this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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Old games had crasher bugs too, and even had new versions :o. 99% of games release in a state where 99% of people will never notice an issue.
Most games are not "far worse", you are looking at the high profile exceptions and extrapolating rather than looking at the actual real landscape of releases.
It's entirely possible that we play very different games, but I'm a gamer programmer, I read patch notes and listen to retrospectives recreationally
I never said games are far worse, I think that's true for AAA gaming (for different reasons), but modern indie games beat the crap out of the bargain bin games from a couple decades ago
My point is this - OTA updates change how software is developed. It used to cost a lot of money to fix if you release it with breaking bugs, and there were several system builds to test on.
Now? There's an infinite number of configurations you can support with one engine and minimal porting - hell, Nvidia regularly patches their drivers to support specific games better.
The cost of extensive qa has skyrocketed, and the consequences of bugs at launch has plummeted.
If that doesn't convince you, go pick 5 random games released this year on steam, and look at their update logs. All 5, maybe 4 if you're lucky , will have patches around release time for major issues.
It's not because they're lazy or bad devs, it's because QA could take months or years to tell you what user feedback would get you in 48 hours after launch
You can make a patch, does not mean you need a patch. The vast majority of games work absolutely fine at launch. I know you're a little obsessed with patch notes, but if you think that games having patches indicates that they needed patched then you're missing the point entirely.