Bethesda: developing for PC is "a headache"

By Robert Purchese Published 10 November, 2011

Hines talks drivers, hardware, piracy.

Developing games for PC is "a headache", Bethesda has said. There are so many hardware configurations and drivers to consider that even the most robust game can come undone at the performance-seams.

"From a technical standpoint, yes, the PC is a headache," Hines told Joystiq. "It just is - a million different possibilities of hardware, drivers, etc.

"As you saw with Rage, all it takes is some bad video card drivers and years of hard work comes off as 'buggy', when in fact it's a really solid, stable game."

The other problem when developing for PC, Hines said, is piracy.

"Unless you decide not to make your games available for PC, it's a problem, and you have to deal with it," Hines remarked.

Bethesda will deal with it not by using "Draconian measures", but by handing extra power to the PC audience.

"We do the best we can to protect it without resorting to Draconian measures," Hines went on, "and we continue to enthusiastically support our PC fans with things like the Creation Kit and the ability to create and add unlimited amounts of mods and content to your existing PC game."

Skyrim's predecessors, Oblivion and Morrowind, were both heavily modified by the PC crowd.

The core experience of Skyrim will be "the same on all platforms". Owners of expensive gaming PCs will be able to tweak graphics for better performance, but Skyrim will remain, for the moment, a predominantly DirectX 9 game.

Whether Bethesda will release full DirectX 11 support plus associated texture packs remains to be seen.

The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind (2002) looks radically different today, thanks to modders.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (86) Latest comment 6 months ago

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  • OnlyMe #1 7 months ago

    Bethesda stops supporting PC incoming.

  • mowgli #2 7 months ago

    I do love the troll potential in this.

  • Thunderbolt #3 7 months ago

    Its not just a headache for developers but gamers as well. Plus pretty expensive hobby to keep up to date

  • markyHD #4 7 months ago

    Really the video card manufacturers should stop all this BF3 beta driver, Rage beta driver bullshit and just release solid all round drivers. I understand they feel obliged to when the PC crowd are posting fraps scores all over the show, but surely releasing a driver that only works well with one game is nuts!

    As he says, Rage suffered as a result, and was classed as buggy at launch.

    *Edit* To clarify, it's because everyone had the special performance bf3 drivers installed which were released to improve the open multiplayer beta's performance. However when they tried to play rage, the drivers completely messed it up.
    Edited by markyHD at 10/11/11 @ 09:49

  • jeeweej #5 7 months ago

    He speak the truth when it comes to all the possible hardware combinations and external factors (drivers etc) that make creating PC games a lot harder..
    But on the other side: generally speaking a PC has much more power than a console which can be used.

    So i guess what he's saying is:
    Programming for consoles - easy mode
    Programming for PC - hard mode

    Also glad to hear they'll once again make this a modding friendly game! :)

  • madgerald Verified Studio Head of PR & Marketing, Colossal Games LTD #6 7 months ago

    You could always develop for Mac - not so many hardware configurations.

    /justsaying

  • Ceelion #7 7 months ago

    Times have quite blatantly changed. The bigger, 'easier' to develop for market, is obviously in consoles. It's a shame that the PC owner has become second fiddle, but I'm not using that as an excuse, as some people do, to condone piracy.

    I hope developers who create PC versions of their games realise that there are still legitimate purchasers out there, and that we're not a dying market, no matter how many drivers they may have to optimise their game for.

  • bad09 #8 7 months ago

    Industry bod from big company moaning about PC? There's a shock.

    Why do the "big" players on PC constantly make you (the customer) feel like they are doing YOU a favour selling games on PC by constantly moaning about it when indies are the ones who just get on making a good game, selling it and looking after customers?

    More and more I'm starting to think big publishers who are so focused on the consoles don't belong on PC anymore. Someone said to me a while ago on the Onlive thread they were worried big publishers would only release on that eventually, there was a moment of clarity when I replied "you know what I honestly would notice if some of them went off to rent streams".

  • Yodith #9 7 months ago

    Ah, the old PC piracy line gets trotted out again. Let me stop you there Bethesda. Skyrim has been available from various murky parts of the Internet for a week or more - but it's the CONSOLE version that was leaked.

    I'm pleased that Bethesda haven't resorted to punitive DRM like Ubisoft but it really is time that somebody spoke up and set the record straight about piracy. Most major multiplatform titles released this year have leaked on to torrent sites ahead of release and every time it has been the console version. I'm not denying for a second that there is a serious problem with piracy on PC but I wish publishers would stop pretending it's a platform-exclusive problem.

  • RodHull #10 7 months ago

    I'm sure it's a right royal pain to develop for such a nebulous platform, and Microsoft had the right sentiment with the Games for Windows branding. Such a shame they gave up on non-Live enabled initiatives so swiftly.
    Edited by RodHull at 10/11/11 @ 09:58

  • Daeltaja #11 7 months ago

    PC hardware manufacturers should really consider consolidating drivers and strive to streamline the whole process, for both developers and end-users. At the end of the day, everyone wins.

  • tossetaz #12 7 months ago

    @jeeweej It's not so much that programming for consoles is easy mode, it's just much more predictable since everyone have the same hardware and drivers.

    In fact programming for a PC is probably easier since the developer can expect more powerful hardware which means that the amount of optimization you need to do is less than on consoles. But it gets difficult with the unpredictability of the various combinations of hardware and drivers which makes quality-assurance on PCs that much harder.

  • Grayvern #13 7 months ago

    Thing is these quotes are from a pretty piss poor interview that is maybe 30% Howard and focuses too much on sports games.

    As to the quotes on Eurogamer there's nothing gained by stating the problems of working on pc you can only embrace the audience as CD project Red has done or GSC gameworld.

    That and the only bug I remember from Oblivion that wasn't just bad gamebyro and/or across all platforms was the frameskipping nvidia bug.

    And In Rage's case it seemed as If they hadn't bothered to test Rage on a number of PC's they then subsequently broke player fixes that worked better than their own patch.
    Edited by Grayvern at 10/11/11 @ 10:09

  • GuyNoir #14 7 months ago

    Diddums. Just go console then. Fairly sure the world won't stop spinning and nature abhors a PC shaped vacuum.


    Cool -5 :-). Obviously missing the point. If they don't want to code for PC because it's too difficult/annoying - fine. Other people will take up the mantle in place of them. Just seems a bit churlish to rag on the platform which made them the money they use to give us the newer products.
    Edited by GuyNoir at 10/11/11 @ 13:08

  • thesonglessbird #15 7 months ago

    Do what DICE did: make a good game, PC first and scale it back for consoles so it still looks pretty great.

    Make a good PC game with no bugs and people are far more likely to buy it that pirate it. I've been a dirty pirate on a number of occasions because I've fancied playing a game but lazy/incompetent devs can't be bothered making a proper PC version. Not that it's going to stop piracy but it's surely going to help a bit. Respect us (PC gamers) and we'll respect you!

  • Stardusted #16 7 months ago

    Dear Bethesda,

    Your beloved (and pre-ordered by many, including me) and as I want to believe awesome game, Skyrim, one of the many in TES series, a series well loved and cherished among pc gamers, has been running circles around torrent and warez sites since it was leaked.

    That would be more than a week's time.

    The version was xbox360 version by the way. You know, the console.

    Here's to hoping pc piracy won't be such a problem for you in the future, your faithful customer, Chris.

    PS : The fact that we love your games, isn't supposed to make us love your stupid statements.

  • Darren #17 7 months ago

    Even single player console games get patches (Oblivion had several on the Xbox 360 if I remember correctly) and they have fixed hardware so it isn't surprising that the PC with its near infinite combinations of hardware/software is seeing a rising number of post-release patches. This is nothing new anyway on the PC but as games get more and more complex then so the likelihood of needing patches increases. I can understand that, open world games like Skyrim must be notoriously difficult to test when the player is free to play it however they like, but it does get annoying when I have to wait weeks post-release to be able to play the game I've just bought.

    Hopefully, this won't be the case with Skyrim as from memory I didn't have any problems with Oblivion on the PC either (it certainly didn't crash like the original Xbox 360 version used to do on a regular basis during the loading screens on my launch model!) and the official and especially the unofficial patches only improved game stability further.

  • Murton #18 7 months ago

    Hmmm, PC piracy is a problem, but then so is 360 piracy. There have been torrents for Skyrim on 360 for a week now.


    Let's look at this truthfully. The shoddy performance of Bethesda titles on all platforms stems from using a piss poor engine that is poorly optimised for modern tech. If Bethesda could put just a fraction of the energy that goes into PR into build quality instead there'd be no need for statements like this at all as both Bethesda and consumer can be confident of getting a game that works from first inserting the disc to 100% completion.

  • Pickster #19 7 months ago

    I hope they stick with their previous policy and ship the game without protection as they did with Oblivion.

    You make a good game and they (we) will buy.

  • Gusdor #20 7 months ago

    @bad09 Majority of indie games do nothing to push the performance envelope, that is where graphics drivers will fall down the most. PC is easy to write a small app for. Less hoops to jump through, but ironing it out for high performance? Nightmare.

  • arcam #21 7 months ago

    You cannot blame them for keeping quiet about console leaks. Back in the day they used to keep quiet about PC piracy too, with the idea that the less you talk about it, the fewer people there will be that know it is available. To be fair, that was probably a good idea, and it's probably still a good idea now.

  • munki83 #22 7 months ago

    Playing Behtesda games on any format is a headache. Love the games but they tend to be buggy messes and poorly animated.

  • bikmate #23 7 months ago

    Fair point, because pirating on the Xbox360 is way harder than on the PC.

    /sarcasm

  • arqueturus #24 7 months ago

    @Pickster It's Steamworks, so DRM is right there.

  • obscured021 #25 7 months ago

    The 360 has just as much pirates as the pc, and you can still connect your hacked xbox to live with out getting banned, using one of many free proxy's setup for just that.

    so why signal out the pc?

  • Buran #26 7 months ago

    Bad sales in Rage aren't linked to technical problems -that anyway must concern Carmack and not the legit purchaser- but due falling short of expectations with a game provided from the creators of the fps genre.

  • Darren #27 7 months ago

    @Grayvern - RAGE ran perfectly on my PC from the off and has never once crashed. The patch added additional graphics options though that were welcome but I still got flawless performance (constant 60 fps that never once dips).

    Yes, you can argue that I'm one of the lucky ones but the problems with that game stem mostly from drivers IMO, especially on the AMD side for which they released three updates to improve stability. I don't think the problems were anywhere near as problematic on the NVIDIA side (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong though) but then their OpenGL support has always been superior in my experience from using cards from both manufacturers over the years.

    AMD have still not fixed the water rendering bug in the OpenGL-based Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath by the way, which has been working perfectly on my own GTX 580 since its release last year, and Grand Theft Auto IV (granted this uses Direct3D) still has a water rendering bug (ripples gradually subside to utter stillness) which Rockstar reported to AMD but they never bothered fixing. I had that very issue when I had my HD 5870 cards but haven't seen it since I switched to a GTX 580.

  • Pickster #28 7 months ago

    @arqueturus

    As long as there isn't more DRM layerd on top, thats fine by me.

  • SpartanGR #29 7 months ago

    Bullshit

    Dear Bethesda when PC was the centre of the world you had no problem then right? Easy Console development has spoiled you i can understand that, but cut the crap right? you have become lazy.

  • bad09 #30 7 months ago

    @Gusdor

    Well that's true for sure but given the hoards of staff and bags of money these big players have it must even out a bit!

    Maybe if they focused a bit more on the PC like DICE or Capcom things wouldn't be such a headache, like thesonglessbird says make your game for the PC and then port it for consoles not the other way around. I would ask this guy how many of his team are actually working on the PC version before talking of headaches with PC, I'm not saying it is the case here but as an example I remember reading BLOPS had about 40 desks of people working on the game and only one or two were actually working on porting a PC version, Reflections even publically admitted their PC version of Driver was a quick port done only after they had finished the console versions. Sure thy are pushing performance and that is hugely complicated but we are an afterthought for a great deal of the big players so it's really hard to sympathise when one says "Oh PC is so hard to make games for".

    Also this unhealthy obsession they all have with PC piracy is getting out of hand with the big players, piracy is literally rammed down our throats these days to the the point that legitmate customers feel the the wrath of big publishers with DRMs, late games, sloppy ports or no game at all sometimes. I have yet to see an indie use piracy as an excuse to do something unsavoury to the customers.

    I just think some of them publically moan about PC so much maybe some of them should just move on, like I said I wouldn't miss a few of them and it would clearly make some of them happier.

  • Anciegher #31 7 months ago

    I see them dropping PC support in the future. This greatly saddens me since I'm predominately buying my games on PC now adays :(

  • IronCladChicken #32 7 months ago

    That would explain why there were absolutely no bugs on the console releases of Oblivion & Fallout.

  • Matfink #33 7 months ago

    That headache made you.

  • HeNiCiDe1988 #34 7 months ago

    lool troll potential, but I thought Bethesda came from a PC background so surely they would be use to it? I would of thought they would be in contact with the right companies to make sure it didnt bug up.

    Well dont forget RAGE was a really thin game and weak writing not just technical misteps.

    But catering for the PC i think does have some problems with the consoles, due to the gaps in technical power. Battlefield 3 looks great but is really buggy on consoles, which is kinda bad practice for game development if your having people spend money on console versions and pc gamers should stop feeling so victimized.

    I came from a pc gaming but I dont feel all depressed and victimized about lack of focus on pcs for games.

  • FogHeart #35 7 months ago

    Is your card AMD or NVidia....

    Remember when your graphics card could have been one of half a dozen other types?

  • Batfink #36 7 months ago

    This quote worries me.
    We have a team of people who are singularly focused on doing a certain type of game really well," he said. "They came up with a tool system that allows them to do those kinds of games, they have a great game director in Todd Howard who knows when and where to make the big bets, and they have an enormous amount of talent. I think the reason that, perhaps, others fail is that they simply haven't been doing it for as long as we have, the way we have. You learn a lot from experience.
    Skyrim is built on the same fundamental engine as Morrowind. People have already rummaged around in the game data and it's packed in the same format as the last two games. It has some rather fundamental limitations that Bethesda are going to bump up against when it comes to developing TES 6 for the next generation of machines. In 2015, are we really still going to accept buildings with no windows, that require a loading screen to go in and out of? Characters with no physics/reaction based animation?

    I'm worried that "doing it as long as we have" means that they can't do it any other way. Prove me wrong, Bethesda - start doing the R&D now.

  • artibeus #37 7 months ago

    "The other problem when developing for PC, Hines said, is piracy."

    Because there's no piracy on consoles..

  • Ryboy #38 7 months ago

    10/10

  • MattEdWithCheese #39 7 months ago

  • bladdard #40 7 months ago

    Can't believe some of the negs people are getting for saying the PC platform is a pain in the neck. I still game on my PC and it's the only choice for shooters IMO but I'm sick to death of applying patches, tweaking configuration, rolling back driver versions and the general fucking around required to get many PC games running. The PC is and always will be a geeky hobbyist platform until they get games working out of the box.

  • arcam #41 7 months ago

    @Batfink start doing the R&D now.

    You can be sure Bethesda are already working an updated engine for the next console generation, and probably have been for a while.

    They have built Skyrim for the exact same hardware that they built Oblivion for, so huge leaps forward are not only difficult, but a bit pointless when they will have to rewrite large portions for the next gen anyway.

    Might as well squeeze all you can out of this one and save the big engine changes for when you have big hardware changes to match.

  • Whizzo #42 7 months ago

    So when people are inevitably reporting bugs and issues with the console versions of Skyrim that'll be because of something other than Bethesda's QA department not finding them, sunspots perhaps?

  • 5h1nj1 #43 7 months ago

    Ok, I'm officially scared now. This totally sounds like he's preparing some ground for a very buggy PC release of Skyrim. :(

  • Seafort #44 7 months ago

    Like alot of the big developers they've just got complacent and lazy developing for consoles first then trying to develop for machines with 10 times more power.

    They have to pass the buck and blame something I guess and it seems pc gaming is an easy target these days with no company standing up for it apart from Valve and maybe Blizzard.

    Its quite sad as most of the developers complaining about pc gaming now actually started developing on PC and made their name on the platform but over time they've forgotten how to develop for a more powerful system and would rather play it safe on consoles.

  • Eisenstein #45 7 months ago

    @5h1nj1: I fully expect buggy when I read Bethesda. Still pre-ordered it, despite being burnt multiple times. What can I say, I'm a masochist.

  • AndyBeans #46 7 months ago

    "Bethesda make perfect, bug-free games; all problems are caused by manufacturers releasing imperfect, bugged-out hardware; please buy Skyrim and direct all inquiries to the manufacturer of your crappy hardware, because as usual we're never going to accept any responsibility or do anything to resolve any issues."

  • Machetazo #47 7 months ago

    Could more patching, more iteratively, be a result of owners of games getting on to the forums, getting on their social media accounts and being able to bring the concerns and problems they've encountered directly to the people that worked on it, often?

  • guernican #48 7 months ago

    @jeeweej

    I guess when they're talking about the huge development cycle of a game like this, consoles allow them much better economies of scale. It's a closed system, after all.

    Business concerns as well as creativity ones, which should surprise none of us.

  • Ferral #49 7 months ago

    "predominantly DirectX 9 game"

    Thats definately not a good sign for PC gamers, makes you wonder what tech they have created this on, or is it a case of created on PS3 or 360 and then certain assets ported over to the PC.

    Wouldnt be surprised if the recommended specs on this are quite low (havnt actually looked, going to now though thinking about it).

    Actually, coming to think of it, DirectX is actually supposed to make things easier for developers. Its an industry standard and has been for a good few years, yeah there are quite a lot of exotic type PC builds and millions of different configurations, DX though makes things easier for them. Not forgetting that the 360 runs a variation of Windows CE (used on the Dreamcast also) and also uses DX.

    Granted I am getting this on the PC and do think it looks pretty damned good, got to wait till Christmas though as my wife doesnt know what else to get me this year! Really looking forward to it as I ploughed about 240 hours into Oblivion with the expansions and doing everything you possibly could in the game the year it was released.

    I hope you dont get a bit on the main quest like Oblivion where gates opened up outside every town and you had to systematically close each one to continue the main quest, got tedious pretty quickly, stopped playing for a few month due to that to take a break from it. I had done all the guilds and most the miscallaneous quests so I had to get it done to continue.
    Edited by Ferral at 10/11/11 @ 12:06

  • Dyason #50 7 months ago

    At the end of the day I suppose they have to make the call, will they recoup the costs of the pc version against pc sales? If this is yes then they can quit the whining and provide it. If no, then they have no business case and shouldn't do it.

    So it's harder to develop for. Well good you're keeping people in a job and advancing your own engine in the process. Chances are that it's 90% ready for the pc by the time you've developed it for consoles anyway.

    The final point is fan service. I know which one I'll buy, preferring better graphics and the ability to mod the game. If you don't want my money then stop whining and go develop purely for consoles. I've pre-ordered it, just like I did with bf3 and batman. I don't see those developers whining about piracy or hard development.

  • miiiguel #51 7 months ago

    I think most of you are fairly inteligent people, but why you keep on saying "it's easier to pirate on the 360"; "the leaked versions are on consoles", etc., when the issue is the copies sold on each platform, not the copies pirated. I think these duded couldn't care less when 1milion pirates if 3 milion buys.

  • bobbo #52 7 months ago

    I confess, I am a filthy pirate who downloads everything I can get my hands on, and generally do not feel any guilt about it especially with crap games and those with draconian DRM (aka UbiDRM). I have decided not to pirate Skyrim and have preordered it. I want Bethesda to support the PC platform and keep making great games, they are some of the very best I have ever played. They deserve my money. Other pirates out there, please buy it. It would be a shame to lose PC Fallout 4/ Elderscrolls series in the future.

  • arcam #53 7 months ago

    when the issue is the copies sold on each platform, not the copies pirated

    But he doesn't say low sales on PC are the problem, he says high levels of piracy are the problem.

    Obviously the two are linked, but I wish what you said were true - concentrate on what you can sell to customers, not what non-customers are managing to get for free. Thankfully Bethesda usually take a pretty good approach to this. For most people, Steam DRM is perfectly manageable and it's managed to get rid of pre-release piracy, which was a big problem.

  • spekkeh #54 7 months ago

    So many wonderful strawmen in this thread.

    Nobody said piracy is a PC exclusive problem, get over yourself.

  • spekkeh #55 7 months ago

    And nice to see miiiguel getting negged instantly. I think we should drop the pretense these are intelligent people.

  • uninspiredcup #56 7 months ago

    Another good way to reduce piracy is not to release un-finished buggy peices of shit with a console interface.

  • kickerconspiracy #57 7 months ago

    Driver issues didn't make Rage a mediocre game, the lack of content and poor story did that for it.

  • zuul #58 7 months ago

    Bad AMD drivers wasn't the only bug with Rage. The engine also doesn't like Core Duos. So if you have a Duo + AMD card, you're completely f*cked. Also great that still isn't officially fixed, but you have to rely on custom config files created by their forum users/customers.

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #59 7 months ago

    "Bethesda will deal with it not by using "Draconian measures", but by handing extra power to the PC audience."

    Right on! Trust that you have an honest audience that will buy your game and give you money. Stop getting hung-up on the cunts that don't.

  • orangpelupa #60 7 months ago

    "Unless you decide not to make your games available for PC, it's a problem, and you have to deal with it," Hines remarked.

    err... PS3 games is pirated, Xbox 360 games is pirated.
    even worse in Xbox 360, its normal that pirated games is leaked BEFORE the release date.

    as for PC games?
    as long as you use Steam, the piracy will be barred to the release day.

  • Jorendo #61 7 months ago

    Dear Bethesda, remember that game called Fallout New Vegas? It was bugged like hell....on the console. The pc version had far less bugs and less major ones. So please tell me what the real problem is? Also piracy..come on can we stop being naive turds? Seriously its pathetic how the game business makes PC gamers look like pirating bastards, its only a part of the pc gamers who pirate. We pc gamers get punished enough already with insane DRM programs and other anti piract tricks that only seem to hurt the legal buyer and not the pirates. And recent tests have proofed that the difference between pc and console gamers isn't that big in numbers. Ask nintendo about the many DS pirates. And between the xbox and pc the number of difference isn't even a million while pc is easyer to pirate yet the xbox gets pirated almost as much.

    And remember the chip for the PS2 so you could download games and play them. Stop blaming us PC gamers, we made you big goddammit show us some credits for that. Without the pc gamers oblivion and morrowind would have been titles of many years ago while the pc community kept supporting these games with mods. Keep making people buy your games cause of graphic improvement mods, total conversions, lots and lots of new stuff. Be thankfull and stop bitching about the pc, without the pc you would have been no where and stop for crying out loud saying that we pc gamers are the source of all evil with piracy. I pre orderd your fecking game okay? Invest in that game while i could pirate it for free. With me are many others who buy pc games why the feck should we feel guilty for being a pc gamer.

    PC gaming isn't dying, but it sure gets shot down by the game industry who only sees a part who aren't even the majority. Also start thinking for once why there is so much piracy. Maybe because pc gamers are tired of seeing crappy console ports comming to their system and these days once you buy a pc game its hard to bring it back to the store and say "sorry the game was not fun can i trade it in?" cause stores don't take it back unless its still wrapped in the plastic. And these days you hardly get pc demo's so allot of the pirates download games to see if its worth the purchase anyway with lack of demo's. And multiplayer demo's don't count with a singleplayer game cause you still don't know how it plays then.

  • TwinPeaksBob #62 7 months ago

    Yes, there's probably just as many games pirated for consoles. But there's a BIG difference compared to PC. And that is: most consoles are not chipped(or wathever you call it), so you can't play pirated games on them. So the problem is much smaller.
    Edited by TwinPeaksBob at 10/11/11 @ 12:51

  • v.profane #63 7 months ago

    @bladdard What on earth games are you playing? The only tweaking I have to do is in the graphics options, and even then I could just leave them at default and be fine. Don't use beta drivers if you don't want to roll back. Every single game I've bought on Steam worked "out of the box" except for FEAR which needed tweaking because it's old and Saints Row 2 because it's shit.

    "[PC piracy] it's a problem, and you have to deal with it". Firstly, why? If people don't want to pay for your game, they won't. Secondly, what are you doing to deal with console second-hand sales, rentals, swaps, and loans?

  • Inmediasress #64 7 months ago

    @bad09
    Yep agreed on that.

    @Yodith
    I'm not really into the whole piracy subculture I won't say hypicritical shit like I have never done it but honestly the only thing that would move me to buy an XBOX is that it has every major title sometimes a week before release leaked.

    The thing is where I live people only buy consoles for pirating games for the msot part.

  • Lunatic4ever #65 7 months ago

    had the chance to pirate the 360 version.yet I sit here with the pc version in front of me and I am unable to play beause of steam...I am loyal because this game and all the effort ...deserves it.

  • arcam #66 7 months ago

    I lost my VISA card. Was gonna wait until my replacement arrived, but instead I have convinced a friend to gift it to me on Steam.

    Does it unlock at midnight tonight?

  • Machiavellian #67 7 months ago

    Ah, the old PC piracy line gets trotted out again. Let me stop you there Bethesda. Skyrim has been available from various murky parts of the Internet for a week or more - but it's the CONSOLE version that was leaked.

    I'm pleased that Bethesda haven't resorted to punitive DRM like Ubisoft but it really is time that somebody spoke up and set the record straight about piracy. Most major multiplatform titles released this year have leaked on to torrent sites ahead of release and every time it has been the console version. I'm not denying for a second that there is a serious problem with piracy on PC but I wish publishers would stop pretending it's a platform-exclusive problem.

    The difference is that when the console version leaks, the actual game still sell where the developer and publisher make a decent amount of money. Look at some of the bigger leaks like GOW3 MW3 and BF3. The amount of actual downloads compared to sales are very small and easily ignored. On the PC it's the opposite. When you have downloads sometimes 3 to 4 times more than amount sold where there is a clear reason why the PC format is the one maligned the most.

  • danidrums #68 7 months ago

    Headache is what I get when I buy a pc game full priced and get shafted with mediocre gameplay and lousy ports.

  • jetsetwillie #69 7 months ago

    Post deleted at 09:51:29 12-12-2011

  • digitalash #70 7 months ago

    Draconian measures would be quite suitable for Skyrim, no?

  • ielisdave #71 7 months ago

    A studio who spend vast amounts of time creating a game with an engine that allows infinite combinations of things to happen in a completely random set of ways, moan about the infinite combinations of PC hardware and drivers currently out there.

    THE IRONY.

  • mahmoudsand #72 7 months ago

    Please, apologist of bethesda, explain this:

    why have the other thousdans PC developers been able to make games for PC without any problems?

    Why would it become a problem all of a sudden? Because bethesda talked out of it's ass again?

    Explain yourselves. Explain how all these developers managed to make perfectly stable games on PC.


    Go ahead, find excuses in the name of bethesda.

  • George-Roper #73 7 months ago

    @bladdard

    Can't believe some of the negs people are getting for saying the PC platform is a pain in the neck. I still game on my PC and it's the only choice for shooters IMO but I'm sick to death of applying patches, tweaking configuration, rolling back driver versions and the general fucking around required to get many PC games running. The PC is and always will be a geeky hobbyist platform until they get games working out of the box.

    Utter and total bullshit.

  • Ferral #74 7 months ago

    Love the way that some people that have honest opinions and concerns get negged for no apparent reason here. See it all the time, granted a lot of the time it happens on the face offs but on a topic like this what is the point.

    Obvious that some people cant actually have an adult discussion without toys being thrown out the pram by the kids that loiter.

    Go on, you know you want to, hit the neg button

  • aphex187 #75 7 months ago

    Sick to death of these devs using the piracy get out card as the reason why they can't be arsed to support the PC any more! Consoles have always had the blunt of the pirating and hacking crews for many years but you never hear devs whine on about that do you!? Just look at how many people had the ban hammer imposed by MS for flashing their Xbox's!

  • Inmediasress #76 7 months ago

    No wonder they say that.
    If the xbox version deserves a 10/10 score the PC version only deserves an 8/10.
    The whole PC version reeks of a console port(no offense)
    The controls are very clunky and as far as I can tell it's badly optimized since it looks pretty aged yet manages to slowdown my system.

  • xmifi #77 7 months ago

    Yes and there is no piracy on consoles. That's why skyrim copy has been leaked almost 2 weeks ago and gameplay videos where all over youtube.

  • Mister-Wario #78 7 months ago

    For me PC gaming has been something I've avoided because I don't particularly want to go through any potential wrangling to get a game to work properly. Generally this is more of a problem with old games, though. I may be alone in this but I like buying games secure in the knowledge I can still play them however many years down the line. Unfortunately, because PC hardware is so diverse and fast-moving compared to their sedentary console brethren, there's no guarantee my copies of Rayman, Worms or *sob* Lego Island will still work down the line, despite their simplicity. And, you know, I find that offputting. But perhaps I haven't looked into emulation enough.

    In any case, I encountered a similiar problem when I downloaded Broken Sword off GoG. For some reason, I can't simply click the shortcut on the desktop. I have to go into the programme files, locate the ScummVM emulator it uses and then open that to run the game. If I don't do this, the game crashes if I try to save it.

    Don't get me wrong, I think PCs are invaluable for gaming progress and you can do some amazing things on them. But that doesn't alter the fact their greatest strength is also their greatest curse.

  • AnotherIdiot #79 7 months ago

    Post deleted at 09:51:29 12-12-2011

  • Hastur #80 7 months ago

    Just some bad video card drivers? RAGE's performance was buggy all across the platform. I had pre-ordered the game, but had to wait three weeks before I could play it. As I didn't want to compromise the performance of other games by installing RAGE specific drivers. Both ID and Bethesda originate from a PC background. So they knew what they were getting into and should have worked more closely with the hardware manufacturers.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #81 7 months ago

    Why do the "big" players on PC constantly make you (the customer) feel like they are doing YOU a favour selling games on PC by constantly moaning about it when indies are the ones who just get on making a good game, selling it and looking after customers?

    If it were anywhere near as easy to get independent games published and well-publicised on consoles, they'd be saying the same thing. Just look at the market for games on controlled, hardware-variation-limited iOS versus variation free-for-all Android.

  • Collymilad #82 7 months ago

    Obviously you can pirate 360 games, everyone knows this, but what all you people going on about console piracy forget is this:

    Console Piracy:

    Initially:

    1. Take Xbox apart, Hook DVD drive up to PC, flash firmware, reassemble

    Then:

    Download and Burn each game you want to DVD and hope your console doesn't get banned in the next wave (which there's a chance of no matter how eagle eyed you may be)

    PC piracy:

    Download game, crack and play.

    Both have piracy but it's quite a bit easier/less effort on PC.

  • HAL9000 #83 7 months ago

    So for Bethesda's sake...let's just have one console, one computer...let's take away choice for the consumer and have one box that does it all! Then the Bethesda developers can stop taking paracetamol for their headaches (poor souls)

  • Valland #84 6 months ago

    The myriad of drivers and hardware on PC doesn't excuse Bethesda of the piss-poor UI in Skyrim.
    It might have worked wonders on consoles, but for us PC gamers who have a mouse and are used to speeding through menus like its nothing, presenting us with what feels like a slow-responding DVD menu that takes ages to navigate through was a horrible idea.

  • Valland #85 6 months ago

    And just for the record, Skyrim was available for piracy on Xbox360 a week before PC pirates could get their hands on it.

  • Zayle #86 6 months ago

    @Yodith It was the console version, but I'm sure that the PC version will get far more illicit downloads eventually. It's faster, easier, and there's no chance of being kicked off XBL or PSN.