Editorial: Buying that boxed copy (Downloadinator Rant)

Published December 13, 2016

The views contained in this article are that of the author and should not be taken as the opinion of Geek Node as a publication.

Now not everyone is going to understand this rant, especially those international readers we have. I come to you today to talk to this little issue that us South Africans face, download caps. I am sure that they exist around the world in some shape or form but as an avid gamer the current state of the gaming industry coupled with ISP’s capping internet accounts is becoming irritating.

When a game is initially staged for release code has to be submitted to Quality control as well as the physical publishers, this normally happens months before the actual release date of the game, this allows for physical processes like writing installers to disc to be completed in time. Now months before release we understand that sure there are a ton of issues that could still need to be discovered in games and fixed, through code changes… changes which were not submitted to publishers to go on installer discs. I’m sure you might see where this is leading: The ever annoying day on patch. As someone who has managed to experience bang on internet connections, the kind of connection where you decide to install Overwatch, go make a cup of tea, return to your PC and play. This is exactly the reason why publishers and studios don’t see a day one patch of 10GB an issue. For us South Africans though, on a fairly modest dsl line you are looking at 1GB download an hour, or a fairly good copper line downloading at 2.2GB an hour. Just this basic (and completely estimated download time, based off my own experience) calculation shows that a mere 10GB day one patch delays us up to 10 hours after we can start patching the game.

This is what can sometimes be experienced with day 1 patches, how about the other villain of the industry: boxed copy games. When buying a boxed copy you most likely expect to pop a disc into your PC and start installing, not anymore folks. If you are lucky enough to get a disc sometimes all it contains is a steam authenticator or a few gig’s of the installer, leaving you high and dry to download the remaining files on that ever shrinking cap. Or his evil cousin, the code in a disc case, literally a plastic case housing a piece of paper indicating you own something in a completely virtual world. I honestly don’t mind this virtual licensing system in principle but what it is starting to do is create issues where a person of limited cap simply cannot install a game and play it at launch. (We aren’t even going to go into the pricing deal that is hitting us)

Again, this is only because studios are trying to get us a product in a world where everything is moving faster and faster, and as such certain real world issues are leaking into a hobby such as gaming.

Publishers/Studios if you read this, know that we still want quality gaming, this is more a rant at local infrastructures and conditions. We do not want you to stop patching out those issues!

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