The launch for the latest expansion of popular space exploration game Elite Dangerous has not been going very well, to put it gently. Elite Dangerous: Odyssey debuted last week and was met with overwhelmingly negative responses from fans who have cited multiple game-crashing bugs throughout the game. The game currently sits at a paltry 31% rating on Steam. That’s an incredible low when you compare it to the 77% rating the original game received.
The fan reviews have been brutal, stating that the game is “pathetic” and totally broken. The reactions have pointed the finger at the game’s developer and have complained that they knowingly released the expansion without completing it first. The first sales figures for the game have yet to be released but it is assumed that the uneven launch will certainly affect it.
The buggy launch has been so embarrassing for publisher Frontier Developments that its CEO has come forward to publicly apologize for the problems that players are experiencing. CEO and founder David Braben took to the Frontier message boards to take blame and plot a course ahead for the troubled game.
“First and foremost, I would like to apologise wholeheartedly to those who have been suffering from these problems. I would like to reassure you that we take these issues very seriously and that they are our top priority and focus,” Braben said in his post. He later went on to comment that the team was hard at work on patches to get the game running at its full capacity. He promised major stability improvements in the near future.
Braben’s apology was sincere and accepted by most of the Elite Dangerous fans on the message boards but it remains to be seen if the damage done will cripple the game permanently. If Frontier is able to fix what is broken, the game could rebound as others have. However, it will take a lot of hard work for the fan reaction to be repaired.
