I could not wait for December 20th to arrive. The perennially unfinished Street Fighter V was finally going to add my favorite World Warrior, Akuma. He was formally introduced during the PlayStation Experience keynote address, and his new look reminded me more of Mufasa than Gouki, but he was still awesome. I purposely racked up enough Fight Money in the game just to grab him.
There was only one problem. When the 20th arrived, I had to update Street Fighter V.
Shit.
The online update has quickly become the biggest bugaboo in gaming. Many see it as a great way for developers to add new content and bug fixes efficiently and painlessly. In my experience, however, the update is simply a way for lazy developers or impatient publishers to rush out games to stores before they’re properly QA tested. Or even finished.
Worse still, they inconvenience gamers. Without that ever-so-important update, the game can’t even be played. The updates cripple games that were working fine prior to it!
If I were to make a list of the worst games of 2016, I would put Street Fighter V at number one SPECIFICALLY because it is constantly making me constantly update the damn game without being able to play it. Worse, it’s HOW it makes me update the game that grates me. It’s a broken system that consists of automatic updates via PSN, automatic updates that don’t start until you actually try to PLAY the game, and MANUAL updates that bypass the automated systems and force players to fetch the update file from PSN their damn selves!
Seriously, Capcom? Not only did you release a half-baked game, you make gamers jump through so many hoops to update it? You preferred making players piece your game together like a digital LEGO set over just, you know, MAKING A FINISHED FUCKING GAME???
Street Fighter V is an extreme case, but the act of updating a game has reached epidemic levels. If updating a game simply meant fixing odd bugs that were found after QA testing didn’t pick it up, it would be understandable, even laudable. But developers and publishers have decided to use the ability to update a game to do some despicable things. To wit:
- Street Fighter V was released with many modes that fans of the series were used to having in the game. Capcom has responded by updating the game – using the haphazard system mentioned above – ever since. Fine, you are getting the updates for free…you just have to go through more hoops than a trained seal.
- Final Fantasy XV was delayed one month in order to avoid having to dish up a Day One patch for the game to fix issues. When it was released, gamers were saddled with a Day One patch anyway. Because reasons.
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 received a Day One patch at launch. The patch added…THE REST OF THE GAME! Activision’s license of the Tony Hawk franchise was ending, so they decided to release the game as-is before the end date of the license. The released game consisted of nothing more than the tutorial. They didn’t have time to finish the game before the license expired, so they sent the game to be pressed with what they had. I mean, they could patch the game later…unless someone had the nerve to try and play the game after the servers went down. Then, they get the tutorial only and FUCK YOU, BE GRATEFUL YOU PEASANT BITCH!
These are but three examples. I’m sure many people reading this can recount their own update horror stories and recoil while doing so. That is our reality now.
I hate to be the old fogey that starts a rant with, “Back in my day…” But I have to do it now. Here goes:
Back in my day, the game that came out had no way of being patched. The internet back in the 80s was limited to academia and the military. In the 90s, only savvy gamers knew how to get patches for games via message boards – and that was for PC games. For people playing games on consoles, there was no recourse. You bought a game; you were stuck with whatever was on the cartridge or disc.
That was a problem with games that were broken on launch. One of the most notable is Turok: Rage Wars for the Nintendo 64. It had a bug in two-player mode that would prevent players from completing the game. There was a cartridge replacement program, but not many people knew about it. In cases like that, a downloadable update would be a godsend.
But the thing was, developers didn’t resort to things like replacement programs. Instead, they worked extra hard to make sure their code was bulletproof. Sure, odd glitches would get past them. But the QA process was stricter back then. It had to be; the price of letting a game-breaking bug through was massive.
Back in the cartridge days, Nintendo’s licensing agreement forced publishers to commit to large initial manufacturing runs for cartridges. Since those runs on cartridges were expensive, it behooved publishers to make sure the code was tight. QA testing was extensive as a result. Game-breaking bugs like the one in Turok: Rage Wars were very uncommon.
Nowadays, the internet is readily available for the majority of gamers. Publishers have the opportunity to patch bugs in games online. This is a boon for gamers under normal circumstances. But it has readily become an excuse for publishers and developers. If a game is broken at launch, it can be patched later. Great! So now a game can be released broken and fixed later.
Don’t think that’s the case? Then explain the large amount of Day One patches that gamers have to endure. Worse, explain the amount of Day One patches that have to be applied but still don’t fix fundamental errors in games. Let’s go with some egregious examples:
- Final Fantasy XV had a very unsatisfying Chapter 13. Square Enix has committed to fixing that part of the game for free, at great cost to them. Many developers and publishers would not commit to such a patch unless it benefitted them.
- No Man’s Sky had a Day One patch to change many aspects of the pre-release code, and it was STILL missing features. A recent Foundation Update added some features that were promised before launch, months later.
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain had a Day One patch that fixed a game-breaking bug. Too bad they didn’t see fit to patch a satisfying third act!
The last two examples are PlayStation 4-exclusive games. That brings to light another problem that the process of patching games has: PlayStation Network is woefully inadequate when transferring large files like patches.
There have been many times when updates on PSN have stalled or throttled down for no adequate reason. I may not have the fastest connection on the planet (25MB down), but I can still receive updates in a timely fashion via Steam or Xbox Live. PSN’s infrastructure seems to bottleneck downloads.
As I am writing this, I am trying to download the Street Fighter V update to get Akuma. It was started at 1:00 PM EST. I have already restarted my PS4 once because the console’s download speed seemed to have reached sloth levels of slow. During the down time, I downloaded Burnout Paradise as part of Xbox Live’s Games with Gold and maintained a solid enough connection to participate in WhatsApp and Hangouts chats while texting people from my PC. Oh, and I am listening to my Jazz channel via Pandora. Burnout Paradise is finished. The Street Fighter V update is not even halfway done. It’s 4:13 PM EST.
To anyone who wants to complain that I’m saturating my connection, know that none of the other services are affected. Only PSN has this issue.
For people who prefer to game via Sony –as I currently do – are further penalized by this patch policy. I am further denied my ability to beat down fools as Akuma because Sony’s infrastructure is weaker than my hairline. That’s a double-handicap. I have to patch my game to play, and I have to do so on an inferior network.
It makes me wish for cartridge games again.
Say what you want about the old days, but at least you were guaranteed to have a more robust – and more finished – game back then. This era of “we’ll patch it later” gaming is allowing lazy developers and profit-per-quarter publishers too much leeway to half-ass games. In the end, we lose out.
I’ve reached the end of this article, and the update for Street Fighter V has STILL not finished downloading. I am over 1,300 words through. It’s 6:59 PM EST. If I can write an entire university assignment in the time it takes me to download a patch to a game, and the game is STILL not patched, the game – and the industry – has failed! Instead of looking forward to playing Street Fighter V on the PS4, I should’ve looked forward to playing my copy of Street Fighter II: Championship Edition on my Sega Genesis. At least THAT game is complete!
