I think that there is a legitimate problem with games that are not in a done state going out the door because they have blown past their deadline and don’t want to admit it.

However, for many of these games, the studios involved do ultimately fix them.

I think that a good fix is to avoid pre-purchasing games and avoid purchasing on launch day.

Reddit had a sub, /r/patientgamers (which has Threadiverse incarnations at and ). That was dedicated to people who waited for at least twelve months after a game’s release to play it.

I think that if that gap were more-common, that a lot of people who play video games would be a lot happier with their purchases. Maybe 12 months isn’t required, but some period long enough to see the state of the game at release and see whether any issues are actually being addressed.

Maybe it shouldn’t be necessary, but…