Bethesda has finally patched a game-crippling bug on the PS3 version of Skyrim, and is now admitting it knew about the glitch from day one.
In fact, it knew about the glitch even before the game hit store shelves. But we all know in these days of downloadable game patches, developers have become much more willing to release a game they know has problems because they know they’ll be able to issue a patch down the road.
There used to be a much stricter onus on publishers to push out games that were as flaw-free as possible, especially on game consoles where, before the PS3 and Xbox 360, there was no way to update games that people had already purchased.
Today’s climate is much more different, and Bethesda’s Todd Howard has admitted, “The way our dynamic stuff and our scripting works, it’s obvious it gets in situations where it taxes the PS3.” The team knew there could be issues with that version of the game, even though “we felt we had a lot of it under control,” he said.
The recently released patch seems to have fixed a lot of the problems, which Howard says is not actually related to the size of PS3 save files despite many news reports to that effect.
However, “There are still going to be some people who have to come back to us and say, ‘OK, my situation is this,” Howard admitted. He said they will continue to work with players on a one-to-one basis if there are continued problems.
For the most part, though, it seems to be under control. Skyrim was the second-highest-grossing video game of 2011, behind only the latest Call of Duty game.
