Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Day One Patches



     Almost every game of this generation has had a day-one patch, The Witcher 3, MGSV, and even Halo 5: Guardians will have one. You'd think game devs would want to put out a finished product, but a game coming with a day one patch means it wasn't a finished product upon going "Gold". Day one patches have been upwards of 16gb (Sniper Elite 3 on Xbox One) and as small as a few hundred megabytes, regardless the download size of these patches, they are still bad, yet they're becoming normal.

     The normality is unsettling, these started as something harmless in earlier games like Skyrim (not necessarily the first to include one) and it has obviously grown into something more. Patches have grown larger and have started including more than just bug fixes, like THPS5 having entire game modes "patched in"(guess what, that's not a patch, that is a game, Activision) is there something more to day-one patches that we have yet to see? It is obvious that a large majority of games releasing this fall will include a patch that will release with the game, Halo, (probably not) Fallout 4, Star Wars Battlefront, and Tomb Raider being the biggest examples, (Note, the only game that is confirmed having a day-one patch is Halo).

     We as gamers should hold devs and publishers accountable for putting out a finished game and not a game that is kinda finished, but still needs a huge day-one patch. Not everyone has access to an internet connection, and if devs aren't putting out games that are complete, some people won't be able to experience a finished product. I would rather have a game be delayed by a month or two and get a complete experience, rather than being sold an incomplete game and being expected to wait longer to download a patch.

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