Since video games were created, the medium and industry have been ever-evolving. Franchises such as Horizon Zero Dawn have seen incredible improvement in a short amount of time with regards to graphics and gameplay, and many modern titles have benefited from the use of the Internet. Through how developers can easily send new batches of data to their games, day one patches have become an industry norm that almost every game uses to better itself. Despite the benefits games get from patch updates, they have also garnered a strong stigma.
One way that developers use patches on platforms like the PS5 is sending out an update to one of their titles before it's set to launch. These have been dubbed "day one patches," and over time they've been used to gauge how good a game is depending on whether such a patch is needed. Some see a developer release a day one patch and assume that the game was left unfinished, or riddled with glitches. These sorts of rash judgments based on pre-launch updates aren't deserved.
Games Before Patches
Before game consoles offered tools to connect to the Internet, many games launched without much trouble. However, many of these titles released before the days of Internet compatibility came with their downsides. Plenty of classic SNES games have game-breaking glitches that fans could accidentally hit. While some of these have been removed in later releases, there was nothing that could be done about physical copies released worldwide during the time of their initial release.
These types of glitches that can be exploited by fans to dodge difficulty curves or even break entire physical copies were prevalent across many eras of gaming for a very long time. For example, Pokemon Colosseum had a glitch that would clone Poke Balls. Without a way for companies to remove these errors, they remain a problem to this very day for anyone who revisits the titles in question.
Modern Games With Day One Patches
Thanks to the help of the Internet, games can be quickly updated to address any issues that get found after a game ships, no matter how dire it may be. Games such as Pokemon X and Fallout 4 were found to have softlock glitches on day one that were patched out as quick as possible. These patches were delivered to the affected players, and they could soon go back to playing the game without a problem.
However, since patches can be released just before a game is set to launch, some fans have taken this to mean that the game in question might be riddled with glitches, or unfinished without the patch. Despite the popular perspective on these day one patches, there's hardly any evidence to support the claim. Developers updating the title before fans can experience it hardly says the game was shipped incomplete.
The Benefits of Day One Patches
Many fans know and look forward to release dates, but how many fans keep in mind the development and publication cycle of games is a smaller number. Release dates are hardly ever the cut-off date for a game's development, as they often need to be finished before then. There seems to be an idea in many players' heads that games ship unfinished without proper QA testing as a result of patches, but the reality is something more akin to QA testing having a bigger window than ever before thanks to day one patches.
Thanks to the potential of being able to send out a quick update to fix any problems, developers have time to add anything from a bit of polish to a fix for game-breaking glitchs found at the end of this extended QA cycle. Game development is a lengthy progress, but so is beta testing. With some huge games like Horizon Forbidden West, testing out every possibility isn't as easy as many might think. Where the QA team may not have had a chance to try out one specific weapon against one particular enemy, thousands of players on launch day are bound to find it much faster.
There are more benefits behind day one patches that both players and developers benefit from. Not every patch released before a game is set to launch says that the game is glitchy. If anything, they express that there's far more care taken into making sure titles are released in perfect shape more than ever. Glitches like the infamous Gears of War PC save file deletion may have caused some trouble back in the day, but it was eventually patched out.
Patches should hardly be used to consider whether a game will be bad right away. Many gamers should try to be more considerate and hopeful that a day one patch may fix issues they'd rather not deal with, rather than chose to start what may be a great game with a negative mindset.