By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
What exactly do I mean by that? I don’t mean the common practice, especially with MMORPG games, of pre-ordering the game and then being allowed into the beta test program. No, what I mean is buying a product that has been released, only to find that you are suddenly swamped by a series of patches to the product, in a very short time after release.
I’ve found this to be much more common nowadays than previously. It’s particularly an issue with games, where I’ve noticed quite a few companies announce “game X” is shipping to stores and will arrive on “date Y”, only to read a day or so later (before “date Y”) that there is already a patch available.
For non-gaming examples, I have purchased two software utilities since October (both were upgrades, not going to mention the exact programs). One of them released 7 patches in the first month and just released patch 8.
The other one uses a lettering system. Version x.0c was the one I received when upgrading … and it didn’t work … Windows Explorer would hang every time I opened it. Uninstalling the program fixed the problem (so it was obvious who the culprit was). Version x.0d was released the next day. Nope. Version x.0e the day after … finally it worked. Since then there have been numerous releases, and version x.0p was released a couple of days ago. It’s also pretty irritating to note that neither company, despite my registering the software, has informed me of the patches. It’s only because I use BetaNews’ monitoring service that checks for updates that I even knew of these fixes. It’s also interesting that I immediately sent an email to tech support after x.0c hung Windows Explorer; they got back to me three days later, after x.0e had been available for a day to tell me to update. How about sending me an email telling me it was a common bug and they were looking into it? That would have been nice.
What about you readers? Have you noticed the same thing? Or perhaps it’s only because I monitor for patches that I’ve noticed this trend? As I said, I feel like when I buy programs nowadays, I’m often paying for the beta, and get the “real” release many patches later.
But the best of all was a company named S**Y (you know, the ones who install virii on their customer’s PC’s)
Before they published a MMORPG which didn’t only
appeared to be pure beta software, they ran an “official”
beta-phase in which they made the beta-players to pay for!
If nobody bought broken software, it wouldn’t be allowed to go out the door broken. Its as much the buyers fault as the creator. There are industries that it is acceptable, and industries which it isn’t.
I’m not sure I agree with that 100%, MissingFrame. For example, the software I purchased that hung Windows Explorer. I certainly wouldn’t have purchased it if I’d known that, but this wasn’t a big company that would make the news, so how was I to know? And it was an update; prior versions worked well, so I trusted them.