bit of a rant about patches and hosting

[Zak33]

CoD W@W needs version 1.6-1.7 now.. not a problem.

Except that the people who wrote the game, and published the game, don't seem to want to serve the buying public with the bandwidth.

So they get people like File Planet to host it, and you gotta sign up with them.

Now don't get me wrong, they're not ALL sign up sites, but I had to try 3 different mirrors before finding one with a simple Click and Save As, without signing away my write to an empty inbox.

This makes me mad. It's a great game, I paid good money for it, it DOES need patches and development, but WHY can't the game company host it themselves for the buyer? With no sign up?

Rant over

[mycarsavw]

I tend to use the bittorrent links for patches - usually quicker than the stupid restricted download speeds.

What about a Hexus shared username scheme for Fileplanet (if doesn't violate their T&Cs of course)

[Disturbedguy]

I have this on Steam, so all done and dusted easily and quickly, without me having to trawl through sites finding a decent download link!

[Main]

That does seem rather cheap of them.

It took me a while to even get to the page that lists the patches from the Call of Duty front page. Conversely the Battlefield website has EA hosted downloads for the latest patches only one click away for the current games even though both of them are old now...

[jim]

The only site I ever liked to download patches from was Multiplay's FTP servers, you could mirror three of them and easily max out your connection.

Being a BF2 fan, patching (and the downloading of them) was pretty serious business.

[kalniel]

but WHY can't the game company host it themselves for the buyer? With no sign up?

Because they'd rather spend the money on developers to make patches than servers/bandwidth to host them. And given a choice of the two, I'd agree.

[Salazaar]

Try Gamershell to download directly.

I also find Gameshadow useful for keeping all my non-Steam games up to date and they've got their own servers as well.

I agree though, I hate it when companies are too cheap to host their own patches.

[GheeTsar]

It is indeed annoying. Sometimes it isn't even clear what the latest patch is or the sequence of patching you need to undertake is.

Fortunately W@W autopatched for me via Steam, but I have yet to run it since. What are the improvements?

MW2 seems to be autopatching with minor patches about 2 times a week at the moment!

[Terbinator]

I have this on Steam, so all done and dusted easily and quickly, without me having to trawl through sites finding a decent download link!

Thats if i dont mind them limiting me to 1MB/s speed :/

[Disturbedguy]

Thats if i dont mind them limiting me to 1MB/s speed :/

I dont get limited on speed by them, I have been downloading at 5 or 6Mb and above before.

[Terbinator]

I dont get limited on speed by them, I have been downloading at 5 or 6Mb and above before.

Im talking MBytes not Mbits

[GheeTsar]

I can only dream of 1 MB/sec download rates!

[Infinite]

When I was at Uni campus halls, I was getting like 6 MB/s download speed through Steam.

[Zak33]

the last Steam patch for ARMA2 screwed it totally...

but the fact remains that patchs, in my opinion, should be the responsibility fo the producer/publisher and should be hosted by them. For me to give away my email address fro yet more spam to sold on my behalf is cheeky.

It's not as though the game was cheap. Wasn't a £4.99 job of anything.