XIII Publisher & Dev Apologize For Issues

The disappointment that met the release of XIII soon after it launched has been no secret. Our own Mike wrote about the fact we don’t need to remaster everything following its disastrous release and Mass Effect‘s newly announced remastered collection. It was also matched with an overwhelming swathe of disapproving reviews on Steam. Now the publisher (Microids) and developer (PlayMagic) have made a joint statement on the disaster of a release, explaining why they believe the issues were evident.

“First and foremost, we would like to offer our most sincere apologies for the game’s technical issues,” they said following their agreement that the criticism was well-founded. They went on to state, “In its present state, XIII does not meet our quality standards and we fully understand players’ frustrations. The pandemic has impacted the game’s production on many levels.” They would go on to blame the pandemic for forcing the team to work from home in recent months, causing issues between development and QA testing. They would go on further, “We hoped we would be able to provide a Day One patch fixing all the issues[,] but the development of this update is taking more time than expected.”

I think the largest issue in the development, among many of the processes that are pointed out in the statement, has been this Day One patch fix-all solution. It is something many studios seem to take as the point for which all fixes should be aiming toward, with little care what the game is before then. If there was not this fix-all resolution to development as was the case 15+ years before now, many studios would be forced to delay further or fear greater wrath than we’re presently seeing. This contemporary desire not to delay for concern over internet comments is stupid, and honestly I wish Twitter users would realize the stupidity of bemoaning a delay.

The last thing the statement goes on to say, that you’d at least be interested in, is: “We want to assure you that PlayMagic is working hard to solve all the game’s issues.” They then go further to give a rough timeline, stating, “With live monitoring and multiple patches in the upcoming days and weeks, we hope to reach the quality level we all expect for the optimum gaming experience.” Here is hoping said patches will fix the present issues for players and give everyone that had high hopes for the XIII Remake what they wanted.