If it's over 500MB, it's not a patch, it's missing content

Developers and publishers are giving us incomplete, broken games with the attitude that they can always patch them later. The latest update to Assassin's Creed: Unity is nearly 7GB of data. This is getting out of control.

[madmonkey01]

does the latest patch replace the footprint of all the other patches or is it added onto it?

[Reverie990]

They said a lot of it is replacing existing files so the game size won't really increase by 6.7GB. Not sure by how much exactly it does increase, though.

[hay]

Well, they might have used the difference mold for the patching, and... re-arranged or re-rendered some of the assets. This way they can even get you to basically re-download entire game, with most of it being completely undistinguishable from original, and still call it a patch and a good work's day.

[on_line_forever]

lol

[Paprika]

IT'S OVER 500!!!!

[MasterCornholio]

Wait till it's over 9000!!!!!!!

And when that happens it will unleash the level that it was holding back.

[FullmetalRoyale]

Ubi:

Pfff, this isn't even my final form.

[G20WLY]

This was less of an article, more of a rant - and I agree with the author 100%.

Halo:MCC had a 20gb patch and yet the multiplayer was still completely broken. Both it and AC:Unity are still having regular patches thrown at them in an attempt to make them playable.

It's not okay to do this, just to hit the holiday release window. They know it's broken, but they want our money - if we don't give it to them and practice will die out.

[ChrisChambers]

Master Chief Collection had a 20gb download that much is true. But, it wasn't a patch, it was all the multiplayer content they couldn't fit on the disk. It's had a lot of patches, but nowhere near 20gb worth. The initial patch was 1gb, the rest have been nowhere close to that. I'd prefer to have a game work at launch as it's intended, but if it doesn't I'd rather them patch it and get it working then to say f*#k it.

I can't speak for AC: Unity, since I don't own it. But I will agree that 7gb is a little ridiculous. Especially when there's a bug in the patch that requires you to fully redownload the game.

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

This may sound crazy, but maybe they should just hire a QA team? I mean given how widespread these problems are I refuse to believe they had anyone test it beforehand.

[AtomicGerbil]

Or they had QA testers that were ignored....quite the common practice lately apparently.

[hay]

I think Ubisoft is outsourcing QA. Had a chance on working with few high profile projects with QA outsourced which was deemed experienced and professional. We played Sisyphus pushing the milestones up the hill for some time, but it finally went acceptable. The feedback time was atrocious and meticulousness wasn't simply there to get it on time, which rarely happened in such magnitude with internal teams.
Ubisoft apparently isn's as soft and bashed that table with a ceramic cup.

[thricetold]

Dudes and dudettes, WE, the paying customers are the QA beta testers. Been this way for about 3 years now.

Stop buying at release, stop listening to these lying ass reviews who don't even MENTION these issues. STOP.

Start being more informed customers! Start making them WORK for our loyalty and funds.

[Talgrath]

Having worked in QA, let me tell you what happened. Someone in QA absolutely saw these bugs. Someone in QA reported these bugs. Then someone in management marked the bugs as low importance because they had to get the game out the door. Management screwed this pooch, no doubt about it in my mind.

[illtornworld]

why test something when they know us ignorant gamers will buy there garbage lol. it is ridiculous though 500mb plus updates and its like every week! smh. i cry at this gen. i miss PS2 days.

[susanto1228]

How does it feel to pay 59.99 and beta a game for a company? Not good eh...

[PizzaSteve]

Glad I didn't buy. Just about every game this gen have felt like a beta. So many patches.

[dreamed]

I couldn't agree anymore with you,i'm really regreting my purchase now,what with xbl having service alerts everyday that last for days & all the network issues that my xbox keeps telling me are on their end not mine.

Next-gen has been a total let down all we got for £350-£500 was better textures and nothing else...wheres all the next gen physics and detailed massive interactive worlds???.

I see devs doing things like watchdogs/ac rogue for example...no multiplayer on 360 which it quite easily could have done just to try and make the x1/ps4 look more powerfull than it is.

Farcry 4 is just 3 on a new (and less interesting) map....i know i'm ubi bashing but isnt that fashionable nowadays???...

[Double_O_Revan]

That's I stopped buying games at launch and at full price a long time ago. It really doesn't take long anymore for a game to hit $40 and below.

And in that time I can hear and read about any problems the game may have. And usually in that time, the developers can fix any problems the game has. So by the time I pick it up its fixed, and at a good price.

[Bloodjunkie]

puhhh so lets tell them to make only 499mb patches to stay credible!

[Anonagrog]

It's worth remembering that most game/engine binaries will rarely weigh in at more than a few tens of MB, even with dynamic libraries. Most of the patch size will be asset changes and not code, and even then it may only be a small modification that unfortunately requires large amounts of unmodified data be re-downloaded.

Most game assets are compiled into binary formats optimized for use at run-time. On top of this the compiled assets will often be packaged into larger packages to further improve seek and overall load times, as well as to allow for direct loading-in-place to memory based on the compiled blob sizes and offsets to simplify the run-time resource management by the engine. The downside to this is if there's a problem with any asset in one of those larger packages, the entire package may have to be reconditioned dev-side and downloaded again player-side, even if it's for a few minor changes overall. Different devs handle resource packaging in different ways, but it is a very common occurrence and can vary across platforms.

The increase in patch sizes are an unfortunate yet often necessary side-effect that comes with the progression to 'next-gen', both due to h/w allowances and the change in asset and/or data quality and variation. There's not really an easy way out of this, short of getting everything perfect for release - easier said than done!

Even the largest of QA teams working for several years would be outdone for hours-of-playtime versus the first couple of hours played by the 2 million first week buyers of AC:U - without public alphas/betas everywhere it's just a hard thing to test, especially with open world designs.

NB. This isn't to excuse the AC:U mess up, though! Even if with testing and bug-fixes being an industry constant, these particular issues are so widespread that it seems fairly unlikely that it wasn't observed internally.

[Whymii]

+1 Well said

[eZJrg6ur]

Came here to post just this. Most people don't understand the realities of software development from a code perspective, which tends to cause unrealistic expectations at times (how could there be bugs? why is there no patch/why is this patch so big?).

FWIW, even I didn't really get it until I started working in software development a couple years back. It was eye-opening.

That said, screw these broken games. Publishers need to be less scared of shipping games late (and it is the *publishers* not the developers who make this call).

[Spotie]

Best comment on the subject. Well said, and have a bubble.

[Mr Marvel]

These massive patches are pretty disgusting. Just release a complete product or delay your game until it is a complete product.

I was offline from PSN for 2 days a couple of weeks ago and when I came back online I had over 4.5Gb of patches covering 3 or 4 games.

[torchic]

crazy... always online consoles should be rejected for that very reason.

devs will fall into a cycle of complete laziness, releasing games which are totally broken then patch them while you're asleep.

the fact that people can stay offline at least pushes devs to release games in some playable condition.

[Nerdmaster]

The Evil Within had a 4GB patch a few days ago. At least it stopped the game from crashing every 20 minutes. In fact, I don't remember the game crashing since the update (although I did encounter a bug that made me restart the game once).

[pompous]

WRONG. Sorry author but you are wrong. Games are far bigger and more complex than ever before so it's only natural that the patches get bigger as there is more to fixing something now.

[BladerunnerZX]

I will stand by this statement :

I will not buy any games from Ubisoft until they release FINISHED GAMES ! Same goes for any other game publishers that continue to release unfinished games to meet a deadline like Microsoft did with the MasterChief Collection.

Current generation console gamers can stop this from happening by simply not buying these games.
Buy only FINISHED games or games that dont need 4 patches before it is a completely finished game and force both the game developers and publishers to release finished games that are actually GOLD not BETA GAMES that are half finished.

[il-JumperMT]

What about patches that give content for free ? Like FFXIV Patch is 2 GB and gave new raids class dungeon quests etc

[user6697483]

Assassins's Creed Unity is going to be around 1tb by the time they fix it. I guess that I'm fortunate enough that I didn't have to pay for my Assassins Creed Xbone bundle.