Topic: Day One Patches

Browsing through the gaming news today, I found a couple of things that seemed to be connected.

First, some buyers in Paris seem to already be able to buy MK8 earlier (prior to the release date).

Second, someone posts a Youtube video saying that his early-bought copy of Watch Dogs was "a broken piece of doggeypoopoooopsie". Some responses to this says that he needs to wait for the day one patch, posted on the actual release date, which would fix these bugs (and that this is to prevent people to play games early).

Then I recalled that Child of Light had a day one patch as well, that apparently to a user fixed some serious issues with the sound on the Wii U (I didn't run the game without the patch myself).

If it's true that Ubisoft releases intentionally buggy retail copies just to prevent users from playing the game in advance (and avoid what happened to MK8 in Paris), what is the actual meaning of a retail copy of a game?

It can only mean that due to demand in games, games are left unfinished and so they rely on these patches so it can be fixed.

Honestly, if I were to make games, I'd make it finished as much as possible and making sure that the game doesn't end up with some bugs.

Its more a matter of them releasing the game before it's fully tested. It takes time to physically print the disks, later versions will have the day 1 patch. Nintendo on the other hand have been historically pretty damn good with quality control. So there are less large day 1 patches for Nintendo's content. Not that this is a new thing, how many glitches and bugs are there in Wii, GC, N64, SNES or even NES games?

In the old days if it was completely broken they had to replace all the carts. (Or do stuff like include the expansion like Donkey Kong 64 had to). Even up to the DS stuff was still recalled.

Don't see the problem.

Not everything can be tested by the time the discs have to be printed and ready for distribution.

What about in the future when people want to play these systems 20 years from now but don't have the patches for these games.

With certain games it's understandable that there are teething problems associated with having huge volumes of users all logging on at once on day one but then there are so many that have no excuse. There are so many little things in games that make me think; "how many QA testers did it take to miss this obviously massive flaw?". They're normally just annoyances like having to confirm something 3 times to get to the next screen or the classic "This game still features an autosave function, just like it has for the last 2 years of you playing it, so press A to get to the next screen, but don't forget to press A twice because you have to confirm the confirmati......and it's crashed"

Day one patches are also a way to annoy hackers and pirates.

Day one patches are fine, you never know if a problem will show up too late to fix before releasing.
Day 1 paid DLC on the other hand....... it's less than welcome.

@Kodeen
As someone who does work QA in the Industry you hit the nail on the head with that

The concept is good, but I think they should be to get stuff missed, not a way to ship a game earlier. I think it's abused a bit too much by everyone.

Follow-up questions: If a game developer relies on day one patches, how will that affect reviews? Will reviewers avoid discussing bugs, because it might (or might not) be fixed in the "day one" release?

at least we can thank the day 1 patches that things like Sonic 06 aren't coming from big companies with tight deadlines.

I think they get special review copies that already have the patch on them.

More likely beta access to the update channel. (However it is implemented).

The Magazines often used to play stuff using devkits but I don't think that happens any more.

Day one patches are here to stay forever.

Then they won't have the patch.