Patching games to fix issues is nothing new. It started in the arcades with ROMs, which were updated to fix exploits, revise difficulty, and improve the overall experience for the players. This legacy continued on the PC platform, where the internet connectivity made it the perfect place to easily update games. Now we live in a console centric world where platforms like Steam are seen as useless because "PC gaming is dead" and the normal routine is to pay Microsoft and Sony for the pleasure of removing annoyingness from their broken systems. Be it cheating, exploits, game breaking bugs, or even the all encompassing "security update,” most modern patches revolve around 2 things, piracy or laziness.

Any gamer on the PS3 has experienced the following, and gotten shit from Xbox gamers because their particular platform is "far superior" to PSN. After unboxing a game, put it in the system, turn on system, install firmware update, wait 30 minutes for that to finish, launch game, new patch notice, begin patch process, 20 minutes later the patch utility restarts and installs the patch for 10 minutes. By the time this process is completed, what little time some people have for gaming is gone and "fun" must wait for the next opportunity. It is an asinine system that is built to ensure people will more than likely purchase the proprietary "subscription" service for either console in order to not put up with bullshit.

Xbox gamers can say Xbox live is better, but let us all stop pretending. When I play my games on PC I turn the PC on, check my email, check the news, and I more often than not immediately get a popup indicating that a few of my games were patched. Imagine that, a system where developers use the internet to send things to their consumers easily, quickly, and without someone else prohibiting what used to be a seamless exchange. There is no need for a long and drawn out "approval process." Those hardly ever improve anything and are only intended to make console gamers wait for shit and pad Microsoft and Sony’s bottom line demonstrating how “useful” they are to developers. Microsoft’s uselessness has even found its way onto PC, in the form of GFWL. It is amazing how the same games can come out on entirely different platforms, no matter the audience size, and how much bullshit one group will put up with. That is the passion the designers should have.

Console games used to be designed for cartridges, where the fabrication of the games themselves was expensive and final. Games had to be perfect, if they were not, there was no going back, no revision, and no way to “fix” lazy mistakes. As a child, those were just bad games, now we see popular games like Street Fighter IV and others with revisions on release day awaiting the player.

I used to be on the PS3 side of things, but after having my 6th one stolen and being told by Sony I had to wait a year to play my games because "I had previously deauthorized my accounts in the past year." #4 and #5 were YLODs and #2 and #3 were shipped incorrectly during the RMA process, which damaged them. That is on top of losing my saves more than three times for extremely difficult games like Demon's Souls, all thanks to hardware encryption rules which are used to "prevent piracy" or as I like to call it, "more bullshit." Needless to say I have enjoyed being forced to only play my games on the PC side of things, it has made me appreciate the ease of use with the interface and not having to put up with categories or blades, but being able to sort things easily as I see fit.

I enjoy picking what server I want to join, what map, game type, and rules I want to play with in Counter-Strike. If CS had the same setup as Halo and Gears, all that would be played is Dust2, nothing else. No gun game would exist, no zombie mode, no surf, no anti-Awp/Auto servers, no beginner servers, no servers with different player limits, no arena servers, no standard map only servers, and more importantly everyone would have to put up with stupid amounts of lag because they never get to choose which region their server exists in, that being if they were even given the option of having a server at all. It is a luxurious experience to simply have things work the way they should, and while Steam has many issues, it is a vast improvement over PSN patching and paying for half the game over in Xbox land.

This is not just an issue for the provider, it is an issue for the development of games as well. Skyrim has had quests that have been broken and would lead to the loss of saves, loss of quest completion, loot, ability to progress further in the game, as well as many others. TF2 has been practically remade in a different light, patched over 250 times into a game that is now about hats rather than strategy. It is standard practice to release a game, and day of release require an initial patch before actually playing the game. I am sure anyone could Google some form of “most broken game, worst patch, or release day woes” and find hundreds of thousands of pages filled with users complaining about that very subject. These all occur because patches are no longer about improving the user experience, or adding to the game, it is about fixing what is broken, and was released in half-playable condition. The best way to improve a game, franchise, series, and platform is to hold the people making the game responsible. If you take pride in your work, if you do it to the best of your ability, it will result in amazing user experiences like Demon’s Souls, Half Life, and F.E.A.R.

Now we move to the all important topic of the month it seems, piracy. Sopa and Pipa, Oh... Pipa, popularized the whole anti-antipiracy sentiment because consumers were against a system whereby some overseer was able to dictate whether or not they had access to something. Sound familiar Mr. Microsoft and Sony? It is funny how consumers cannot hack devices to put free games on them, fix broken firmware, or just flat out improve the functionality of a device, but it is OK for the same group demanding the previous activity be stopped to lock users out of basic fixes and flat out hold them out of multiplayer for an entire platform unless they pay a fee. I am going to guess you can see where this is going, you think I am going to rant about how piracy is not evil and how the world should simply allow it to exist?

Well, no, I have been living in a world of piracy for many decades now. One currently where it is easiest to simply Google a game name and have an ISO download link immediately, that works for every console, not just PC games folks. While you can blame PCs for all of the piracy, it is quite clear that torrent websites have been attacked by trojans, congressmen, angry developer letters, and police raids all of which have more than curbed piracy of large files like games. The addition of digital download platforms has put the nail in the coffin for the common gamer as well. The rest of those whom pirate PC games are simply the hardcore hackers, pirates, and vermin that will never pay for anything if they can get it for free, it is a psychological barrier, not one that software and hardware based DRM will help to break. Again, I am not vouching for it, I am simply stating facts.

These both culminate with what amounts to two separate platforms where the driving force for updating is to stop piracy or fix bugs that should have been caught by anyone who actually played the game prior to release. Instead, games are designed to a deadline, an insane deadline that encourages the “we will fix it later” mindset. The single best way to improve the gaming experience, simply stop being lazy and stop being all about prohibiting users. As Jim pointed out, the best way to fix piracy is to simply provide a better experience. Steam has done this. Indie titles like Beat Hazard, blockbusters like Demon’s Souls, user supported games like Frozen Synapse, and even Kickstarter projects like Abandoned all put the game above any sort of anti-piracy or laziness. Fans have directly supported all of these things with community feedback, monetary support, word of mouth, and in some cases direct design discussions with users. These games may take a bit of extra time, but there is nothing better than word of mouth and customers doing the marketing to sell a game.

It is all about making the single best possible experience available to the player. I think many game developers, platform holders, and even gamers forgot about that a long time ago. It is not about making something for money, fame, or to be better than the person next to you, the reason certain games will always be considered good, and the reason games are around today, is because those games have the heart and soul of every person that worked on it and every time you launch the game you can see the passion on the screen.