One of the drawbacks to being an oldtime computer gamer, beginning way back with my first Altair, is that I remember when computer games were released bug free. I remember when beta testing was used to find bugs prior to release. In the area of online games, beta testing is just an advertising tool these days, and people willingly pay monthly fees to play "released" MMORPG's games while the programmers work out the bugs. We pay, in effect, to beta test. It's not so bad with the non-MMO's, because with most of them we get free patches and eventually the worst bugs are handled. It is perhaps even better with a game developer like CA which supports an active modding community.

Still, it's a shame that the days of relatively bug-free game releases are dead and gone. It's not likely to change. EA is the worst offender; but they all do it. We have to face the fact that once people started making considerable amounts of money on computer games, the corporate accounting leeches got involved and they now run the show. Add in the deleterious influence of the even more money-driven console game market and we're pretty much guaranteed to get bug-filled products now. Some are just in a beta status and can be fixed with a couple of patches. Others are in worse shape and would have been considered alpha status in the good ol' days of a few years ago. In the end, the corporate suits would rather release a bad product, knowing we'll still buy it, then risk their excessive salaries getting the product right before release.

All things considered, CA is the least offender in system which promotes the release of bugged products. At least the encourage our modding and listen to the community. They aren't perfect; but compared to other developers, it could be much worse.