Damn these things are annoying me. While I like the idea of my games and software updating themselves, I'm getting really annoyed with the constant downloads and updates of every bloomin' thing I use.

I turn on my PC at home or at work and it seems there's always a new patch to be applied.

I put a game in the 360 and seem to invariably need to wait another five minutes while the new update is downloaded and installed. The PS3 seems to do less of them, but they take even longer when they do come through because Sony's servers seem to groan under the strain.

It wouldn't bother me if I felt like these things were actually adding to my experience, and in fairness to Sony there usually are cool things in their updates, but most of the time the 'updates' seem to be fixes to stop people cheating online - it's never bothered me, so why should I have to sit around, waiting to do something I want to do, just because of cheaters out there? The ones on the 360 annoy me the most because they never seem to change anything, they come in really often, and sometimes they even take functionality away!

Why can't these things be done in the background like all the other sensible things in the world? Or at least they could be done while allowing you to fiddle with music settings on your machine... Anything but watching yet another progress bar limp its way across the screen.

/rant

A LOT of MMORPGs are like that. When I was GMing for a Ragnarok server, I had (and still have) dialup. We had an extremely experienced programmer that would get eAthena's (original Ragnarok company) updates before the main server was allowed to use them - I'm guessing because he was a former employee - and it would take me between five and thirty six hours to download these patches. That's thirty six hours to wait just because I had to go look after other players and someone decided to install several MB of extra features that weren't necessary.

Once, I lost the entire game, and I literally waited the week and a half it took me to re-download it. That, and the additional three or four days to re-patch everything.

Dialup has made me an extremely patient person in all aspects of life.

Great, now I've just lost the game too.

/spam

I guess that's one of the few advantages of not being on Xbox Live; I can just stick the disk in and start playing.

Ah, good old updates. All those little things which need to be done in order to cover up for poor programming. I can sort of see how it works on the PC, as there's so many different permutations it's impossible to get right; what works on one setup will crash another. But for consoles? These things are hardware static, for heaven's sake!

We never had these issues with the Spectrum, or the C64, or the Amiga, or Gamecube or even the PS2, so how come now it's suddenly necessary?? I appreciate cheats are a pain in the arse, but how many updates does it take? Why not just ban cheaters if they bother you that much?

How hard can it be to have a checkbox that says "Don't download any updates". And as Mata says, why not in the background? I mean, if Windows can handle it, then why not games?

And I really feel for Syuu on this one. I have fibre-optic cable internet and whilst the speed is impressive and there's no contention, I can't actually afford to get anything but the base level 2Mbit. And that takes over an hour to update Steam sometimes!

I suspect it's not the conection speed that's the problem, it's the servers not sending the information fast enough. I've lost several hours this week waiting for updates that I'll probably neve notice. Bloomin' things. Grumble mumble, kids these days, etc.

It's overloaded servers that point to a game being a victim of it's own success. When one of my friends bought Half Life 2, he couldn't register with Steam for two days. Which meant he couldn't play it! I guess console games aren't as stringent when it comes to copy protection but the update mechanism is still pretty rubbish if a game is successful.

Of course, you could always remove the internet connection from the console.

Gah, thanks. Again.
/spaaaaaam

Eww, that just made me think of that gross Spam stuff we saw in the gas station yesterday.

/more spam..

Nintendo may actually be ahead in this respect - Mario Kart, Super Smash Brothers Brawl and possibly other games on the Wii includes firmware updates on the game disc. This handily removes the need to wait while the update is downloaded (though only if you buy certain games). It also makes life difficult for people who want to play imported games using modchips or a freeloader but as far as Nintendo are concerned that's a good thing.

Sony does that with the PSP as well, but again a big part of it is trying to stop people from doing things sony doesn't want them to do with it.

Sony seem to update every month, or thereabouts, so there wouldn't be a lot of point in putting the updates on the game discs, unless a certain level of firmware was needed to run the game. I think there's the option for developers to do this, it's just that no-one's needed to because the core software is usually fairly decent. Most of the updates seem to be about adding multimedia features rather than anything much to do with the games.

Given the relative complexity of the latest consoles, and the fact that the devs are now working for nothing (in that the consoles are out there now so there's no more revenue) would it not be better to get the damn things working properly first? It'd be like buying a car and then needing a patch so that you got all six gears or the brakes working properly. Madness!

As for game updates, I tend to avoid it by not playing online games. Potentially very boring but at least it saves the updates.

Even single-player games get patches. They are good things because they fix small problems in the games that were impossible to track without tens of thousands of people playing them, but that doesn't stop me missing the days when I would put something in the machine and it worked instantly - that was why I loved consoles so much in the first place!

I'd been on PC games for a while before I got my first console (the Mega Drive) and it would take me hours to get anything to work the first time I put it in the machine. I would have to create a new bootdisc with specific instructions for the PC's configuration... Then consoles came out and life was so much easier. Now it seems that when you first put a game into your machine it will install a load of things, download updates, check your inside leg measurement, and learn the macarena before you can play.

The idea for dev teams to continue to develop the capability of machines, fixing, and adding new things for games is that the products are still on the shelves. While the product gets better and better, the price goes lower and lower, so the deal becomes more attractive to new buyers. Take the game I worked on last year - Burnout Paradise. The whole studio is spending the year working on downloads for the game. Most of those are free, because that drives sales in the shops. Lots of free content catches the attention of gamers so you sell more games. Then, when there are loads of people with the game, you release a paid-for download and make lots of money.

Personally I prefer non-online games I love a structured singleplayer experience. I find playing online generally very annoying because there always seems to be someone who's an idiot - either that or they've had no offline life for the last three months and now have the twitch reflexes of a mouse on speed. Niether are much fun to play against. Oh, and apparently 95% of people who play online are gay, if the general chatter during the games is to be believed.

I started playing Age of Conan reasontly and the patch down loads on that are redictulous at the moment admittedly it's still pretty new so they're stil sorting out stuff which doesn't come to light until it's played but every time I logg on at the moment it seems they a new ickle bit to sort and then there's the big patches every as well. :s

I think I managed to miss out the worst of this with WoW and they've also got it pretty organised so you know when to expect it if they do need to patch. Wednesday is the day the the dungeons get reset and is also the the patch day, but mostly now they've got to the point where you only get patches if there been and expansion of some sort.
The main annoyance these day's is with installing MMO's (or reinstalling which I think most people have got to the point of avoiding like the plague if at al possible) because you first waitting for the game to install and then you've got the hours of waitting for the patches.

I dont have a console but from what I've seen it does seem a bit annoying seeing as the point of them was a plug and play alternative to PC's.

Aargh! Between having a PC, a laptop, the PS3 and Xbox360, and another PC at work I now feel like I spend my whole day updating my software.

So far today I've had Firefox updates, Windows XP updates, and Apple trying yet again to get me to install iTunes because Quicktime apparently needed to update itself (although I suspect that really it was just that I didn't have iTunes installed, therefore clearly I wanted the latest version of that on my machine).

There's no update more annoying than the one that tries to force you to get software you don't want. Apple, I'm looking at you. Stop trying to force your fricking iTunes software on me. I only use Quicktime when I'm faced with stupid web developers who haven't worked out that the rest of the world uses Flash these days, and I don't want to instal bloody iTunes at the same time as updating the software I'd rather not use. Aaargh!

Adobe have a habit of trying the same thing with their Photoshop updates - do I want to get the latest version of some photo-sharing thing that I've never used? Or the thing that lets me buy photos off of them? No, I don't, now will you please badger off and stop bugging me with your strapped-on download updates.

Poopies.

Gah. iTunes is a dirty update-pusher.
Seriously, though, everytime I've turned on my computer it's always "Quicktime *MUST* be updated!" "There's a new version of itunes (version 997987.9) ready to be installed install now or later?"
Never mind giving me the option just not install it, as everytime I do, the only difference I can tell is itunes looks a little bit prettier when I use it, no problems fixed.
Gah.

I hate updates. For all the reasons above, but i'd also like to know what they are installing on my computer/console. The latest nintendo update didn't tell me that they were going to block the freeloader.

I may be a little weird in that, whilst waiting for updates to download can be a pain in the nonnies, reading extensive patch notes whilst waiting for it is fun. I get really disappointed if there's a random patch with no notes, but if its something that totally changes bits of the game, or adds new stuff in, the wait becomes a tense, exciting one rather than a silly boring one.

My personal favourites are command and conquer games (remember downloading the patches for online back in the early days of Tiberian Sun when they buffed the Mammoth Mark 2. I couldn't wait to start playing again with that baby even harder than before), and Dawn of War. DOW especially, since when it gets patched its usually a rebalance one and it changes absolutely everything. Which is awesome fun for when I get a little bored of the same old styles of play.