Should game reviews be updated after patches?

[laggyteabag]

Sure, but reviewers don't tend to have that much time on their hands. It makes sense that a review should change if game breaking bugs that were mentioned in the review are no longer present, but between new game releases, and personal time, Im not sure if a reviewer has time to replay a game, and update a review, each and every time that a new patch comes out.

 

[happyninja42]

Pretty much. Care to elaborate?

Hmm... how to put it.

If handled poorly, "updating" a review could effectively "scrub" a company's poor release record clean. If a developer has a track record of AC:U type release screw-ups, I don't want to risk not knowing about it because of "revised" reviews.

Similarly, a "retraction" review (something like the "two scores" option) is better, it still incentivises a rushed launch followed by patches instead of trying for a quality product at launch. It's not about punishing devs so much as not giving them more of an incentive to rush things.

That said, if someone comes along and simply reviews a game later, whether they did before or not, that's fine. It's still valuable knowledge. I just don't want a dev or producer to bank on "fixing" their reviews later.

I think updating a review, but clearing separating the previous material, and the new material would be better. Most people, probably aren't going to take the time to try and track down 2 different reviews from a news source, about the same topic. They're going to do searches like "totalbiscuit unity" or something similar. They're not likely to do something like "totalbiscuit unity patch new review". It's just not human nature to frequently do that in my opinion. So, assuming they are going to do very simple searches, and probably only expect to see one review posted by a particular source, updating your original post to include new material seems practical. I think you can easily keep the original material, and add new. You don't have to wipe the slate clean, just put "Update post patch review", and then go into your new material.

Now granted, if you are talking about some kind of scoring metric system, then yes, doing it this way could potentially cause problems, in that their aggregate score would go up. But, in a way, is this actually bad? I mean, if the patches turn a game from a 2 star piece of junk, into a 4.5 star classic, that is genuinely fun to play, and is a marked improvement, isn't it fair to let the score now reflect this? I mean if I write an article, and give a game a 2/10, because of the unplayability of it, due to peformance problems, and then they fix those problems, and the rest of the game is an 8/10 quality game, why shouldn't I give it that rating in my review?

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Don't get me wrong. If, when you review the game, it's been updated and it's now and 8.5/10 or whatever, great!

If it's your second review? Also great! My own point is kind of nebulous in my own head, one of those "know it when I see it" kind of things. Just adding a button to the first review to take a reader to the "next page" with the updated review would probably be fine. I mean, Metacritic would have to come up with a new protocol for handling the new scores, but considering they're a third party, that's Meta's job.

 

[SKBPinkie]

Honestly, I feel like reviews don't have much place in today's gaming market.

At least, that's how I feel. A simple let's play / gameplay video tells me infinitely more about the game than any review ever could. My purchasing decision is decided primarily through these videos and forum discussion rather than a review.

But if reviews did matter to me, I feel like they should update the patched game's review with an additional paragraph or two, mentioning the problems that were fixed. But the game's vanilla issues should still be displayed in the original article there for all to see. If a consumer decides to purchase from another game from that developer in the future, they have to know how their previous title fared on release.

And for the same reason - the score shouldn't be updated. And there's the additional point that the possibility of a patch fixing a game's issues shouldn't be a crutch and may influence a developer's attitude towards future releases. It cannot be excused.

 

[CaitSeith]

Certainly not. If for any reason you can't patch your game, you're stuck with the shitty version. It's the developers and publishers' responsibility to launch their games in their best possible state, and they should be evaluated that way.

 

[RJ 17]

Nope. The entire point of a review is to inform the consumer of the state of the game at launch, not the state of the game 8 months down the line when the developer finally "finished" the game with patch fixes.

That's why reviews are done at launch in the first place.

 

[Aerosteam]

Sure? But instead of updating the review, it's best to add something at the end to tell the reader what state the game was in at first. The majority of reviews are supposed to inform the consumer about the product as much has possible, after all.

That being said, if publishers stopped releasing broken/unfinished/incomplete games we wouldn't have this discussion.

 

[Bizzaro Stormy]

News stories are sometimes amended to cover an update to the story. So long as the original review stands and any changes made are specifically listed under a paragraph titled update it wouldn't be a problem. Or you could make a subreview section of any given review site labeled Patches where these changes are mentioned.

 

[Bad Jim]

I say yes. If I am reading a review a year after release, I'm not interested in what it was like on day one. I want to know what it is like a year after release.

I don't think it really encourages lazy devs. Game prices drop fast, so it is still much better to be stable on release. Rather it would encourage publishers to get any flawed gems fixed. And it is nearly impossible to make a multiplayer game which doesn't need bug fixes and balance changes after release.

Plus, it could go both ways. -20 when a single player game with a multiplayer mode has its' servers shut down. And zero when a multiplayer game loses its' servers.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

Yeah, I don't see why this it should be any other way. It's good form to update a review after a game's changed. How you update it is fine, but if I'm buying a game I want to know what issues it has now, not the issues it had years ago.

It shouldn't be absolutely necessary, but I can't think of why it wouldn't be a good thing to do.

 

[Windcaler]

The first 30 days tends to be where sales really matter. There are some exceptions to the rule though like Alpha protocol or pretty much the entire elder scrolls series that have made money over extended periods of time. Thats also why early reviews matter.

I think its fair to maybe put an outdated tag if a review is no longer representative. However Im not sure requiring an updated review or even new review is feasible either. Reviewers, like any of us, have limited time to do their work and research. If theyre constantly having to research patches to find information to determine whether their review is outdated or not I can imagine issues with time and pay coming up quickly

 

[K12]

Patches? No, at least I don't think it should be required of an outlet. If you want your game to have good press then don't release it in a condition that needs significant patching. Maybe within the first week but after that it's your own damn fault.

From the point of view of the consumer it'd be nice to add in an edit after a patch. Having said that it's unreasonable to expect a rewrite/ edit of every review for every major game every time it gets a patch. Some games change significantly after patches and may even fix bugs that most gamers won't experience anyway, this is potentially many hours more work for a reviewer for a couple of sentences of edit (either that or the edit will just be trusting the developer's word on what has been fixed).

Most professional reviews are intended for launch. I think if you're looking for a game well after launch then there will be an abundance of information out there from the gaming public, it won't just be professional reviewers who've had the chance to play the game in full. Plus it probably won't be full price so it's less of a risk to you.

 

[veloper]

Should is a strong word here, but it's still much more useful to know how a game is in it's current state, if you want buyer's advice.

The game you could be playing after that updated recommendation, may be a much better game than the game as it originally shipped. A good game experience is a good game experience, even if it requires a patch between installation and first play.

That said, I also much prefer it when the original review and score are also stored and remain easily accessible from the new page, for the purposes of comparing game critics.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I don't like the idea of a review being updated either (since other people are of the same mind) but if something drastic were to happen then I would definitely like to see an annotation or a post-edit. I seem to recall a couple of instances in which Angry Joe (and possibly Total Biscuit) have reviewed a game that had a feature (or features) which were broken on some degree but wherein they stated up front, "If this feature is fixed later, than this X/10 game should be considered an X+/10 game" etc. Since a lot of reviews are buyers guides, I think the initial review should also have a statement or two about the cost of the game. Like, game X is good but would be better once the price drops, etc.

 

[Gone Rampant]

Incidentally, what kind of state is AC Unity these days? Working?

Worked all right when I played it around Christmas, I've no idea how it's done since I uninstalled it after I finished the Dead Kings DLC (Like hell am I doing those bloody riddles for a skin with no gameplay benefits Ubi)

 

[ffronw]

I don't like the idea of changing a review that I wrote because of a patch for multiple reasons:

1. The review is accurate to the game I played. Should I go back and re-review a game once all the DLC is out?

2. Especially in the case of console games, there are still a good number of people whose consoles are not connected to the internet. No matter how many patches come out, those people are still paying for and playing the game as it was at release.

3. I think changing the review lets the dev off the hook, in a way. It removes the record of how poorly the game performed at launch.

All that said, if a reviewer wants to append an update to the original review without changing the original review, I don't see a problem with it. Just don't change the text of the initial review.

 

[Elfgore]

In an ideal world, I would say yes. Games can change a lot from Day 1 to Year 1. But I have several reasons why this won't ever happen.

1. Time. Games are constantly coming out. Reviewers most likely already have to power-play through games to meat due dates. Imagine if they now had to go back and re-play old games, while still trying to review new releases. It would be way too time consuming.

2. A really shitty day 1 release, should never be forgotten. MKX, Battlefield 4, Rome 2: Total War, etc. It should never be forgotten that they released games in a really shitty state. Yeah they can patch them, but they still released a game in either a broken or barely playable state.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

Short answer, nope.

Living, growing games like MMOs may warrant occasional revisits to see what has changed, but the state the game was in post-server issues should be the original review.

As far as games like Unity? I feel like amending a review or making a new one only lets Ubisoft (or whoever it may be) off the hook for making a broken piece of shit gold/review copy, and would perpetuate a collective gamer acceptance that a game can be unacceptable shit to be addressed later because patches.

That, and not everyone has the internet, at all. My wife's cousin is a strange case, he owns a PS4 and over a dozen games for it, but has no internet access at all. His phone doesn't even get 3G where he lives, and his gaming information comes from print magazines. His 1.0 copy of The Evil Within was this 15-20 fps 10 second to stream textures that was below 1080p. He didn't like the game because it felt like shit, when a big day one patch bumped the resolution to 1080 and brought the framerates to at least the next door neighbor of 30. In that case, reviewers had the day-one patch, but this isn't something that should be acceptable just because 60-70% or whatever of people are able to download patches.

If you decided a semi-broken pile of ass was worthy of being gold and more than half the bugs were considered shippable, that's the game you've presented to the gaming public on the release date that was scheduled long in advance, after the publisher asked for the payment in advance, and has $30-40 worth of DLC they'd like you to purchase in advance, available when and if the fucking thing is actually out of beta after the release date (granted this doesn't apply to all AAA, but it did for Unity). If we're talking about Unity in particular, I'm glad that the gaming media stepped up and crucified it for its unacceptable state of release on all platforms.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I don't think so. If its being sold in a broken state, it'll be reviewed that way.

 

[Trude]

I don't think so. If its being sold in a broken state, it'll be reviewed that way.

That seems rather unfair if the product is fixed in post. It shouldn't have been launched like that to begin with, but with the stupidly high value that buyers put on review scores these days, I think a review should reflect the product a buyer would receive at the time of reading. Polygon does this quite often.