DICE Defends Rockstar on Troubled GTA Online launch, says they’re not Stupid People

It hasn’t been the best of starts for Rockstar and GTA Online, with the multiplayer component coming two weeks after the launch of the game and then being very broken for the next 2 weeks after that, causing thousands of players to lose a lot of their online progress.

Recently at the BAFTA HQ in London, Patrick Bach, the executive producer on Battlefield 4, spoke to OXM and briefly talked about the troubled launch for GTA Online.

Seeing how Rockstar handled the launch of GTA Online – they are not stupid people, they’re not incompetent, and they had a lot of problems. Those are the problems you have with an online game, it’s very, very complicated.

He then went on to say that “you can never know for sure” when you release a new multiplayer client into the world.

People might think ‘how can they be so stupid, etc’ but it’s extremely complicated. There are so many things that can go wrong, and you can never know until you’ve launched, because you can never fake – you can simulate a lot of load tests, but you can never know for sure. So we wept with them, when they had those problems.

I have to say I honestly agree with Bach on this, people these days are way too impatient when it comes to games, and that is why they end up being churned out the door every year instead of every five like they were 15-20 years ago.

Yes, we should expect a perfect launch from Rockstar with GTA Online, but the truth is, creating a multiplayer game of that scale really isn’t easy, and some people seem to think it is. There is so much to think about, so many things to consider and more often than not, no matter how many simulations you do, you won’t ever get it as accurate as a full on launch day.