Answer one question please, Funcom

I watched the stream from Friday. Look, we get that it’s a process to fix things in a game and it’s not easy. We understand that when you fix one thing, it might, and probably will, mess something else up in a small or big way. We know that in comparison with other developers, Funcom has a relatively small team. That’s not the point.
My question to Funcom is this: Why wasn’t this game given more time for testing and tweaking before the official release date? It’s a legitimate question.
You guys had to know it was gonna be a buggy mess when you released it. Yet you had no problem taking people’s money for an unfinished, unpolished product. Then you ask us for more patience until you fix it.
I think it would make more sense for you to take more time in the development stage so there’s fewer issues upon release.
Now, some people don’t seem to care about all that, but a lot of us do. I can’t speak for other people, but I’d rather wait an additional 6 months or so for a game to be released in a more finished state than put out the money for the game and not be able to play it because it’s too frustrating to have to deal with all the bugs and broken things.
I don’t expect Funcom to answer this because it puts them on the spot as it’s intended to. But I’d really like a good solid answer…after all, Funcom, you have my money and I have a game with issues that’s been out for more than a month now.

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It’s kind of the nature of game development these days, for better or worse. Development will have bugs and issues, even with studios famous for polish. I can’t recall a game I’ve played in the past decade that didn’t have either bugs or a patch to fix them. Usually both.

As to why Funcom released Conan Exiles when they did, I’d chalk that up to money. Development takes money, and I assume Funcom needed more of it. Or needed to prove that it could ship a game with a certain level of “working” within a certain timeframe. Prove that it can maintain profitability. Or get CE on the market to compete with the likes of ARK and Rust before some heavy hitters like Fallout 76 hit the market.

So, your question as to “why release the game in this state?” Money, devs gotta eat. “Why not wait 1-6-12 months?” They’ve said they’ll continue to work on the game post release, they have continued to work on it, and have given loose outlines for future plans. They’ll be here in a year, and probably as long as they can afford to after that. Release isn’t the end of a games development anymore. It’s barely even halfway.

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I’m not from Funcom, obviously, but my thought is that they set it as official release to get more funds for further development. As I understand it, “launch” added both the swamp/jungle and volcano biomes and a bunch of other new changes and content. They could have pushed it as an early access expansion like they did with the Frozen North a while back but perhaps they weren’t selling as well in Early Access and they may have been running out of money to pay their development team. Launch added a whole new platform (PS4) and saw a dramatic increase in players both on PC and Xbox which means more money. Just my thoughts though. Only Funcom knows the real reason.

Funcom is a publicly traded company. They may also have had a deadline forced on them by a board of directors or other similar group voted in by the investors. Missing the deadline would have hurt stock prices and the desire of investors to see a return often trumps waiting a month or two for bug fixes.

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I’m not in the business but I’ll do some speculation.
Physical copies of the game means a network of distribution, be it game stores, electronics stores, perhaps even chains like Target or Walmart.

I’ll wager there are contracts made for delivery. In time. Long in advance of release. They in turn might advertise in their channels.

I don’t think it’s an option for a coding company to break the contracted delivery dates unless you’re ready to just hand over the keys to the company in the pending law suits/ penalties in the contracts.

So, you make the time plan and hope to Crom you squash enough bugs to make it playable by the time you have to deliver.

Like I said, speculation, but I don’t think I’m too far off.

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It would be nice if Funcom answered it. Meantime we can speculate with real reasons :money_mouth_face:. Nothing, or very few things has changed with official release regarding EA. Same bugs, same glitches, same exploits, same lack of sensitive content, communication approaching to zero… A lot of pepole in the community are beggining to ask ourselves if developers will be able to change anyhing of it at all.

But the market is relentless. If Funcom is unable to stabilize the game and incorporate delayed content, sadly November present year could be the finish of Conan Exiles and some other survival games.

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