we actually want things to change, here’s what needs to happen:
- Stop pre-ordering games.
- Wait for reviews before buying.
- Stop defending broken launches like they’re just “part of modern gaming.”
Because right now, there’s no reason for publishers to stop doing this. They get all the benefits of early sales, all the money from pre-orders, and zero real consequences when a game launches in an unfinished state.
They don’t care if a game is good at launch. They care if it sells at launch.
And as long as we keep giving them money up front? They’ll keep releasing half-finished games, apologizing, and promising to do better—until the next one.