Rampant Coyote - In Defence of the Patch

Rampant Coyote's latest blog entry risks life and limb to argue the case for developers and publishers in defence of the patches we see so often these days:

And it's no longer just PC games, either. Consoles games, now that they have downloadable content, are beginning to show signs of patch fever. Is this a sign that developers are just lazy, and use the fact that there's now means of distributing a patch as a crutch to release games in a buggier state?

Now, I'm probably an official "part of the problem," because I sympathize with the need for patches. And I'm a developer. And I've released patches for my games. So I'm gonna go on a limb here and actually defend this horrible practice of releasing buggy, broken code.

Well, not really. I can't condone that. But I do want to talk about why your favorite game is on its third patch in nearly as many weeks. It's probably not as bad as it sounds, and the publisher probably didn't try just get bored and try to foist off a horrible mess on an unsuspecting public in hopes of getting a quick buck.

Probably. At least not most of the time. I think.

Thems fighting words. ;)