When I first heard of the GTA IV problems with freezes and crashes, my first thought was that the testing department screwed up royally by allowing such a big fat bug pass through. But after I thought about this for a while, I suddenly realized that it probably wasn’t the case at all.
If anything, the testers probably found the error and production decided to go ahead and release the game anyway. Why? Because GTA was scheduled for release on April 29 and Hell or high water, it was going to be released on that day.
Imagine the embarrassment of Rockstar if they had to issue a press release saying, "Due to unforeseen circumstances, GTA IV will be delayed until further notice…" Can you see the chaos that would have started?
Millions of fans that pre-ordered the game would have been left with their asses hanging in the breeze. People who took off from work to pick up and play the game would have had their vacation time burned up for no reason at all.
Let’s think this over. The testing department at Rockstar would have had to be totally brain dead to allow such a bug to go undetected. Also, games just don’t get tested in-house.
The game had to also pass the quality control boards of Sony and Microsoft as well. Sony has a TRC (Technical Requirements Checklist) that is a thing of beauty and horror to behold because passing all these things on a first pass is a rarity.
So how could Microsoft, Sony and Rockstar miss these glaring errors? My theory is that a "deal" was made to push the game through. I can almost hear Rockstar saying to Sony and Microsoft:
"Sure, we know it’s broken, but cut us some slack here…we can always release a patch later. And besides, think of all the MONEY you’ll lose if we don’t release it on time…"
Of course, it just could be that the testers totally missed the installation bug, Sony’s top testing review board could have missed this error and Microsoft’s Quality Control guys missed this big bug as well.
If we’re supposed to believe that, then the convergence of the planets may have had something to do with this too.
I hate patches that attempt to fix glaring issues after I buy the game.
