Betas are Not the Same as Demos

I'm sure you'll forgive me for laughing at those complaining about the bugs in the Fallout 76 beta release. But honestly, it's like paying for half-cooked burger and complaining that you got botulism.

I just read a very recent article about a game-breaking bug showing up in the same beta that automatically re-downloads the entire 50 gigs. Because that's exactly what you paid for, waiting for shit to download! I don't honestly know why game developers do mass market beta releases, surely you should be painstakingly quality assurance testing. Oh, wait. That's what this is. You want to save the amount of money that you would spend paying QA testers and just have us slobbering pigs doing the work for free. No, in fact, we'd have to PAY YOU to do the quality testing by pre-ordering.

I love you Bethesda, but my love has its limits. There's been way too many times in which you have throttled me for spare change and spent your valuable work hours getting day drunk, coming home, and puking on my couch. I refuse to enable you anymore. You do your own goddamn quality testing, you think I'm made of money?

What is this constantly repeating pattern of "fans bitching about the beta release," "fans bitching about the alpha release," and then "fans bitching that you didn't add enough light reflections on Master Chief's helmet." Games are being ruined by beta testing if I'm honest, because players tend to get first impressions of a game from the first time they play it. The improvements of the first day launch are not going to resonate so heavily with them. And we know that beta-testing isn't working because there are still huge launch day patches. I don't know what you think a "finished game" is, game devs, but you don't paint a house and leave one room as bare drywall and call the house "finished."

We Happy Few was a game in its beta stage for over a year! I do not play one game for a year. I usually take three or four days, sometimes not consecutive, to beat a game. If I like the game well enough, I play it again to luxuriate in its lore and water physics. I'm not going to stay invested in one game for years, watching it develop, like I'm its mother. I only stay invested in franchises and lore of finished games and I can't exactly get into the story of a game that's only halfway done. I'll wait a week at the most for a drama series to release a new episode, but with games, it'd better be all there, or it's not getting my money.

Maybe I'm petty or maybe I'm jaded. Remember the good old days of demo disks, when the games were actually done and the devs just had to iron out things for the full release? Those were the days. I'd sit at my grandmothers playing the demo version of Tomb Raider 2, just swimming in the cave waters, not getting anywhere. Ah, memories. Now you'll be hard pressed to get demos for anything, because demos will be at least 5 GB. Betas are not demos, however. Demos imply that the final game is going to be like this. Betas are for testing purposes and ironing out the bugs. I don't want to pay $60 to $70 to pre-order just to encounter glitches. For instance, would you pay for half a car under the conditions that there won't be brakes, airbags, or air conditioning?! NO!! Because that'd be really dangerous! You heard it here first, reader, game betas are as dangerous as automobile accidents! Save a friend's life! If you hear him planning to pre-order a game, kick him in the face, and sit on him until you can bully some sense into him.