Bethesda responds to complaints that modders are fixing Starfield faster than the actual devs

Bethesda has been publishing regular updates addressing various Starfield bugs for several months now, and community modders have been addressing many of the same issues - sometimes at a faster pace. Today, in the aftermath of the beta launch of the latest Starfield patch, the studio has explained why mods might be able to handle bug fixes faster than the devs themselves.

[jjb1981]

Typical jargon that translates to: "It just works".

[Rocketisleague]

Not really, it's typical...professional software development versus low quality development with high risks.

Imo Bethesda is just poor at development but what they're saying in the article is normal for large code bases. This is the whole "agile transformation" that so many companies re trying to follow and either doing well or messing up.

[VenomUK]

Bethesda’s been using its Creation Engine for years and this likely because its developers are intimately familiar with it and it doesn’t have to pay licensing fees. But CE is now visually dated and now Bethesda is owned by Microsoft, so there is no necessity to hang on to every penny so like 343i it should consider switching to Unreal Engine 5.

[Jin_Sakai]

Bethesda knows modders finish their games for them.

[OtterX]

Bethesda to Gamers: "You're not playing it right."

Bethesda to Modders: "You're not modding it right."

[Chocoburger]

Despite the multiple delays, this game needed an additional two years of development and polish before it should have come out. What a mess.

I'd be shamed of myself and co-workers being quickly out-classed by individuals working for free in their spare time fixing my broken junky game. 🤪

[Andrew336]

Outclassed because people can edit some files and change some things around?

[Christopher]

Wow. Just, wow. Someone implements proper GPU features, but it's just editing some files and changing some things around. Anyone who can type on a keyboard can do it. It doesn't at all take programming knowledge, understanding of the game engine and programming for such things at all.

I mean, just think about it. If it was so easy, why didn't Bethesda do it? I mean, we're talking just one week for the intern, right?

[Bathyj]

Some people are just better at their jobs than others

[Markdn]

Does Microsoft own a dev that knows how to fix there broken games, halo, forza and starfield are but a few

[anast]

The devs at Bethesda aren't very talented in this field. It's obvious.

[bunt-custardly]

I think their answer is pretty reasonable actually, and some of the responses here completely ignorant to that fact. Certification takes time, unlike modders who can just put out shit without such checks.

[DarXyde]

In the absence of scrutiny or any knowledge of Bethesda's history, I would say that makes sense, but when you say this:

"There is also the fact that, because of this, fixes are best bundled into larger consolidated updates that target branch milestones, rather than releasing them ad hoc. It also ensures better build testing when the new code is all together."

It sounds like SOP for companies NOT named Bethesda. While it is true that it *might* make now sense to address issues more comprehensively, this company has a history of relying on the community to fix their issues. In perspective, it's ridiculous that people have to buy the game, find the problems, fix it for them (pro Bono, I should add), and the game is better as a result. You've pretty much got a community paying Bethesda to do QA. That's wild.

And frankly, I think if we're talking about finding and fixing issues, that shouldn't have to wait until they get their ducks in a row in an aggregated manner. Address it as you find it. Don't just sit on a solution until you have more things to fix and make it an update package. I think other companies can do that because the range of their bugs is very mild by comparison. I think Bethesda stands to be in the best graces of consumers by at least providing official weekly updates. Whatever is good to go in a week, do that. Whatever isn't, include it in next week's update.

Putting all of that to the side, the game received quite a bit of extra development time. It's kind of odd and there really isn't a good defence for that.