Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems How To Report Major Patch 4 Issues to the Press (Community Collaboration Thread)

Update: IGN has reported on Larian finally addressing this issue. Basically, it's our fault for stealing/murdering too much:

IGN Report

Even though this has obviously been a frustrating situation for many players, I do genuinely find the reason for the bug to be hilarious.


IGN News Tips Page

I had previously called this issue a scandal, the scandal being not the bug itself (which despite being basically game-breaking for non-Lawful Good Paladins like me and many others, was obviously not intentional), but the lack of acknowledgement or communication from Larian for almost a full month, which is very uncharacteristic for them.

IGN stated in their article that they were contacted by players calling the game "unplayable" which was the language we used and the appropriate language to use in this situation, so I feel we made a difference.

It's all on Patch 5 then. We'll see.
 
Original Post:

Here's the text of the message I sent them, in case anyone wants to copy/paste it. Feel free.

"Are you aware that since the latest Baldur's Gate 3 patch (Patch 4, and Hotfix 11), Act 3 is totally unplayable, with lag between 30 seconds-10 minutes or longer occurring in between each player action? There are hundreds of players reporting this on the Official Larian Forums, and Larian has not communicated or acknowledged the issue at all.

This is a major game release that is up for Game of the Year, and yet in its current state, could not even pass a beta test.

This is a huge news story and major scandal, and as one of the leading video game news outlets, you should be covering this."

This may not make a difference, but it's worth a try. I think we need to take actions like this if we want faster results.

I also encourage sending tips regarding this (and footage of Act 3's abysmal state, if you have it) to other large media outlets like Gamespot. If you do, kindly leave the links to their respective reporting pages as I did here, so others can follow suit.

I will list other ways/links to tip news outlets below, and edit as more are listed in this thread:

Forbes: email to tips@forbes.com

Gamespot: email to news@gamespot.com

Game Rant (select "Submit Story Tip")

Eurogamer: email to contact@eurogamer.net (credit to Rahaya)

I was about to say, probably should pick another news site. IGN is the one who spun the 'AAA devs mad about BG3' story out of their ass and gave the game a 10/10 with no mention of bugs or the unfinished nature of Act 3 until 2 weeks later in a separate article. I doubt they are interested in going against the grain now.

IGN actually did publish an article about Act 3 bugs on August 28, when we were still in Patch 2.

https://www.ign.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-act-3-bugs-missing-content

Actually, a few gaming news outlets seem to have published articles about Act 3 bugs in August and September (I am unfamiliar with most of these outlets and am unsure about their reputations, just FYI):

https://www.dexerto.com/baldurs-gat...e-are-just-as-frustrated-as-you-2270822/

https://www.thegamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-performance-issues-act-3-ps5/

https://www.gamesradar.com/baldurs-...and-promise-a-better-ending-for-karlach/

https://gamerant.com/baldurs-gate-3-patch-3-problems/

But there has not been a single article published about Act 3 issues since Patch 4 dropped, that I can find, which is very strange. Since Act 3 bugs seemed to be a fairly popular topic just a couple months ago.

Yeah, that would be the two weeks later I mentioned. Curious how bugs and Act 3 being unfinished didn't factor into their ratings at all. IIRC Eurogamer is the only one who called it out from the start in their review and how it affected scoring (and was mobbed for it).

Patch 3 came with a decent amount of bugs as well. Like Gale's bipolar approval bug, being unable to click through open doors, unable to save after talking to a vendor, Strange Ox attacking Dammon, many of the cutscene bugs like with Astarion's romance scenes were from Patch 3. The game has been broken for longer than it was fixed at this point.

Radio silence.

I am aware that IGN's credibility is suspect. That is why I suggested contacting every news outlet we can that covers video games. We may even have success with more mainstream outlets like Forbes, because although they do not focus solely on video games, a news report by them carries more weight and reaches more eyes than just those in the video game community. I ask that everyone pitch in and if you find a link or know an email to report this to a relevant news outlet, please post it in this thread.

mailto:contact@eurogamer.net

I did my part and submitted a story tip to Game Rant. I didn’t want to have to do this but I understand the game is in a very bad state right now. Larian’s focus has always been a little “skewed” since day one

I usually see The Gamer covering bugs and game problems, so it might be worth a try. Not sure about the credibility though! If someone can pitch in, that’d be great. https://www.thegamer.com/contact/

Submitted, completely unacceptable at this point, hopefully this gets some traction

Ya, not true and the hyperbole people are spreading doesn't help anyone when most people who see it immediately just roll their eyes and move on. Does the game have bugs? Yeah, but 99% of people aren't going to recognize the difference between most of the bugs and their failure to understand that following a vague guide on how to do something doesn't mean you can't screw it up by doing something else. The number of bugs that can be easily duplicated is small, but when its as easy and small as say blood in camp triggering artifacting its not exactly a priority.

Now, this patch is absolutely an issue. There are workarounds, but many of them are overly complex. You can go back to the pre-patch 4 version, but any saves since patch 4 are still unplayable. Modding the game and manually fixing whats causing the issues seems to work, but I don't have the patience after all the other bs I tried before finding that option. Honestly, the moment the reports started rolling in and it became obvious how bad it actually was, they should have rolled back the update. In the 3 weeks since the patch went live I finished a pre-patch PT from early in act 1 and got a new PT to act 3. Something should have been done in the short term while they worked on the long term fix. And there should have been some communication, period. Because now the game actually is broken.

This is a really bad look, but I don't for a second believe anyone is going to write a story about it. We're talking about the same companies who praised Starfield for being Bethesda's least buggy launch, saying its virtually bug free and claiming there were no gamebreaking bugs. And yet almost all my family and friends ran into the same issues and gamebreaking bugs bc we tried to play it like a traditional Bethesda game rather than cycling into new game plus every 20-30hrs. If they did drop an article now about bugs in BG3 after failing to address the glaring bugs in other games it would look like they were actively trying to sabotage Larian's award chances. Like they are actively punching down on Larian to give the bigger, more financially secure studios a better chance to win awards that they really don't deserve even with what's going on atm.

I'd suggest publicly asking the studios faces about it on Twitter. Just because your grandparents go to the news every time the neighbors dog barks doesn't mean it's an effective way to get anything done. Especially in an era where the individual is just as capable of putting them on blast publicly as the media is. And you're more likely to get an actual answer when you're talking to someone who actually knows whats going on day to day rather than some support rep from India who can't answer any questions that aren't in the script they received.

I've been a gamer for 30+ years, but never experienced bugs quite like these. Having to wait 5 full minutes for a door to a main quest area to open is not a mere annoyance. It is not acceptable months after a full release. This game does not deserve to be GoTY.

Well this makes a lot of sense. But hou knows mybe the op can be successful. I do think more success can come from complaining to playstation.
But honestly I dont know what to do whit ignorance and ppl whou praise the game on patch 2 experience. I mean they are right but what about us and the ppl hou will buy or get it for Xmas???
I wanted to create something a unified complain but I have no idea how to approach this situation. Also what's the point to rant if it will be ignored anyway.

I agree that hyperbole about minor bugs is hurting clarity on this issue.

Before patch 4, the game wasn't perfect on PS5, but it was playable. Everyone experienced minor bugs, and a very small number of people experienced game-blocking bugs that affected their current playthrough - often fixable by reverting to an earlier save. Some people complained about it being "unplayable" then - but what they mean by "unplayable" is not what we mean by "unplayable."

After patch 4, the game is literally unplayable on PS5 once you reach act 3, and what we mean by "unplayable" is that you cannot play. This isn't a bug you can ignore or work around. This isn't something that only affects an unlucky minority of players or saves. It's an issue that is preventing PS5 players from completing the game at all.

Larian needs to make an announcement about the issue and the state of a fix. As it is, this game should not be on sale to PS5 players at all. It's completely broken. Cyberpunk 2077 was actually pulled from the Playstation store shortly after its release, once the state of the game became obvious - I believe that BG3 should be pulled until this is fixed as well. I think the only reason it hasn't been is that it was working until patch 4, and that people don't know it's this broken until they reach act 3. It's taking a while for people to become aware of how serious the issue is.

This gamebreaking bug that is Act 3 is also affecting PC. So it is platform wide.

Not really hyperbole. The sheer irony of you saying I was speaking in hyperbole because you didn't suffer game-breaking issues for as long as I have, but then turning around to complain how people were saying Starfield was bug free but you and yours had problems.

Act 3 on release varied from fine for some people, to broke as hell for others. I personally had to wait 3 days of not being able to play my save. At all. Because there was a bug that corrupted save files when they got too big. Before that, constantly having to reload saves because quests wouldn't update was also a very common thing. If your performance was especially bad, you had to wait until Patch 2. Patch 3 had a little thing called 'The Lower City Crash' bug. Where you can (and a lot DID) get stuck in a recursive crash loop due to undying NPCs somewhere or something? I don't know what the cause was, but that took weeks to get resolved. And if you were really unlucky, you had the inability to save your game because you talked to a vendor. Having to find workarounds to saving means your game is broken, sorry.

Now we have Patch 4. Luckily for us, this isn't a zero sum game. There are degrees of broken. This is just the worst it's been.

And FYI, CP2077 was pulled because refunds were offered that were against Sony's refund policy. Not because the game was that broken. Two years earlier, Sony had Fallout: New Vegas port and that was never pulled.

I think asking publicly visible devs about it on Twitter is a great idea. I'd do it myself but I don't do social media. I'd be interested to know if people are on there asking them about this though. If not, I'd be shocked. There's almost no YouTube videos about it either, other than ones from smaller channels. This whole situation is like the most Orwellian shit I've ever seen in video games media. The game literally cannot be played past Act 2 and no one is saying shit about it.

If you're on social media, by all means please do this. Put them on blast, politely.

People are in Swen Vincke's replies, in their Director of Publishing's replies (@Cromwelp, I don't actually know his full name because he does't list it anywhere but he's listed as an Affiliate on the official Larian Twitter), and on the official Larian and BG3 accounts. If the other devs have accounts on Twitter, I cannot find them at all. No one else who actually works for Larian is followed by the main Larian Twitter, except for their VAs.

But anyway, people have been asking Vincke and Cromwelp, but absolutely no replies. Vincke posted about how their programmers are working on the memory leak issue in their engine on his personal twitter, back on November 2, and then absolutely nothing but posting about awards and concerts. Cromwelp just posts about other video games he's playing. It's very frustrating none of them care to communicate with their players.

ETA: Honestly, it's better if their employees don't have much presence on Twitter due to the tendency people on there have towards harassment in large numbers when they're upset about someone/something, but Vincke is the director of Larian, he does use his personal account to post updates on patch/hotfix development that is shared nowhere else the general playerbase will see, he should be be talking about this issue with Act 3 there at the very least.

Try Send Email to Then or Find Someone Inside there to Make your Case Reach the Uper Dudes..
This way they will Talk about that and by by Goty for Larian.

(normally they dont read Email from Users and Stuff Like that.. if yu really want to be listened.. Better to Find Someone that Works inside there.. and Plead your case to Then and Pray for this to be Good Enought for then to Make Something and want to Talk About.. but in Truth.. i dont think they will.)

Larian Reputation at the Moment its Like CD Project Red when they Released Witcher 3..
Evrybody Loves then and call then the Best Game company ever existed in Man Kind..
so i dont Beleave that At the Moment anybody will Have the Balls to call then Out and Speach out the Truth..

The gamer just ran article about this about an hour ago, looks like word is starting to spread

Here's a link to the Gamer article Stevenvfx mentioned:

https://www.thegamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-act-3-broken-unplayable-bugs-patch-4/

It's actually just going over replies to a Reddit thread posted 9 hours ago. But it's something.

That's funny. According to that article, User King_Brass evidently copied and pasted my own words from the thread I started here: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=922399#Post922399
Second person to do this. Ha! I guess that means people like my writing...