Now, I've worked as a game tester for almost 4 years, across 4 different companies and have put my skills to use over a myriad of games over that time. Generally our job in quality assurance is to act as, essentially, a last line of defense between product and consumer; or, to put it more literally, we work to make sure that the game that you've spent your hard earned dollars on actually works the way it is intended to. There was a time that games would have to be nearly impeccable to be released (no game can be 100% bug free, but they can come pretty damned close). However, in this age of universal online connectivity, it seems that gaming companies are simply allowing more bugs to fall through the cracks when submitting a game for release, with the safeguard that they can simply come out with a patch to fix them at a later time. I'm about to tell you why this lazy, money grubbing practice absolutely, positively sucks.
