Decline [GQ was right] I am a proud member of the Patch Hater Club

[rusty_shackleford]

For the unaware, a bunch of gamedevs got their panties in a bunch because some british rag called them out on being lazy fucks who release unfinished games because they can just patch it later
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/stranger-things-netflix-retroactively-editing

When the Xbox 360 was introduced back in the mid-2000s, it brought with it an epochal shift: consumer-friendly, broad online connectivity, boasting global multiplayer, party chats and the ability to download new games. With this digital tidal wave came the console “bug patch,” less-than-a-megabyte updates allowing developers to clean and refine code well after their product had shipped. Call of Duty fans could complain about gun balance, for example, and damage modifiers would be tweaked; Oblivion players identified visual glitches, and the dev team could go in with a glue gun.

But alas, as they say, innovation is so often fuelled by laziness, and now even the biggest gaming studios could afford to be negligent. Day-one patches have become the gaming industry standard; games are typically shipped in working condition but in need of a post-purchase zhuzh.

As you'd expect from terminally online developers addicted to twatter, they were immediately OUTRAGED!!! that someone would imply they're lazy for games taking 3x longer to make with half the content and double the bugs.


Therefore, this thread is for us enlightened people who realize patches are a cancer on gaming. They encourage lazy devs to release broken games, constantly make changes to things players like, and regularly strip features away.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

https://www.shacknews.com/cortex/ar...eeds-to-stop-removing-content-from-their-game

Opinion: Destiny 2 Needs To Stop Removing Content From Their Game​

Destiny 2 is a very odd game, instead of expanding locations, dungeons (Strikes in Destiny 2), or Raids, they permanently remove older content to be put into what they call “The Vault” and you can no longer do quest, earn rewards, do dungeons, or explore these areas, they are, once again, permanently removed from the game.

DAS RITE, if you bought Destiny 2 at launch content you PAID FOR is no longer available to play.

 

[Maggot]

games are typically shipped in working condition

Is that even true at this point? Also the GTA games getting patched to remove music from games over a decade old or major balance changes mid-playthrough with no way to revert to a patch of your choice in Underrail are more examples of patch-happy cancer.

 

[Jvegi]

Most of the games we praise were patched multiple times before most of us got to play them. So stfu a bit.

Also, Josh is being quite an alfa here.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Most of the games we praise were patched multiple times before most of us got to play them. So stfu a bit.

How many movies or tv shows that you enjoy require patches before you can enjoy them?
"nooo you can't apply a similar standard to the *checks notes* most profitable entertainment industry in the world!!!"

keep choking on Kotick's gold cock.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Is that even true at this point?

ask a console owner the last time they could buy a game and play it without mandatory day 1 patching
they're basically the last place "shipped games" even exist, gamedevs work in a perpetual early access state now

 

[Dr1f7]

>playing new games in 2022

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

Man, Josh Sawyer comes across as such a child in his response. You would think he would have the self-awareness that reacting in anger like this makes you seem irrational and unhinged. Or do game developers on twitter think this is a normal response? I just follow economic news and stuff on twitter.

Do people not remember it was possible to play a game without a patch back in the day? Hell, if you shipped a game a buggy mess it was going to fail, cause most people didn't have the internet connections for large file patches. That's why Pool of Radiance(1990s version) and Temple of Elemental Evil failed.

 

[Zombra]

Yeah, because back in the day all games were perfect at launch, and none of us played games that had little bugs that we tried to ignore and figure out workarounds to. Yep.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Yeah, because back in the day all games were perfect at launch, and none of us played games that had little bugs that we tried to ignore and figure out workarounds to. Yep.

if you released games half as broken as a typical release now your company went under.
see: Troika

 

[Wunderbar]

AFAIK you can't even play singleplayer campaign in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019 due to game's bloated data storage and DLC packs that were added into the game.

 

[Kerghnox]

Prison Architect is a good example of updates completely fucking the game up. The game went from being slightly buggy to completely unplayable. They add new DLC that introduces shitloads of bugs, fix 50% of them (being generous here), then repeat the process with the next DLC. Their code butchers also drastically reduced the performance of large prisons, something the game struggled with already. Parajew is the worst, fuck Introversion for selling out too.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Well we've been complaining about this for a long time. But it certainly had nothing to do with the Xbawx and definitely not the 360 - by that time Patch Culture was already in full swing.

It started with Blizzard and specifically Diablo 2, the first game to have a major patch on launch day. From there on it was a slippery slope until the horror show of today, with always online patching and DLC.

And of course in regards to removing content from games you already have, Patch Culture's even worse cousin, Rent Culture means that you never really own the games you buy. You could buy a game and it gets pulled from Steam or GOG or something due to corporate jewry no one gives a fuck about in the background and you're screwed.

 

[Cromwell]

ask a console owner the last time they could buy a game and play it without mandatory day 1 patching

After stopping buying consoles when I moved out from my parents, I bought a ps3 again later specifically to avoid downloads because the shitty area I lived in had no cable internet, only wifi which was shit and capped at 3gb a month. So I bought this thing with the expectation it works like the consoles I had when I was younger, put the game in start playing. The, literally, first thing this piece of shit asked me to do was updating the fucking firmware with a bigger patch and after putting my game in to patch that.

 

[gerey]

So I bought this thing with the expectation it works like the consoles I had when I was younger, put the game in start playing.

That's one big reason consoles have been steadily losing ground over the last two generations. They're not plug and play anymore, console releases now require to be installed and patched, on top of the firmware updates you mentioned (which are oftentimes just pushed through to prevent people from jailbreaking the system and bring no benefit to the end user).

Once you're sitting on the couch waiting for the console to download the latest 100 GB day 1 patch you might as well start asking yourself why not just buy a PC and be done with it.

 

[Semiurge]

firmware updates you mentioned (which are oftentimes just pushed through to prevent people from jailbreaking the system and bring no benefit to the end user).

Aka HDCP DRM certificates that are kept up to date.

 

[vibehunter]

Man, Josh Sawyer comes across as such a child in his response. You would think he would have the self-awareness that reacting in anger like this makes you seem irrational and unhinged. Or do game developers on twitter think this is a normal response?

That is just Twitter culture. Fake outrage and moral grandstanding in service of clout-chasing.

 

[Utgard-Loki]

"if you complain about us releasing buggy garbage for a price tag of 60 bucks you don't understand game development!"
that's about the response i'd expect from a guy whose most prominent works include nwn2 and fallout new vegas.

 

[toughasnails]

This is p much coming from the older console-only gamers. Not the younger ones who started with the last two generation or even late 360/PS3 era, but from those who remember the time when they could just throw the catridge or CD of the last Final Fantasy into your console without even thinking about something going wrong or even having the language and frame of reference for stuff like "bugs" or "performance"... This is likely tied with the nostalgia for childhood or youth for such people. Maybe their own aging run parallel with the games losing this reliability and "innocence" in their eyes...

 

[Absinthe]

Leave it to Bugsidian to fail to see the problem with buggy D1 releases and elect to make excuses instead. I was thinking Josh Sawyer would be smarter than this, but I guess not. Turns out he prefers to bury his head in the sand and claim that D1 buggy releases are just so unavoidable and then whine about how reviewers should be even more forgiving to a broken, dysfunctional game. Shit like this is a major reason why buying games D1 is a bad idea. All you're going to do is frustrate yourself with a broken game and end up having to wait weeks for patches to fix the most glaring shit.

 

[Zombra]

I remember calling Bethesda on a telephone plugged into a wall because Daggerfall had bugs. I explained the issue to a human being who answered the phone when it rang. They mailed me a 3.5" floppy disk with a patch.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I remember calling Bethesda on a telephone plugged into a wall because Daggerfall had bugs. I explained the issue to a human being who answered the phone when it rang. They mailed me a 3.5" floppy disk with a patch.

Bethesda gets away with it because of Todd's smile, nobody else had that kind of leverage.

 

[Ravielsk]

This reminds me how early in the xbox360s life cycle developers were complaining about Microsoft charging absurd amounts of money for distributing even small couple of MB patch(around 10k I believe) and now its obvious that it was the right call on Microsofts side. Had steam adopted a similar policy I am positive the quality of titles as well as the selection would shoot up like a geyser.

 

[†††]

Gaymurs get what they deserve. They could've prevented this shit two decades ago but...

 

[Lim-Dûl]

It's clear that he's retarded and he's not getting any better so why do you gays keep obsessing over him like you hate him because he won't give you his cum?