The flaw with this approach is that it alienates a sizable chunk of gamers (in this case, gamers who live in a house without a high-speed internet connection). With the advent of integrated network play, developers also seem to favor releasing patch after patch (if they even bother) and treat their paying customers as unpaid testers. In these days of mainstream, multi-million dollar titles, developers seem to favor release dates over thorough quality assurance. if not for game-breaking bugs that slipped past the beta testings ( if there were any) and made them literally unplayable or Nintendo Hard. It was also The Problem with Licensed Games incarnate, since several licensed games actually may not have been as bad as many people say they were. Many games that were made after The '90s seem so much easier because of the reduction in such bugs on average. Game-Breaking Bugs were more prevalent in the earlier days of gaming.
The dark side of Good Bad Bugs ( though not necessarily mutually exclusive) and a Griefer's favorite variety, Game-Breaking Bugs are severe bugs that cripple your ability to play the game involved. William Cassidy of GameSpy on the Atari 7800 port of Impossible Mission
