This is quite a bit more shameless. He appears to be talking about bug fixes rather than adding new content. He talks as if games are shipped bug free or even functional, when the standard model for well over a decade has been to ship out buggy messes, have a day one patch, then fix things with even more patches in the months following the game's release. I don't know why it's so much to ask to release free patches when the players are serving as free beta testers.
Day one patches exist because games get etched onto discs months before release date and if they quash a bug after that they have to patch it day of since they can't patch a sealed disk. Day one patches aren't a big deal if they're small, but they've started being up to 30 or 40 gigs.
The day one patch isn't really the problem here, and for reasons you describe it's pretty much unavoidable. The product should be at the very least functional after the day one patch is applied, and they should put off the release if that's unfeasible. The real problem is it often takes months after release and half a dozen patches to reach that functional state, and they often leave bugs that aren't game breaking unaddressed completely. I'd obviously rather them fix their shit than not fix their shit, but we really ought to stop rewarding this behavior from companies instead of incentivizing it like the jackass the article is talking about suggests.
This is quite a bit more shameless. He appears to be talking about bug fixes rather than adding new content. He talks as if games are shipped bug free or even functional, when the standard model for well over a decade has been to ship out buggy messes, have a day one patch, then fix things with even more patches in the months following the game's release. I don't know why it's so much to ask to release free patches when the players are serving as free beta testers.
Day one patches exist because games get etched onto discs months before release date and if they quash a bug after that they have to patch it day of since they can't patch a sealed disk. Day one patches aren't a big deal if they're small, but they've started being up to 30 or 40 gigs.
The day one patch isn't really the problem here, and for reasons you describe it's pretty much unavoidable. The product should be at the very least functional after the day one patch is applied, and they should put off the release if that's unfeasible. The real problem is it often takes months after release and half a dozen patches to reach that functional state, and they often leave bugs that aren't game breaking unaddressed completely. I'd obviously rather them fix their shit than not fix their shit, but we really ought to stop rewarding this behavior from companies instead of incentivizing it like the jackass the article is talking about suggests.
That and because they release games in pieces via DLCs is why I don't play games anymore that haven't been out for at least a year.
Does he? The article makes it sound like this is about "a $9.99 DLC adding a lot of new content to the game as well as a true ending."