Developer admits Saints Row 2 will have 'bugs'

by Alexander Sliwinski { Mar 5th 2008 at 1:10PM }

Developer Volition admits that Saints Row 2 "won't be bug free" when it releases. Speaking at the game's unveiling in London, a Volition producer says no title ships bug free, but that the studio is going to do its best to polish the game before it releases this year. He even says the company has "a full QA team" on the project, which given the issues with the first title causes us to imagine it only had a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig named Mortimer testing it.

Admitting off the bat there will be bugs is refreshing honesty from a developer, but it's more like preemptive damage control spurred by the fact that Saints Row was known for its comedic code issues. In fact, the bugs were so ridiculous in the game that there was a musical made about them (which can also be found after the break for those afraid of links).

Tags: bugs, saints-row-2, saintsrow2, volition

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

License to ill @ Mar 5th 2008 1:13PM

Turd...

Tiptup300 @ Mar 5th 2008 3:45PM

"Full QA team" ?, as opposed to a half full QA Team? Also its not great to say a game will have bugs. It's a given!

James @ Mar 5th 2008 5:47PM

Feature.

agent k @ Mar 5th 2008 1:14PM

I can assure you that they have a good sized QA Team because they run ads for QA jobs on tv about it all the time here in Champaign, IL (where Volition is).

FidliousWong (Oatmeal Defense Force) @ Mar 5th 2008 2:13PM

God I love that commercial..

I know three volitionites that I give shit because of it.

Mystic @ Mar 5th 2008 1:17PM

Bugs or not, I'll still be playing it.

naxe @ Mar 5th 2008 1:19PM

To be honest with you i've never even heard of this game. everytime i try to get a mental picture of the box art i keep getting crackdown.

oh well with that many bugs it should have never seen the light of day. but then again what game doesnt have a bug or two??

baby sea tuna @ Mar 5th 2008 1:32PM

Yeah, even award-winning AAA titles. I mean, I got stuck in a wall in Mass Effect, stuck on a horse in Assassin's Creed, stuck in the black between DMC4's cutscenes, trapped in an animation loop in Uncharted, and had FFVII and KOTOR eat my saves.

Then again, it's not very often that you see a game as bug-riddled as Saint's Row...

Cal @ Mar 5th 2008 2:28PM

To be honest, the bugs weren't that prevalent, you had to go looking for them to find most of them, the only bug I experienced in my play through was dropping through the road *once*.

All in all SR was a very good game (I'd rate it above GTA:SA) and SR2 better be good too =P

Maverick Saturn @ Mar 5th 2008 3:48PM

This is football, worse case of bugs I have seen, and unfortunatly, Lair was the bug. lol

losr11 @ Mar 16th 2008 9:13PM

hey screw you huys.Have you ever even played saints row,its a god game. its fun to run around and rob stores and run guys over becuase of the ragdoll effect.
And i have only ever encountered bug a few times so shut your mouths about dat game

Mr.ESC @ Mar 5th 2008 1:21PM

That video is funny hehehe.

Pass I rather play GTA IV.I never liked Saints Row.

Mystic @ Mar 5th 2008 4:16PM

Have fun fanboy, I'll be playing both.

Mr.ESC @ Mar 5th 2008 7:57PM

fanboy?

Well not really I don't like GTA either (thank San Andreas for that) but IV sounds promising.

Oh you mean Ps3 fanboy hardly since my XBOX 360 Gamerscore is OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!

License to ill @ Mar 5th 2008 9:12PM

He called you a fanboy because you don't want this buggy piece of shit game? Unbelievable...

rockintom @ Mar 6th 2008 9:34AM

So, does having an opinion make you a fanboy of said opinion? Because if that's the case, Mystic, I am a fanboy of telling you to go fuck yourself.

Pureshooter @ Mar 5th 2008 1:28PM

The first game was awesome and didn't have any more bugs than any other GTA style game has had to this point. I've yet to see an open world game that didn't have some bugs here and there.

Von Dozier @ Mar 5th 2008 1:31PM

That video was pretty terrible.

But Saint's Row was never supposed to amount to anything. It plays like a "True Crime" game desperately wanting to be GTA and failing.

FidliousWong (Oatmeal Defense Force) @ Mar 5th 2008 2:21PM

For a game that was desperately trying to be GTA and failing, it's amazing that the game offered us an alternative to GTA's biggest failings. Aiming, diversity in mission structure (activities added a LOT to the game), and GPS.

Hardly a failure since all three of those issues have been addressed in GTAIV.

KingOfGods @ Mar 5th 2008 3:21PM

I wouldnt call it a failure. It sold well enough to make another, the character customization and game play were fun, it improved on a lot of things GTA got wrong

tmacairjordan87 @ Mar 5th 2008 3:43PM

@ kingofgods

mario and sonic at the olympics sold well too, but most in the gaming world agree it's a peice of shit. Bad games sell well more often than we'd like to admit.

Zaius @ Mar 5th 2008 1:35PM

wow, a youtube clip that's actually great.

Zertoss @ Mar 5th 2008 1:36PM

That chick looks like a trap.

XLM @ Mar 5th 2008 1:40PM

Honestly the size of the QA team doesn't mean much at this point.

The title will be shipping on a given date. They likely know all the serious issues already, but to fix them at this point would destabilize the product too much or push out the release date, so out the door it goes. Bugs and all.

Not much different than any other software release.

baby sea tuna @ Mar 5th 2008 1:44PM

Speaking of release dates, does anyone know when this is supposed to come out? They'd better give GTAIV LOTS of breathing room, if they know what's good for them...

nerrrrrrd @ Mar 5th 2008 1:45PM

Saints Row was great. I dont know how anyone who's a fan of the GTA3 series could dislike it. It copies all the best aspects of GTA and added to it.

I will definately be having this game in my collection with GTA4.

KeenCommander @ Mar 5th 2008 1:49PM

Mortimer McMire?

There is no reference...or is there?

Marty @ Mar 5th 2008 1:50PM

Once you get past the learning curve, and the sub 30 frames per second moments, Saints was a pretty fun game. Could have been better, and sometimes (at the worst times) bugs did rear their ugly head, but overall a decent stab into the GTA / Urban Sandbox style game.

Hopefully the sequel is better. And hopefully GTA4 is good too!

FidliousWong (Oatmeal Defense Force) @ Mar 5th 2008 2:19PM

You and I agree on something? Gah!

The sub 30 framerate issue never made much sense to me because everyone still clamors onto GTA as the apex in this genre and, simply put, GTA has a shitty framerate too. But the aiming in Saint's Row was top notch, the GPS system was definately a huge leap forward in this genre (in fact, my biggest bitch about Burnout Paradise is the inability to set waypoints, SA spoiled me), and the story was sooo bad, it became hilarious.

My main complaints about Saint's Row was the loss of the promised walkman feature (seriously, why isn't this in any of these fucking games?), the occasional bug, and the sexual humor didn't strike me as funny but more foul. It didn't have the tongue in cheek aspect of GTA.

Marty @ Mar 5th 2008 4:44PM

Haha, yeah I think we are agreeing here. Most of my GTA experience is on the PC end of things though, so sub-30 FPS is a pretty rare experience for me with these sorts of games, and was a big turn-off for me with Saints when I first tried out the demo.

I strongly agree about some of the humor in Saints though - it makes GTA look downright high-brow. And though eventually I stopped caring about it, I always felt that having almost every NPC in the game dropping the f-bomb all the time while you drive by them kinda made the game feel dumber than it should have... and slightly embarrassing to play when anyone else was around.

That's not to say that I am offended by such things (I'm not), but it just struck me as being a bit beyond what was necessary.

doug @ Mar 5th 2008 1:53PM

I'm going to agree with other comments that the first game was perfectly acceptable, and no more buggy than any open-world game is going to be. Especially considering how early in the 360 cycle this game came out (and two years later has yet to be bettered, in the open-world gangster realm) this was a pretty impressive title.

I think everyone who only played the demo thinks the game was buggy, because the finished game had considerably more polish and smoothness than the demo.

BigD145 @ Mar 5th 2008 2:01PM

I'm happy for this news. Now I know what NOT to buy.

knetworx @ Mar 6th 2008 10:23AM

You're gonna miss out on some good times. I spent probably a good 80 hours on Saints Row (more than I ever cared to spend on a GTA game), and only ran into 1 or 2 bugs, neither of which actually caused any problems (one of them actually saved my life during a mission). Considering Saints Row was Volition's first attempt at an open world game, I can pretty well guarantee you there will be a lot fewer bugs the second time around. Besides, if you can name a single game that's ever shipped out completely bug-free, I'll give you a cookie.

sinergy @ Mar 5th 2008 2:22PM

boobies!

Mills and Boom @ Mar 5th 2008 2:31PM

Aka we're rushing it so GTAIV doesn't eat us.

Saleswise.

Don't really care for the series though, unless SR2 is hugely better than 1.

Mills and Boom @ Mar 5th 2008 2:36PM

Haha. Cabel. He's so great, them old DS Lite vids he made were golden.

To stir something up - he's a huge Mac fan. Lol.

ThornedVenom (Harley Quinn Defense Force) @ Mar 5th 2008 2:43PM

While I most certainly agree that a few bugs isn't that much a problem for good titles, and that I congratulate the developer for honesty, it seems to be a bad decision PR-wise, because for a developer to admit that there are problems, it must mean that bugs are a big problem in this sequel and therefore the confession is just damage control.

Otherwise, the video is a timeless classic.

Donald @ Mar 5th 2008 3:08PM

This will no doubt lead to a day 1 patch.

Parasite*Evil @ Mar 5th 2008 3:10PM

And in other news, new study suggests humans must 'breathe' to survive.

Mike @ Mar 5th 2008 3:17PM

hmm.. knowing that they are going to ship with bugs.. maybe they can throw us a bone and make the game $50 instead of $60 huH?!

Frank @ Mar 5th 2008 3:25PM

THQ do 90% of the testing for the titles they publish. They have a pretty competent QA department of about 300-400 tesers these days.

I worked on the original Saint's Row briefly and trust me when I say it is 200% less buggy than it was when it first hit the QA floor. You can only polish a turd so much =)

THE WICKER MAN (BWF) (GT: Dalek Prime) @ Mar 5th 2008 3:45PM

When you were testing it you couldnt have suggested it be a better game? jk

LaughingTarget @ Mar 5th 2008 3:45PM

I won't ever buy this crap. When I can run through AAA titles like Mario Galaxy without a single thread in Mario's pants out of place, these things should be doing it too. The single biggest reason for bugs in the PC world is numerous hardware profiles. Saint's Row had to deal with just one. One. Sorry, if you can't get it working to a point where I have to go out of my way looking for bugs to find them, it has no business being on the sales floor. The average player should be able to play a game from start to finish without ever seeing so much as a framerate hiccup on a console game. Anything else should be outright boycotted.

THE WICKER MAN (BWF) (GT: Dalek Prime) @ Mar 5th 2008 3:48PM

I agree ive played through a slew of games on these current gen systems and ive never dealt with SO MANY BUGS. Is it a matter of the devs being lazy or just that they are still learning the ropes of the hardware?

LaughingTarget @ Mar 5th 2008 5:19PM

If learning the hardware was even a remote excuse (last gen launch titles didn't have these issues), the 360 has been out for over two years now. Bugs showing up at this point is 100% unacceptable.

tmacairjordan87 @ Mar 5th 2008 3:52PM

so in a year when GTA 4 is coming out, next month in fact, we're actually talking about shit row 2?? Is the world spiraling out of control so fast that there are people who actually like shit row 2 more than gta 4 even though it's a complete knock off of the gta series?

I'm waiting for morgan freeman to tell me there's an asteroid coming and we gotta haul ass to some cave or die

umm....hello??? @ Mar 5th 2008 3:53PM

correct me if I'm wrong, but the main problem I have with bug fixes is that
1) you need connection to the internet
2) the bug is downloaded and takes up space on the HDD--which can be very limiting for some people on 20gig HDD...
3) some bug fixes might not be wanted (I think either Fable or Oblivion had a earn gold easily glitch fixed? it isn't like I'm going to start goldfarming to ebay on either of those games)...