How did GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition pass certification?

[TTrue]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't certification where game testers go test the game if they are glitches and bugs and if there were bugs the game wouldn't be ready till its fixed.

and the state of the remasters aren't that great due to bugs, glitches and character models

[Tycek]

If you meant certification performed by compliance engineers working at Microsoft and Sony, these don't work exactly like that. Of course during certification process whole game should be checked, but in reality nobody got time for that. 

What happens that along with certified build, proper save state is sent to make compliance engineer work a bit easier - he isn't completing whole game. Compliance engineers usually focus on console specific features in the whole process. They check achievements, account pickers, behavior of the game during controller disconnection, controller prompts, etc. They check the stability of the game as well, but they mostly look out for reproducible crashes and freezes. Game may be buggy as hell, have various glitches and pass certification because all console specific features were working and it didn't crash at the same time too often. 

Generally it should be developer's work to send as the best working build as possible to the certification, but during crunches, when the time limits are looking in their eyes, they send something that more or less works.  

Edited November 14, 2021 by Tycek

[ChiroVette]

26 minutes ago, Tycek said:

If you meant certification performed by compliance engineers working at Microsoft and Sony, these don't work exactly like that.

 

 

I think what @TrueGamer was really asking was how did this survive beta testing? I think that's a valid question. I honestly believe that other than choices made by Take2, such as music licensing, many or most of the flaws would have been rooted out with beta testing. I have no information about this one way of the other, but my guess is that very little beta testing was done on this Trilogy iteration.

[Jason]

3 minutes ago, ChiroVette said:

I think what @TrueGamer was really asking was how did this survive beta testing? I think that's a valid question. I honestly believe that other than choices made by Take2, such as music licensing, many or most of the flaws would have been rooted out with beta testing. I have no information about this one way of the other, but my guess is that very little beta testing was done on this Trilogy iteration.

 

I imagine it went through some Q&A, I mean Rockstar have a studio whose purpose is purely Q&A but Q&A teams don't do anything but report and pass on the issues they find. They have no control over them being fixed or the game being delayed, but they're often the ones on the receiving end of the blame.

 

There's a lot of stories from ex-Q&A folks around the industry where they reported bugs that were never fixed, knew a game wasn't ready but it was released anyway, etc. It's typically either that the developer/publisher either wants it out cause they want their money or they run out of time and money to continue development. Considering Take-Two are one of the biggest publishers in the world I assume they simply wanted this game out for the holidays.

[Yoona]

21 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

I imagine it went through some Q&A, I mean Rockstar have a studio whose purpose is purely Q&A but Q&A teams don't do anything but report and pass on the issues they find. They have no control over them being fixed or the game being delayed, but they're often the ones on the receiving end of the blame.

 

There's a lot of stories from ex-Q&A folks around the industry where they reported bugs that were never fixed, knew a game wasn't ready but it was released anyway, etc. It's typically either that the developer/publisher either wants it out cause they want their money or they run out of time and money to continue development. Considering Take-Two are one of the biggest publishers in the world I assume they simply wanted this game out for the holidays.

Even if it's true they should have delayed it at least until December 7th and release digital and physical at the same time.

 

That way they would have 25 extra days to fix the bugs and improve performance in Day One patch.

Edited November 14, 2021 by Yoona

[Jason]

1 minute ago, Yoona said:

Even if it's true they should have delayed it at least until December 7th and release digital and physical at the same time.

 

That way they would have 25 extra days to fix the bugs and improve performance in Day One patch.

 

IMO if you're relying on a day 1 patch to fix something then you need a much bigger delay, cause a day 1 patch aint gonna be anywhere near enough.

 

Based on what I've seen the DE trilogy need another six months+ in the cooker, probably another year at least really.

[Yoona]

4 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

IMO if you're relying on a day 1 patch to fix something then you need a much bigger delay, cause a day 1 patch aint gonna be anywhere near enough.

 

Based on what I've seen the DE trilogy need another six months+ in the cooker, probably another year at least really.

 

Yeah I guess, but it would still be in much better shape if they had full 25 days more I think. 

 

Because as you said they wanted that Holidays money, but rushing digital version by 3 weeks was even worse idea.

 

It's a shame, really...

Edited November 14, 2021 by Yoona

[IVCavalcade]

We don't know the conversations that went on behind the scenes. It's quite possible at least some of the devs were unhappy with the state of it, but it was forced out to meet a deadline, with the assumption that patches could sort it out. It's odd though, they could have easily delayed it another month and still got Christmas sales. But yeah, I'm doubtful it'll ever get fully fixed tbh, major bugs will be fixed but all the little issues will probably remain.

 

It should be interesting when major publications like IGN etc get their reviews out, probably at the end of this coming week or some time into the next. I can't imagine they'll be too favourable, to say the least lol. Nobody was provided with review copies so they are having to play the games at the same time as us, the reviews will come eventually and that's what the execs will hopefully take notice of.

[Americana]

To be honest, how can they not see this? Maybe developers don't play these games before they release them? 

 

[Kirsty]

QA often catch the flack when games are buggy, but in truth, like Jason says, there's probably a lot of stuff they had already reported but they just didn't get sorted. Their job is to thoroughly test and then collate that information into a well-organised and well-commented system for tracking, but it's up to the programming side to go into the code and fix them, and production is responsible for keeping it on track.

 

It has to be a mixture of lack of time, lack of resources/suport, or general inexperience/skill when it comes to games of this size. The programming credits for the games aren't long, GSG are a very small studio, but it's not clear what the ratio is for how much of a hand R* had in that part of it as well.

[ShadowOfThePast]

1 hour ago, Tycek said:

Compliance engineers usually focus on console specific features in the whole process. They check achievements, account pickers, behavior of the game during controller disconnection, controller prompts, etc. They check the stability of the game as well, but they mostly look out for reproducible crashes and freezes. Game may be buggy as hell, have various glitches and pass certification because all console specific features were working and it didn't crash at the same time too often. 

So basically what you are saying is that Compliance engineers focus on how a title integrates with the said platform's hardware and software, in addition to this they only check if a game doesn't crash the console system itself, brick it and that player can just run the game on a specific platform ?

[Badman_]

Same way as Cyberpunk 2077, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Fallout 76, and many other half-assed games out there. I stopped believing in the efficiency of certification a long time ago.

[ShadowOfThePast]

8 minutes ago, Wolfman_ said:

Same way as Cyberpunk 2077, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Fallout 76, and many other half-assed games out there. I stopped believing in the efficiency of certification a long time ago.

If you have enough money certification doesn't mean anything to you.

[Americana]

So, now GTAForums has a dedicated Bugs subforum. Strange times we live in.

[Jason]

From what I understand console certification is not there to protect the game but the console. It makes sure it works well with all the basic console systems, doesn't brick the console or cause crashes in consistently reproducible ways etc. It's not really there to stop something like Cyberpunk 2077's launch or other similar launches, that's on the developers.

[ShadowOfThePast]

11 minutes ago, Jason said:

From what I understand console certification is not there to protect the game but the console. It makes sure it works well with all the basic console systems, doesn't brick the console or cause crashes in consistently reproducible ways etc. It's not really there to stop something like Cyberpunk 2077's launch or other similar launches, that's on the developers.

Yeah, I remember when Call Of Duty: Cold War was bricking PS5s ....

[Lonely-Martin]

I think another problem is we're in an era of gaming where companies release games as beta's and basically get us to highlight stuff too.

 

Doesn't help as, like said by others here, the issues may be reported by the testers to the people above but aren't fully addressed for whatever reason. But once a game is live and a much bigger playerbase is playing in various different ways that maybe the testers aren't doing, they learn more quicker about things. 

 

In theory it's a good way to catch more, but again, after we report anything, it's up to the companies to decide if it's worth addressing or cost effective etc.

 

I think companies in general can get cute with this too by not releasing games officially as a beta but it really is to the company. If the company is honest about it being a public beta of sorts and show to listen and fix things, it's not a bad idea.

 

Though I don't know enough on the topic, so I could be way off, lol. But it made sense to me. 

[Spider-Vice]

4 minutes ago, Lonely-Martin said:

But once a game is live and a much bigger playerbase is playing in various different ways that maybe the testers aren't doing, they learn more quicker about things. 

This has always been true even before "early access" and public "betas" though, a team of 500 QA testers around the world is never going to find as many things as 10,000 perhaps 100,000 or more players.

[Lonely-Martin]

1 minute ago, Spider-Vice said:

This has always been true even before "early access" and public "betas" though, a team of 500 QA testers around the world is never going to find as many things as 10,000 perhaps 100,000 or more players.

 

Yeah, absolutely. Not just by playing 'how we're supposed to' but with how we gamers often like to push game limits and so on too, especially in an open world game like R* do that really thrives on the diverse ways we enjoy them. There's just so many more variables that it's much quicker to catch stuff so it makes sense.

 

Just feels like there's more games/companies that do this, but it may be that because I'm here on these forums for example that I notice/read about it more, lol. RDRO being the only beta I knowingly played, I'm very green on the topic really.

[The Nefarious]

People are saying it should've been delayed until it was ready. With how they just let the AI handle everything, I don't think it would have made much of a difference. Unless there were some major advancements in machine learning or they delayed it until April 1st.

[Tycek]

9 hours ago, ShadowOfThePast said:

So basically what you are saying is that Compliance engineers focus on how a title integrates with the said platform's hardware and software, in addition to this they only check if a game doesn't crash the console system itself, brick it and that player can just run the game on a specific platform ?

More or less that's absolutely correct. It's also worth adding that certification procedures were much strict during previous generations, but with the eight generation (Xbox One and PS4) these were loosen a bit to their current form. Compliance will check if the game works and don't have crashes, but as You said they care more about the platform than the game itself. It's developer's work to make sure that the game is working correctly without any issues. Many recent releases have proven how this works, however. 

Edited November 15, 2021 by Tycek

[Ivan1997GTA]

I guess playtesting and quality control are alien words to Grove Street Games.

[ShadowOfThePast]

2 hours ago, Tycek said:

More or less that's absolutely correct. It's also worth adding that certification procedures were much strict during previous generations, but with the eight generation (Xbox One and PS4) these were loosen a bit to their current form. Compliance will check if the game works and don't have crashes, but as You said they care more about the platform than the game itself. It's developer's work to make sure that the game is working correctly without any issues. Many recent releases have proven how this works, however. 

Thanks for letting us know. I'm always excited about what happens behind the scenes and this is a nice addition !