Two-thirds of gamers in Britain say they would rather wait for video games to become free of performance issues before playing them.
One of the major complaints from the gaming community today is with respect to undercooked video game releases. Several notable titles have come under criticism for launching with prominent glitches, video game bugs, missing visuals and other issues.
A lot of these issues can be fixed over time, and devs often release patches and updates to iron out their titles – think Cyberpunk 2077, which has gotten significantly more polished over time after having been released to widespread criticism for its glitchy gameplay.
New data from a YouGov Surveys poll reveals that two-thirds of British gamers would wait for these types of problems to be resolved before playing a title that they are otherwise excited for (66%). Only a quarter of them say that they would play glitchy titles as soon as possible (24%). Gamers in this piece are defined as those who play video games for at least one hour in an average week.
More serious gamers are noticeably more accepting of the flaws in video games. More than a quarter of those who play video games for more than seven hours in an average week say they would play video games as soon as possible even with glitches (27%). By comparison, only a fifth of those who play between one to seven hours each week show the same tolerance (21%).
The news comes after YouGov recently found that UK gamers are more likely to frequent the gym than non-gamers.
Video game bugs affect sales
The new findings reveal that news of video game bugs or glitches has the potential to adversely affect the sales of video games. Half of all British gamers indicate that their likelihood to purchase a title would be affected ‘a lot’ if a video game has bugs and glitches (51%). Another 28% say that their likelihood to purchase a title would be affected ‘a little’ if it contains issues.
Three quarters of hardcore gamers (75%) indicate that their likelihood of purchasing a title is affected ‘a lot’ or ‘a little” by the news of video game bugs compared to four-fifths of regular gamers (those who play for one to seven hours weekly) who indicate the same (82%).
While franchises with more ardent fanbases might be able to tide over through a patchy video game release, this might be detrimental to video games that aren’t already established franchises. In a lot of cases, delaying a title to iron out issues might be the prudent choice for developers.
YouGov has more intelligence on gaming and esports here.
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
