I understand both points of view. Products shipping with bugs especially a product as obviously buggy as SHIV is extremely annoying to the customer, both new and veteran. However, constant moaning about small issues solves nothing.
The main problem here is that SHIV was shipped with at least one MAJOR functionality bug, a show stopper and to me, that's just un-acceptable. Cosmetic bugs are aren't going to stop the game. But if a user presses an onscreen item essential to the game's functionality and the program stops or crashes EVERY TIME, then that is a non-starter IMHO.
The original poster is correct, if people keep buying software and not pointing out these faults, companies will simply keep shipping out unfinished work. I'm old enough to remember the days that when you bought a game it worked to an enjoyable degree out of the box. But the internet has made companies lazy when it comes to resolving QA issues. They can simply release what effectively is a beta and ship a patch later (usually with a promise of others to come. Which quite often don't).
I don't care what anyone says, but SHIV should NEVER have shipped without the major show-stoppers ironed out, even if it was just to save the credibility of the producer.
Tony
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