There’s a 13GB update live for Dead Rising 3 today, and if you think that seems kind of big, well, that’s because it’s kind of big.
This is one of the biggest patches in video game history — our previous definition of “big patch” usually clocked in at 500MB or a gigabyte — and it’s designed to both fix issues and “ensure compatibility with the online players and all of the upcoming add-on content that’s coming out shortly as well,” according to executive producer Josh Bridge. The Xbox One game’s first piece of DLC, Operation Broken Eagle, comes out tomorrow.
You can dodge the patch by disconnecting your router or your Xbox One, but if you want to play Dead Rising 3 while online, you have to download the update. And, really, while this might be kind of annoying if you have a slow Internet connection, it’s not that big a deal… unless you have a data cap. If your cable company limits the amount of bandwidth you can use every month, this could be a serious problem.
As one Redditor writes: “This is bullshit. I live in a rural area and the best internet I can get has a 20GB a month bandwidth allowance.”
The caps aren’t usually that drastic, but not everyone is lucky enough to have a broadband connection with unlimited bandwidth, and if net neutrality goes awry, things could get even worse soon.
So now it’s time to start asking questions. Is this sort of massive patching going to be the norm in this generation of gaming consoles? As game updates continue to get bigger, will ISPs feel more inclined to limit our bandwidth? Does anyone else get the feeling something bad is going to happen?
Comments
121 responses to “13GB Dead Rising 3 Patch Raises Questions About Gaming’s Future”
Sweet zombie jesus..
Hey, don’t look at me.
Good work sir. Have an upvote
How the hell did you get 81 upvotes?
Everyone on this site that isn’t you is actually me, using alternate accounts.
But why am I not?
I ran out of email addresses to register with =(
But what if I am you but you don’t know it?
My other personalities insist I don’t have a split personality.
Get cranky at the rubbish broadband and infrastructure in this country. 13GB anywhere else in the world wouldn’t matter in the slightest. Only in crappy internet Australia is it an issue.
I still think the people making 13GB patches should get their heads outta the rich clouds & show some respect for their customers.
I think the only reason it could be deemed disrespectful is because a 13gb patch can be difficult for some Aussies to download – because of slow internet speeds, or data allowances. So it’s not really a lack of respect when 99% of the planet wouldn’t have an issue with downloading a 13gb patch, but crappy internet Australia does. That’s not the developer’s fault.
Except it’s a problem in the states too.
and the UK and Canada..
and i wouldn’t be surprised if there is no actual core game update. just seems like all the DLC getting downloaded in case you want to buy it.
and New Zealand
It’s disrespectful to customers because the game is broken to the point where the patch is bigger than most games. They sold a product that was so non-functional, that practically everything needs to be replaced. You can’t sell somebody a machine and then tell them that not only will 80% of the parts need to be replaced, but you’ll have to pay for shipping.
That’s some grade A bullshit right there, regardless of how cheap and efficient the shipping is.
Nope, I’v got the game and it’s not particularly buggy at all.
Certainly not on the level of other games I’ve played which have needed big patches (I remember Sin requiring 600+mb of patches to be basically playable back in dial up days).
It’s not Skyrim PS3 broken and It’s certainly not broken to the point of expecting a 13gb download! I’d chalk this one up to developers running out of time to put the final touches on a launch title.
How does that make it ok? They had a product that wasn’t ready to be sold.
There are two options here; they are either incompetent or disrespectful.
a) They just suck at making patches and are making massive patches that replace whole swathes of the game with almost identical information. Like replacing entire sections of code for small, but necessary modifications.
b) They sold an unfinished product and lied about it. Now they are covering up for the fact that the game was ready for sale.
That 600mb patch wasn’t ok then and a 13gb patch isn’t ok now. That’s not ok. That’s the size of the damn game!
But it WAS ready to be sold.
Look, I don’t have a problem with it being option ‘A’. I have no f*cking idea why the patch is so big. Clearly they’ve got future plans for the game outside of the launch product which couldn’t be incorporated using a large amount of the current code. It’s weird for sure.
At the same time, throwing around accusations of lying about unfinished products and the like is a bit silly. You clearly haven’t played the game, it is finished, nobody in their right mind would have expected a download so ridiculously large. The game was reviewed well before it went on sale and it’s not like customers haven’t received exactly the product that they expected (not like an EA product that gets reviewed and then breaks down on launch day).
Look, i’d suspect that we probably agree that the patch is ridiculously large and inconvenient. I just don’t think saying that it’s not ok, or accusing people of being incompetent, disrespectful, liars or calling the game unfinished is a reasonable response over a PATCH.
Far, far worse acts of bastardy occur in the gaming industry every single day. Is a free attempt at improving a decent product with a (too) large patch actually the kind of thing worth getting upset about compared to exploitative DLC, microtransactions or games that don’t work at all because of DRM? Cool your jets buddy!
So how does someone who can’t feasibly download the patch justify the fact that the game they bought no longer works as advertised? It’s not ok. Just because there are worse problems, doesn’t make the less bad problems go away.
As a happy, lifelong Capcom customer all the way back to before Street Fighter had different portaits for Ken and Ryu, even I can see through my fanboyism to say that this is shitty. This is a shitty, shitty move by Capcom.
I agree I finished the game twice, no patch was needed and personally I didn’t come across any bugs.
the reason for the size of the patch is all the extra stuff that will be included in the DLC and so its compatible when playing co-op with ppl with the extra content
Every patch will be larger because everything is a higher texture/resolution. Also the game was ship ready and I haven’t encountered a single bug and I complete the game fine. What game breaking bug are you even talking about, can you be VERY specific about how it is unfinished? Have you in fact even beaten the game?
So you are telling me that they have modified all of their textures? Sure, that makes sense for a patch.
The final game being 13GB sounds legit, because that needs all of the textures and models and so on. But a patch? This sounds like bad patching, they need to learn how to patch data and not copy over redundant data.
There are a few bugs, but dead rising isnt some buggy mess by a long shot. It’s not something made by bestheda at launch.
What is broken about DR3? Honestly, because I own it and haven’t run into a single bug/glitch aside from the random/odd texture lag when driving really fast around.
99% of the planet? You may need to get your head out of the rich clouds, too 🙂
You could be right about 99% of Current Gen console owners, though.
This. Boy oh boy. When I lived in a town in the Philippines for a bit, they hadn’t even HEARD of a Playstation. Literally, it came up in conversation.
Yeah some towns are Xbox only towns 😀
13gig is a pain in the ass for most people in any country. personally, 13gig would only piss me off because of the valuable space it would occupy on my hdd.
Precisely. Blame should not be placed on the developer but rather the modern country with third world internet.
And console developers for small hard-drives.
I disagree on 2 points – 1. I know you’re using it as a turn of phrase, but actual “third-world internet” is horrendously unreliable, affected by dropouts and very slow speeds, Australia doesn’t literally have “third-world internet”
2. I feel it is entirely the fault of the developer – they’ve chosen to hide their DLC in a required patch. Why not, like many before them, have the DLC download as the DLC, and the patch as the patch.
It’s not to hide the DLC. It’s how Capcom ensures that online play client compatibility is maintained. Everyone plays with the same version so there’s no clashes causing crashes. It seems Capcom are just awful at structuring this stuff behind the scenes. It’s why they keep releasing on disc paid content when most companies skip the headache and release the content that could have made it on disc as downloadable add-ons.
There’s nothing to worry about as far as this being the future goes because it’s pretty much pre-XBOX 360 level stuff. Large DLC downloads will be a thing but massive mandatory title updates won’t. It’s like saying the Wii U’s online functionality is a sign of bad things to come. Although in that case it’s more that Nintendo are resistant to the idea where Capcom legitimately seem confused by the concepts.
The last game I remember doing this was Fable II, and they were smart enough to make it a free marketplace download rather than mandatory title updates.
It’s really quite puzzling. Capcom put out some pretty high quality games on a technical level, there’s a lot of skill down there, but it’s like there’s some sort of mystical barrier preventing them from understanding DLC or even just copying how the competition does it. It’s like they’ve got one person down there who insists the only way to do this is to maintain one single version of the client that includes all DLC.
Much of the USA is moving away from unlimited and towards capped Internet.
Of course, this is in large part because they *can* – many of the companies imposing caps (such as Comcast) have an effective monopoly in many service areas. Capitalism ho!
Fortunately (for us) this means that there will be protests from an audience that’s actually likely to get some attention.
13GB is a bit excessive considering a larger % of the people that will play this game from now on won’t even purchase the DLC… The whole game itself was only 19.9GB to start with.
Note that this article seems to be saying that the size is large enough to be a problem in parts of the US too. While our infrastructure could do with some work, this isn’t purely an issue for Australians.
yep, and its the biggest reason why i HATED the original idea of a mandatory online console (Among many many other things)
I just wanna point out that always-online is NOT what the original Xbox One was. It was a 24 hour check-in, there’s a vital difference.
Always online would cause issues for anyone with an unstable internet connection, I have ADSL1 at home and regularly drop out. Always online causes issues whenever there is a drop out.
24 hour check-in means that only once every 24 hours, it checks-in with the head server. The check-in itself is small, takes kilobytes of bandwidth and is done in under a few seconds. This would cause no issues with my crappy ADSL1 connection, on the odd chance that I have a fault and my net is down for 24+ hours, tethering to your mobile phone can be used to do the quick check-in.
Yeah I get that, sorry I wrote it badly. But it’s the same kinda deal. Microsoft toyed with the idea of the xbox1 not even having a hard drive, so download games only. That’s kinda where I was heading
I think you meant to say not having a disk drive
Yep, arrrrrrrrrrrr I give up
You have it the other way roundf.I reckon the ONLY places in the world where this would be even remotely acceptable is US and UK…
Everywhere else does not have fast, unlimited interwebs
Yeah in London & surrounding areas they have fast broadband, yet go an hour north to Huntingdon & their ADSL is slower than what I get here.
Yea but I was actually thinking bigger…as in non-western countries too. There is no where else apart from first world countries where you could get fast and huge downloads. And when you do get them its the exception rather than the rule.
This seems to me like the same trap MS fell into when they decided that their console would be always online.
Think global!
Jeez laweez
Let’s be honest, if patches are going to continue to get bigger (and they probably are), then there needs to be more creative ways for them to be accessed and installed. It wouldn’t be half the problem it is if you could download it at work and then install it via USB drive or something similar.
Or head to your local eb games and get it there for a small fee
If you’re doing it at EB Games then it’s going to be a large fee. A very large fee.
$49.95, but they’ll knock $5 if you buy 4 other new releases at the time of purchase. Only if you have an EB card. Oh, you don’t have an EB card? What’s wrong with you? All your friends have one. They’re laughing at you! You should totes get one.
Don’t forget the replacement warranty as well! They’ll throw that in for a small……ish fee!
Would you like the scratch protection for your Flash Drive for a smallish fee?
Perfect opportunity for EB Games to jump on this and act as a ‘mirror’. They download all patches, you purchase a $5 USB stick and use touch-screen to select which update you want, it copies, you go home and install in 5 mins.
Or, alternatively, people could realise 13GB patches are ridiculous and so are data caps on NBN.
A while ago I remember an issue on Steam where the Witcher 2 always had large patches because the system in place at the time wasn’t able to patch parts of a file, it had to replace the entire file… and that caused patches for the Witcher 2 to be about 9GB each.
A patch as large as this makes you wonder if something similar is happening? Because after this patch the game only shows as using a couple GB more doesn’t it? (Don’t own the game, I remember reading that somewhere)
Same with Shogun 2 Total War… it wont let you play the game on Steam unless you install their 15GB+ update(S). Its crazy. I’m essentially stuck with a game i paid for but can never play because the douches over at Creative Assembly werent smart enough to create a game which didnt require these ridiculous sized patches. Im only on 50 gigs so I gotta use a 1/3 of my internet allowance just to download a game patch. I’m sooo going unlimited when this plan expires.
Heres an idea for Sony and MS:
Setup kiosks around shopping centres where you can plug in a USB select what game patches you want and they get transferred to a stick.
to prevent people from having to wait, you could lock your stick using a 4 digit pin inside the unit…
Problem Solved.
All it does is highlight how SHIT the DR3 people are at coding games, all of this stuff should have been done prior to release especially since reports are that about 12GB of this is replacing existing code within the game.
I for one was thankful that on the 360 microsoft Forced patch limits, now it seems they have done away with it and given license for people to make products even worse than before because “we can patch EVERYTHING now”.
For comparison I just got Devil may cry AND bioshock infinite for free on PS+ on my ps3. Both games combined at the same size as this patch. Makes me glad i took back DR3 to EB games, nothing would have annoyed me more than wanting to play (being offline cripples everything on XB1) and having to wait 2 days for this patch to download (hurrah for 300kbs real download speeds) and eating over 10% of my bandwidth allowance(which i pay through to roof for) for no benefit.
I would be highly surprised if there was anywhere close to 12GB of code in the game. It’s usually textures and models that contribute most to the size increases as you increase detail in games.
Well yes, that is true but the point remains. Its not like they added high res images or new DLC models either, (that would all add to the file size).
so what exactly did they need to replace so many Gb of data with?
This is the question. 13GB would be a hell of a lot of code. One would have to assume the most likely thing is that there is a lot of new or modified content.
Mines 61% downloaded and I haven’t even put the disk in the drive, it must have been downloading it when my Xbox was off?
hmm i wonder how the Xbox will know if you still own a game or will it update all games you ever played in the past?
Hmm, interesting point! I noticed this with battlefield 4’s update. My mate told me it needed an update so I turned on my xbox, but it had already done 10%. I thought nothing of it at the time but I don’t want it constantly updating stuff I don’t play anymore!
This is why I have it turned off completely. I don’t want it to randomly be downloading anything at any time i don’t want.
Especially since the only way to stop it would be to first realise its happening then boot up the Xb1 change the settings and turn it off,repeat when you want to re enable it. The entire thing is more a PITA than helpful in its current state.
I like the fact it gets downloaded while I’m at work, I don’t trade in games and I’m with vivid so unlimited downloads…but good to know the option is there to turn off
If you get rid of a game disc and don’t plan on getting it back press menu (start) on the DR3 tile in the “my games and apps” app (yes app, le sigh) and un-install the game. Aside from freeing up valuable hdd space on the 500gb drive, your x1 wont automatically keep updating games you no longer play, wasting your bandwidth and quota.
Good tip 😀
my monthly data limit for mobile BB is 12Gb, count me out.
This never used to be a problem when I was living with my folks with a 300GB monthly data allowance, but first month out of home with only a 120GB allowance and I capped my net in 3 weeks without even downloading ridiculous patches like this… :\
I thought when I moved out that I would just start buying games on disc rather than downloading, but I didn’t factor in patches… At least I’m not on a contact with my internet, might be time to change to a TPG Unlimited plan…
13GB game update…never seen a updte that big before
Yeah it would be nice to be able to download the update to say a USB and then install it yourself but that can also lead to problems
People could start using the buddy system again. I have a 500GB data limit and a pretty decent speed (well, 3MB/s isn’t decent but it’s better than what a lot of my friends have) so I can download patches or even full game files for people (if I have the game on Steam) and take it to them on a USB or an external hard drive. But it only works for a few games because a lot of games now don’t let you download the patch on its own from anywhere.
If more developers allowed people to download patch files (and not some stupid little exe that still has to do a download, the WHOLE patch and installer) from their official website for the game or something, it would make getting a friend with a big cap and fast Internet to download the patch for you a lot easier.
people need to stop labeling this as purely a patch… its also the DLC… sure i think it sucks you have to download it even if you don’t own the DLC, but many games have been doing this on Steam for years… my AC4 install has been “patched” with all the DLC released so far even though i don’t own it… its annoying but its just the way things are :\
I’m pretty lucky xbox live is quota free on iinet so i’m not worried about this!
Same. One of the main reasons I use iinet is the freezone quota. Although sometimes it doesn’t calculate correctly…
Well according to some this patch only makes the game a couple GB bigger (saw that yesterday somewhere, forget where); so that suggests it’s mostly just a patch for current files and not really DLC that’s taking up most of the size?
This, the actual patch adds about 2Gb ish, the DLC is much bigger than that so that argument is gone. So literally 10Gb of this patch is replacing existing code with changes, just shows how poorly it was done in the first place.
Strange I finished the game twice bug free, there must be another reason?
Well if you read what they actually changed it was like 7 minor things which is why the whole thing makes no sense.
Its NOT the DLC, it is NOT new or higher res textures and 80 off % of it replaces existing code. The changes themselves are almost irrelevant so why is this patch being forced and why is it so large.
Agreed that seems excessive
Remember when games used to be finished and testedbefore they were released?
As someone else stated – pretty sure 13gb isn’t just a ‘patch’. DR3 has a season pass, so I’m guessing this is mostly DLC. By DLC standards, 13gb is a lot, but not earth shattering by any means.
Yeah, but you have to download it if you want to play online at all. i.e. if you want to play the game…
We’ve gone the complete opposite now. Now you pay to access “Alpha” versions of games (that are real Beta versions), that get constant updates and never reach a state of “completion”.
Nope. Games have always shipped with bugs and problems.
On one hand you are right. But back in the day you were hard pressed to find them. Exceptions being the likes of Daikatana.
Back in the cassette and cartridge days (and even during the CD and DVD days for a while) it was clear that patching was logistically impossible so most games have rigorous testing phases.
Now thanks online connectivity its become a close enough is good enough phase. Now it seems most games are quickly tested and the first few months is full of updates.
It’s a catch 22 isn’t it. I remember Flintstones on the NES there was a certain point near the end where the game would lock up around 50% of the time. It was a dice roll. The era of patching games has been great cause it’s allowed critical game-ruining bugs to be ironed out. The downside is that some devs exploit the process to deliver games that haven’t been properly tested. I’m not saying devs are lazy or incompetent, I’d bet it’s usually a case of trying to meet harsh launch windows whilst games are becoming ever more complex.
Like I said, catch 22. But I won’t stand around and listen to people talk about the good ol’ days when all games were released and 100% complete and worked properly out of the box. Cause no such days existed.
Pepperidge Farm remembers
I remember when games didnt get DLC or on going support.
Maybe it’s selfish but it doesn’t worry me. I can see the issues others may have, but I also believe that you can’t always provide a service for the lowest denominator – never get anywhere that way.
Well, 50 hours and exceding my cap is pretty piss poor service, and I’m not on the slowest internet in the country.
The point is that no game should force a 13GB download, that you have to download just to play online.
Even on a reasonable 8Mbit connection that download is going to take hours.
That’s ridiculous. I’m lucky enough that iiNet doesn’t include XBL traffic towards quota, but that would place me in a minority.
Also that fact that the hdd is only 500Gb and non-replaceable…
Luckily it was overriding data and added less than 2 gig
Who’s your ISP? Tried steam limiter to see if u can access the download unmetered?
Ignoring the size, that’s a lot of time to download even of fast connections.
Pretty poor planning on the dev’s part if they didn’t include a patching system in the first place that didn’t require such a substantial amount of content to be downloaded.
*sigh* 13GB will take about 50 hours on our wonderful 2.3Mbit download speed here.
Glad I don’t have the ‘Bone.
R.I.P half finished games of last generation, welcome barely functional ones of this gen…
To call it a ’13GB patch’ whilst technically correct doesn’t really cover it…
it’s a DLC pack that you have no choice but to download.
It’s more a software packaging issue and a classic EA move (C’mon, where are the BF3/BF4 players, EVERY ONE of those f***ing ‘add-ons’ you download, paying customer or not.)
If 13GB happens to be the ‘new record’ for largest patch, I’m SURE that BF3 would rank (a few times) in the top 10 courtesy of the add-on packs during its time.
And that industry crash just keeps getting closer and closer……
You know what, screw it! I’m not waiting anymore.
*Makes an HD version of ET from the 2600 and pre-emptively causes the new video game crash.*
OK, quality games are now one or two years off as creative designers have them made and find distributors which are willing to try again in a market that maimed them but the games are coming.
Wow! I won’t be updating dead rising 3… Onto ebay you go.
So glad the ps4 patches while in standbye while I am at work or asleep. It does not excuse Australia’s broadband or the usa moving towards data caps though. MS must be annoyed about the reverse direction of a digital future. Really hurts the ambition. Heck even Gabe Newell must be going are you serious!
I’m guessing someone from Microsoft is sitting around the office right now struggling to figure out how to scream at Capcom without damaging the business relationship. For all the douchebaggery with XBOX One’s online only policies 13GB title updates just to maintain basic multiplayer compatibility weren’t meant to be on the cards.
This is the equivalent of having Epic put out a game with PS2 level graphics. It’s poor design that embarrasses the console as a whole. This is the reason they don’t give dev kits to anyone who asks.
Holey fuckballs Robin.
I have plenty of data to spare, and acceptable speeds to make this an easy install in a few hours, but this is crazy.
All of my games are digital installations, so I care not if it’s a 40GB+ game, but to be making people that purchased via disc to have to install a 13GB patch when they may have small data limits and slow speeds is fucked.
That is the only word that applies, fucked.
Technically this shouldn’t be a problem since there’s something called file compression. Of course, it goes to show how lazy developers are these days with compression. So yeah, it raises questions about the future of gaming. Not the sheer “scale” of patches (I doubt that 13gb patch is even remotely compressed), just pure laziness from devs. These guys need to learn from Bethesda having managed to compress a 100GB game into 6. I hate how PR departments now market the size of the game as something to brag about when they should be hiding in shame at their incompetence. (Looking at you CoD Ghosts; That is not even 51GB worth of game)
I do not mean to be rude but the contents on the file depends on how well it compresses.
Ignoring other factors and just considering this 13 GB download is a patch, then it will be a nightmare to compress as binary (the final form of code which can be run on the console) or even byte code (the intermediate code form used in most systems and possibly consoles) is deemed noisy that is difficult to compress.
Most compressors use dictionary based substitution of repeating sequences but even if they have the best compression, I doubt they can get it compressed lower than (say) 9 GB. And even then, that is just ridiculous.
If this is also DLC or required content for the game, then that can further complicate things as textures and sound are technically already compressed and recompressing something is impossible unless you convert to a decompressed form first.
Imagine unlimited bandwidth… you could blow your quota instantly 😉
& welcome to 2014.. Things are only going to get bigger. imagine how slow our internet will feel come 2020.. go oztraya!
I’m curious to know whats in this patch. Is there a change log available?
I agree that these patches are ridiculous as it’s a huge expectation for those users out there to have a substantial Internet quota to cater for it.
That being said, my biggest concern here is the amount of space these patches are taking on a fixed hard drive that we can’t replace. Sure, ‘500GB’ might seem a decent amount now, but this is a console that should last longer than its predecessor, and 500GB is not going to cut it when we add up all the game installs, patches and game downloads we’ll accumulate over time.
My XB1 is a great console, but not following Sony’s lead in having a replaceable HDD is one of MS’ greatest design faults.
Glad I didn’t buy an Xbone. Monthly cap is 12 GB with average speed of 300-400 kb/s
Umm star wars the force unleashed 1/2 patches were like 20gb+
13gb in patches is the size of 3 PS+ games. There better be meaningful content for the people who bought an xb1
Wait,
So what your telling me is people will have to use their bandwidth limits on something other than pr0n, w4r3z and pirated movies and shows?
Whats the world coming to!!
Assume that this version will be pressed onto the new batch of DR3 discs, right? So for the new Xb1 owner in a few months time who picks up a new copy of DR3 (lets assume it was pressed in the near future) wont have to download this because its already on the disc, right?
Right?
My guess is that you’ll be downloading basically all (or most of) the new assets, weapons, sounds, geometry, etc for the upcoming DLC. That way, they avoid having MK9’s desync issue when you try to play online with someone who has/hasn’t purchased the DLC.
My issues here are how fast my HDD on the consoles will start to fill up if they keep doing this.
If its overwriting the installed files no probs but i doubt it will.
SHOGUN WAS WORSE. The retail version became redundant so I had to download about 30GB (including all dlc though)
this is out of control, how long until devs start selling discs that cant even be played until a 20g update is downloaded (like forza 5 needed a 6g patch) if they do i will stop paying for my games
I blame Microsoft
Is it dead rising 4?
Im willing to let anyone use my quota (unlimited) to download this patch if needed. Just send console to
64 Scam school street
Theives way
Queensland
Care of : King Nigerian prince
…just in case anyone was wondering, NO, it DOES NOT fix the Beer Hat Blueprint Glitch
( if you’ve experienced it, you’ll know what it is )
so, basically, there’s no point attempting any PP Challenges for that Achievement as, if you have the Beer Hat/Drink Cart Blueprint glitch on your Level 50, 28 un-needed EXP Points character with 386,012 Zombies killed there is no reason to bother trying.
Good ole Capcom Vancouver.
20 GiB is an extreme cap? And here I am, glad to have 3 GiB!