Day One Patches

And while I'm thinking about the games industry, what's with all the complaining about day one patches? Far Cry 4 has a patch waiting to download as soon as it's unlocked.  It'd be cool if they downloaded the patch with the pre-load data, but I know it's not likely.

Day one DLC sucks, because that means they left content out of the game in order to try to get more money, a few more dollars on top of the $60 they're already charging you.  It just feels gross.  Why not give us a complete game?  Expansions or episodes like Bioshock Infinite gave us make more sense.  The two episodes back in Rapture wouldn't really have fit in the game, they're their own stories.  And really if they had released those episodes Day One I wouldn't have minded, because they're not part of the finished game, they're their own thing.  Day one DLC with extra characters, missions, guns, etc, are things that were designed to fit in the main game but studios chose to leave them out to charge for the extras later.

Bitching about day one patches though?  Are you fucking kidding me?  Are people really upset that they're fixing bugs this quickly?  Yes the days of NES and PS1 are over, where a game had to be completely bug-free, because there were no updates.  It is an inconvenience?  Yes.  But in PC at least I don't blame a studio for not testing every possible configuration.  It would be impossible. People are going to report issues, and Ubisoft is actually so on top of it many of the issues were fixed when the game came out.  And let's not talk about all the games and shitty ports that never saw a single patch at all.  you'd think we might be a little more appreciative when someone is jumping on it,

A brief aside, I don't want to come off like an Ubisoft fanboy.  I thought it was really cool when they released Rayman Origins DRM-free, but apparently it was just a phase because Rayman Legends had DRM.  I don't really like Uplay but you only need to log into it to activate games and then you can leave it in offline mode, it's not that big of a deal.  I did really like Far Cry 3 though, and I'm really looking forward to Far Cry 4.  It's supposed to be more of the same, which sounds good to me.  I do hope the story is a bit better, I see what they were trying to do with Far Cry 3 but I think the game got away from them.

Anyway, I know the frustration stems from wanting to play a game and having to wait for patches, and I know this is an even bigger deal because it affects the biggest fans, the ones going out on a limb and buying the game before they get any word of mouth from friends.  But do me a favor and look at the Saints Row 2 pc port.  Look at Deadly Premonition.  Be glad that Ubisoft is on top of it.  It's annoying but it sure as hell beats the alternative.

David