Why do video games have bugs in them?

Most big video games tend to have bugs, especially if the game itself is longer and larger than say, a game like Journey, which is linear and fairly short. The longer and more expansive the game is, the more you'll encounter bugs. read more

Bugs and glitches have been common occurrences in video games for as long as they have existed. Most of these unintentional exploits, however, used to be difficult to find on major titles, and only on rare occasions were they considered detrimental to the game’s core playability. read more

Considering the complexity of something like any modern game, there is a real monetary cost in fixing a bug (they have to pay QA, Dev, ect) and after awhile it becomes cost prohibitive to fix the last 5% or so bugs, and pretty much all code in existence has some bugs. read more

The reason you see these bugs in video games can probably be attributed to one of these reasons: Enough samples (time spent with the game) to observe failures. People will still buy games with bugs -- up to some threshold. No one dies from a bug in a video game*. read more

This comes down to how hard it is to program something as complex as a video game, bugs in complex code are a real problem, and can be caused by a variety of annoyances, most of them can be avoided, but only after nit-picking the software very carefully indeed. read more

The three biggest franchises launching this holiday all have problems, ranging from problematic (frame rate drops, glitches) to rendering games outright unplayable (broken online multiplayer). Even if you've been watching the game industry closely, it was surprising to see Assassin's Creed Unity, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Halo: The Master Chief Collection all launch with major issues. read more