Day one patch

I think, based on zero relevant knowledge aside for being an end user, that games are so big and complex now that they’re never entirely finished. Ever. So publishers pick a date, and the developers are never ready for it because it’s a never ending process - so there’s probably a battle at that point where the developers are saying ‘we’re not ready’ and the publishers saying ‘you’re never bloody ready’ and sometimes they come to a compromise and sometimes they don’t, and sometimes we get a mess of a game that is eventually ready to play months after release

Yeah there was also another game where the day one patch was effectively the game effectively fucking over anyone on disc because the game on the disc was broken beyond belief. It was a big game but I can't remember what it was.

I don't know.

Most of the complaints I see about games come from the internet.

I mentioned elsewhere (Reddit) that I'd been playing Saints Row recently and was met with derision; "it's a completely broken game", "it's trash", "runs like shit" etc etc.

I didn't notice any of these things. That's not to say it doesn't happen, I'm sure games are released broken. It's just that I so rarely play stuff on day 1 that they're almost always fixed by the time I get to them.

Option 3:

"The sad state of things, and the first of many more patches to come."

If they, in any way, help alleviate crunch then I'm not completely against them.

Honestly always hated the day one patch ever since they started showing up in the late PS3/360 generation and, after zero impact to sales, provided the industry with a green light to put any half finished code on a disc, slap a full price sticker on it, and do a "Super sorry but we're listening to the community" message when there was some sort of outcry. I'm still astonished that there was an almost immediate acceptance from gamers to fork over their hard-earned for the privilege of essentially becoming QA testers.

There's just seemingly no minimum standard of quality a game has to reach to go gold these days and that's insane to me. Of course that means literally hundreds of disc-based games released in the last few years are completely broken. Limited or non-existent internet connection? Fuck you, find another hobby.

Anyway I've ranted about this before so I'll shut up now. (Also, I bought Skyrim upon release so I'm as much part of the problem as anybody.)

As a consumer, it’s bullshit. I’m paying a premium at launch to have a physical copy permanently filled with issues.

As a software developer, I also know how many snags only become apparent at the last minute when end users actually get their grubby mitts on it and some decent error reports come in at volume.

Honestly it’s just incredibly hard to recreate the level of testing you get inherently when the app is in the wild. And I’m basing this on products that are about 1% as complex as a AAA game

There is a gap between release and when the version 1.0 is completed to be fully compiled.

During that time game cannot be changed.

Then it goes to be recorded onto discs for you console pea... pleasant fellows then to be shipped to warehouses then to shops for the official release.

That gives time to fix some bugs which were left to do later.

Hence patch day one.

So not just marketing bs. Just a sign of complex development.

I wonder if marketing just see it as a way to extend the publicity window?

It gets a lot of print inches and coverage with everybody and their dog covering the release and the subsequent bashing on social networks.

The patches then drip feed in on a day by day basis slowly increasing performance until it's now running loads better but extending coverage and maintaining mind share.

Then a whole bunch of coverage again on the day it's all fixed. Praise these hard working developers for toiling away.

Sure lots of people like a working game but the amount of ranting and vitriol is definitely increased when everybody piles on, which just scales because people love nothing better than seeing a hated entity getting a social kicking.

I don't think so, a game like Callisto Protocol got kicked on day one and it didn't recover to make a positive financial impact. I believe it sold quite low numbers in relation to the money put into it. Marketing don't care about the nuts and bolts because quite rightly the people who aren't always online like us don't hear about this kind of stuff and just buy it because of the IP, those are the sales they are going for, also people who are online still pre-order against all past evidence. Why would they stop releasing buggy shit?

Not really as the digital version you preloaded two days before is the version on the disc in most cases.

Sony games are usually reliable and polished from day 1.

I know of 2 people who don't connect online at all, they have to make do with what's on the disk.