Epic Games Store maintains status quo of forced software updates; says "software partners" are to blame.
Epic Games Store recently had an AMA on their Discord. One of the things they were asked is if they would offer patch roll-back in their V2 store client. The response was that there are no plans, their "partners" do not want people to be able to use older versions of software.
Well... that is a complete load of, excuse my French, bullshit. I AM a developer, and I know MANY other developers with software for sale. WE DO NOT want this nightmare any more than the users whose software stopped working after an update because they use a super rare brand of <insert hardware/software product name here> that we never tested our software on and would have an exceptionally difficult time buying and testing to resolve said problem. Having users always forced onto a single version of our software is just as stressful for us as it is for the user having problems with the software, how a software store can be so oblivious to this for so long is just mind blowing.
I have brought this up many times before, but I always get down-voted into oblivion because I mention Valve/Steam. This time, it is Epic, so maybe things will be different?
Forced software updates in PC games are completely unethical and need to stop.
They suck on consoles too, but on consoles they are a mere inconvenience. On PC, because everyone runs a different version of software, different hardware, different drivers, the developers who test the patches are only best-guessing whether a patch will work or not.
Before digital stores royally screwed customers by half-assing software distribution, if a patch broke something, you just uninstall the game, pop the disc in, re-install and then install all of the patches up to the game-breaking patch and now you have a working game again. With the introduction of Epic*****, every time you install a game it installs the newest version and unless you want to pirate the software you can't go back to the original version you had that worked.
^(*yeah, we all know it didn't start with Epic, but I can't mention the real store here or this will be down-voted and nobody will ever read it...)
Currently only GOG offers protection against compatibility bricking patches. You can open GOG Galaxy and pick any older release of a game that you have installed, and it downloads and installs that version.
It is obvious why only GOG does this. Of the successful stores, GOG is the only one that was created to patch a single product. Steam and Epic were both created to patch a live service, the needs of any other type of software were an afterthought... but that thought still has never happened.
I propose the following legal and software design requirements for Software Stores:
- They must offer recovery from patches (i.e. backup or otherwise offer rollback)
- They must not force patches unless the game is the variety that communicates with a server (i.e. Live Service)
- They must provide an option to show patch notes, if a developer has provided any (and if not, @#$% that developer) before a user begins downloading a patch.
- In lieu of 1 or 2, if the store wants to be a total anti-consumer jackass, they must extend the refund eligibility window following each and every forced software update.
You would think this would be a cause that is important to Stop Killing Games, but it just is not and that has rubbed me the wrong way about SKG the entire time :(
I do not play live service games (aside from EverQuest, and it's not been bricked in the 27 years I have been playing it). Meanwhile, I need major protection from having my single-player games killed. I have had zero live service games bricked, but to date the count of games bricked on digital stores (the one I can't mention here or I'll be down-voted, specifically) has risen to 13. That's over $700 in software bricked with refunds refused because of software updates, and that's $700 too many.