Poll: Day-One patches...is it justifiable?

[FakeSympathy]

Remember those days where you either rented/bought the game, pop it in the console, and just play the game?
Look at what's happening now days. You get hyped for the game, you pre-order or buy on launch for whatever you do to get your hands on the game, you insert the disc or let the digital game install, and then......bullshit. A goddamn day one patch. And as your hype starts to crumble down, you now realize the patch can take anywhere from 5 min to 2 hours to download. Hell, if the game is digital, It takes even longer to download.

I mean, i get the devs trying to iron out any bugs, glitches, and issues, but if there is going to a problem, why not fix it and delay the game? The best/only excuse I've seen so far is "Yeah, it's too late to delay the game now." And you guys didn't think of patching the game earlier because....?

I get the fact that most of the game now days use online feature and that requires patching, but goddamn, stop making us gamers wait even longer!

 

[Elfgore]

Yes... I don't see why anyone would complain other than to have another reason to light their torches and sharpen their pitchforks.

Games aren't finished the Monday before they get released, they tend to be finished a few weeks before release date. If you want to be glass half empty, the Devs are aware of bugs and yet the publisher or the devs themselves continued with the date as planned to get those sales and patch the game after it starts getting manufactured and shipped out. Glass half full would be that the bugs escaped the dev's notice, and with how complex games have gotten it doesn't seem unlikely for this to happen, and have to quickly patch the game before release.

Honestly, when it comes down to it. I rather wait a short time for a patch to download then wait another several months to play a game.

 

[Loonyyy]

Of course they are. Often they're practically a requirement.

Whether the games being that broken is acceptable or not might be a better question, but that's not just an arbitrary thing. Games "go gold" quite a while before release, and that's an important part of their release process, so any fixes past a certain point just aren't making it into the first file, or on the disk.

Why developers don't want to bail at the last minute in the leadup to launch and delay it? Well, because they've got a large amount of marketting money riding on this, convincing people to buy it at launch, so there's something to lose. Additionally, hobbyists like us follow these things, and if we see a game pulled at the last minute in the week or month before launch, we're probably going to speculate that something is wrong with it, that it was so significantly broken that they wouldn't release it, and that's probably going to turn people off a purchase.

Honestly, I expect a certain amount of bugs, they happen, and ideally they'll be patched. The release period will uncover more bugs than QA, that's just the way it is. I think it's hopeless to expect a perfect release. That said, a release should at least basically work, unlike say, Arkham Knight, or Assassin's Creed Unity.

It's never that important to get right to it anyway to be honest. You have a 2 hour update in front of you? Find something else to do, it isn't exactly hard, be glad you didn't get saddled with the bullshit of a gamedisc which is literally just the steam client with the steam key so it can download itself, in it's entirety.

 

[Mutant1988]

Depends on how broken the game is.

If the game goes gold (ie, supposedly "finished") in a completely dysfunctional state (Assassins Creed Unity) then no, it's not acceptable. If the day 1 patch is the entire rest of the game (There was a recent game I can't remember the name of that had several gigabytes of data as it's day 1 patch and that had tons of features unavailable without it), then no, that's not acceptable either.

Finish the game first, make sure it's functional, then put it on the market.

Don't punish the customers for your ineptitude and poor planning or attempt to standardize such practises as part of overly rushed development cycles solely because of greed (Ubisoft, here's looking at you).

That said, day 1 patches are just necessary, to some extent, since games are so much more complicated to make these days. But the extent to which some products are broken upon release goes far beyond what's acceptable.

 

[DementedSheep]

Eh, it is not unreasonable to think they found more bugs during the time between going gold and actual release. Every-time you think you've found the last one another pops up and if it's minor or rare glitches (which can still be difficult to fix) I can see why they wouldn't want to hold back the entire schedule (of course it would help if they didn't announce release dates so soon) to fix them especially since release dates are usually set for specific dates for marketing reasons. There also comes a point where you have to go "ok if we don't release this now it's just never gong to get released because there is always something".
If it's massive patch because the game is broken on release that's not ok. Shit should have been fixed before hand and they should not be relying on patching it later.

 

[Metalmacher]

You have to understand, games these days are so complex, they can't be compared to their predecessors from the 90's. They are a bigger undertakings with more room for error, it's not that unreasonable to think that some would require day one patches and more. If you can't handle patches than you shouldn't be playing modern games, s'what I think.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

they tend to be finished a few weeks before release date.

I have a radical notion; Finish the game, then announced that it will be released a a couple of months.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Nothing wrong with patches, everything wrong with releasing a broken game however. Especially when you are then forced to update for hours on end before the fucker will even work.
If I was running one of these game shops that shit would put your product to the curb until a full version was released.

 

[kasperbbs]

I don't mind the patches, but i have an unlimited download cap and decent enough speeds, that might have something to do with my indifference.

 

[The White Hunter]

Remember the days where Europe tended to get more stable versions because it came out late? It's because the printing came later and issues could be ironed out.

The games go to print and are ready to go long before the actual release date comes about. Patching day one to fix bugs found after the fact is valuable, though often it can be frustrating for those with slower network speeds.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

they tend to be finished a few weeks before release date.

I have a radical notion; Finish the game, then announced that it will be released a a couple of months.

While this might make sense, there is still a business element to it.
Once the game is done, you still have a few hundred highly skilled employees and middle management people who need a daily paycheck, so until the game is released, it's just sitting there not really doing anything for the company while the ad campaign might be more then the game itself.

So that means you'd be paying the same workforce for even longer for little more then a boost in functionality and, while that's great for end users, I can imagine the number cruncher getting a stroke and it could lead to even more cases of massive layoffs of development staff around big releases as the company would be even less encouraged to keep all those programmers around doing nothing while the game is waiting to be released.

 

[Odbarc]

I think I'd take an every-day-patch over a game that needs patching and doesn't get it.
I sort of hate it when 'nothing is broken' and you get a patch. And it's a big file and it takes a long time to download. And maybe it doesn't even tell you what's being fixed.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Game goes gold a good amount of time before its release, and the development doesn't just halt there. Day 1 patches are that nice addition (for the most part) to the release, knowing a company is still focused on fixing bugs. However the experience post-patch determines whether or not the patch itself was a good idea or a complete fuckup.
I don't expect a developer to get every single bug eradicated and as long as the patch itself fixes things, then I can get behind it.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I find it disgraceful that a company can release a product that isn't quite finished and then fix the problems later.

If i bought a new table and when i get it home the company arrive at my door to 'fix' a problem they already knew about then i would be returning the product and never dealing with the firm again. I'm sure trading standards might have something to say to them aswell for such dodgy practice.

 

[Sewa_Yunga]

It's justifiable if the patches are reasonable.

For example, Rebel Galaxy released yesterday with a day-one patch that was 2.9MB in size. That patch contained two fixes/tweaks. Perfectly reasonable.
But companies shipping a broken game, hoping they'll be able to fix it until release? Definitely not.

 

[XT6Wagon]

Of course day 1 patches are ok. It can be several weeks between a game going gold and the sale date. That is time for more testing and bug fixes.

Now if the game goes gold in a unplayable state....

Edit:
Also Day 1 patches are a way to keep retail copies from being able to play prior to the sale date.

 

[happyninja42]

In theory I'm fine with day 1 patches, but it sort of depends on the context. If the company rushed release to get the game out on a particular date, and knowingly let a sub-standard game hit the market, then I'm less ok with it.

If it's a genuine case of "shit, our playtesting didn't catch this critical error with people using *insert hardware item of your choice*, we need to patch that" then I have no issues. There are so many varied types of systems out there, that it's easy to expect at least some might have serious critical problems that need to be addressed.

Do I think most day 1 patches are the former instead of the latter? Yes, but the idea of a patch to try and smooth out issues itself isn't a bad issue.

I dunno, I guess I just don't worry about this because I don't pre order games, or buy them day 1. I wait a year and get them on sale, patched up and ready to play.

Patience is a virtue my fellow gamers, patience is a virtue.

 

[Lightknight]

The game has been packaged and shipping for months before release. It would be silly to think that there wouldn't be patches or any dev work performed during those months.