And to those complaining about inadequate testing - the last time i saw an approximate number for hardware combinations in the Windows world - it was north of 1 trillion. You can't test every single combination of hardware, it's just not feasible. And you can't tell that the keyboard software installed for your Corsair Keyboard has a weird software interaction for the Mpuse driver for your Razr mouse - but only when you have a specific model of NVidia Graphics card running a specific version of the software. It's just not possible. I know there are people out there who aren't having issues playing - I'm one of them. But please be patient and let them fix the problems without hassling them further.
I once wrote a small program for flagging the status of about 10,000 employees. It was only about 800 lines of code. Very small for what it was. Upper management wanted it out faster than I could get it out. I tested it thoroughly even though they whined about the extra couple of days. The first day it was used one person was flagged for termination and... so were all 9,999 other employees in the company. It turned out I had put a random "m" in a string that shouldn't have been there. It was a typo. And I honestly never experienced it during testing.
Any time a big piece of software is released management is pushing for it to come out too soon. And they usually get their way (especially if that software is a video game and they need money fast). They usually know about many of the bugs going in to the release ahead of time. And then there are always unforeseen bugs. Either that is exactly what happened here or the coders are just abnormally incompetent. Genuinely, there isn't any other reasonable conclusion to draw. (And I doubt it is the latter.)
I don't blame the coders. No code is ever perfect. That's why you test it. But when something is this buggy, it makes me shake my head because I do know exactly how it happens. And I know what the programmers have to put up with. When people ask my why I quit programming after 11 years and became a truck driver, I tell them these kinds of stories (also I make better money and am way more relaxed now).
That said, I am also a gamer. And as a gamer, I believe gamers (in general) are too lenient with regards to the wrong type of software. I am extremely forgiving of bugs, glitches and exploits in video games. Video games are massive and complex works of art. And bugs are rarely game-ending. I would never come here and make more than a polite comment about a game bug. And your comment about the technical difficulty pertains to video games well, though not to portal software.
Portal software is different. It should be critiqued harshly when it is done poorly or it will continue to be done more and more poorly more and more often. Feedback is how humans learn to change their behavior. And after spending over $300 last week for software I can no longer use, you can guess what changes I expect.
In my opinion, part of the problem with video game software firms, is that they push out a lot of complex games and those games often have bugs even with extensive testing. And that's okay because the alternative is often bankruptcy. But no other type of software firm would expect to walk away with their reputation intact after releasing a piece of software in this shape. (Or, as with Steam, a program that melted processors.) This doesn't only happen in the video game world (I'm looking at you Beoing) but only video game devs expect to get away with it. Why? Because gamers continue to give them their money no matter how poorly they are treated and defend them even when they know they screwed up because they like their games.
I am not telling anybody else what to think or say. I feel bad for whoever was working on the launcher (artists, coders, designers). I really do. It's always a big dissapointment when a launch goes poorly. But their bosses aren't going to give two poops unless somebody starts calling them out when they do a bad job. And let's be honest, this was a not a good release. As customers, we shouldn't be mean but we should tell them we don't appreciate it.
They're adults, they can take it.
). Thanks once again for your reply. Best wishes.
