March 29th, 2023, Rishad Dsouza
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, 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.
Interestingly, 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 findings reveal that news of 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.
Once again, heavy gamers are slightly less sensitive to bugs and glitches. Three quarters of them (75%) indicate that their likelihood of purchasing a title is affected ‘a lot’ or ‘a little” by the news of bugs compared to four-fifths of regular gamers (those who play for one to seven hours weekly) who indicate the same (82%).
There are a lot of considerations that go into video game purchases, not least loyalty towards certain franchises. Even so, it is instructive to know that gamers are so put off by shoddy visuals and glitchy gameplay that many would consider delaying playing the title. While franchises with more ardent fan bases might be able to tide over through a patchy video game release, this might be particularly 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.
Explore our living data - for free
Want to run your own research? Start building a survey now
To receive monthly insights about the video gaming industry register here.
To read YouGov’s latest intelligence on gaming and e-sports explore here.
Make smarter business decisions with better intelligence. Understand exactly what your audience is thinking by leveraging our panel of 20 million+ members. Speak with us today.