There’s still plenty of bugs to be ironed out
As gamers seem to be more and more willing to play games in an unfinished state, it feels surprising to me when a developer decides to delay an update because of bugs. Of course unfinished games are buggy — we expect that — but at least Chris Roberts has explained the delay in adding the Arena Commander mode to Star Citizen. Apparently there’s still some pesky bugs that really need fixed before the update is playable for all.
“Our biggest issue today is a newly developed DirectX crash,” Chris explains, “which breaks the single player Vanduul Swarm mode every backer will be given access to.”
That sounds bad and the other major bug listed is a problem with feedback that results in losing sync with the multiplayer game. The Arena Commander update is the big ship to ship combat mode that fans have been clamoring for so there’s understandably going to be a few unhappy pilots who will now have to wait a few more days.
It’s refreshing for a developers to come out and say “hey, we’re delaying this because it’s still not quite right and here’s exactly what we’re trying to fix” and I’ll applaud the team for being open about the delay. As Chris points out in his update, a publisher would probably push for the update to be released but since Star Citizen is crowdfunded, the team doesn’t have that pressure.
Arena Commander V.8 Delay [Roberts Space Industries]
