Experts Explain Why So Many Games Are Launching Broken on PC

ign.com:

PC releases are under scrutiny as of late. When compared to their console counterparts, PC games more frequently experience anything from immense graphical glitches to game breaking bugs regardless of an individual’s specific build. And since many high-end rigs cost upwards of thousands of dollars, questions often arise as to why so many titles launch in unplayable states.

Games like The Last of Us Part 1 Remake, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Redfall, and even Final Fantasy 7 Remake recently suffered from ports that required extensive post-launch patches to fix. Speaking with IGN, three experts familiar with porting games to PC discuss the challenges of porting, the complexities behind changing control methods, and how studios can work to potentially eliminate rough launches.

To the average player, it may be confusing when a PC game with a simultaneous release on consoles fails to function. If the price is the same and the overall content of the game is identical, regardless of platform, why are there such stark differences with performance? Senior staff writer and video producer for Digital Foundry John Linneman says that one of the primary problems with bugs may be PC gaming’s biggest selling point – customizable systems.

“One of the biggest hurdles is the variety of hardware configurations available - consoles are fixed platforms, but PCs are wide open,” Linneman said. “Any user can have a PC built from a variety of parts running a different operating system with different drivers. For games that push the visual envelope, this can put a lot of stress on the hardware, resulting in sub-par performance for some users. There are only so many permutations a developer can test while building their game, so it’s very likely that