Early last year, David Jaffe gave a GDC micro-panel where he expressed his distaste towards day one patches, going as far to say that games shouldn’t have any patches in the first one or two months after release. Now, Jaffe has announced that Twisted Metal will receive a day one patch.
He said back in March:
Hardware manufacturers, I feel, should only allow one to four updates to the software per game per year. None of them should come within the first one to two months the game is shipping.
Continuing:
When I first started, when the disc was shipped it was our last chance [to get rid of bugs] off the bat. If developers could make it work then, then today they can at least make sure our games don’t have to be updated the first week they hit shelves.
On Twitter, Jaffe has now admitted:
I f***ing despise day1 patches. And yes, TWISTED METAL will have one. But it’s a very small download that fixes a few bugs but mostly is there to address some balance issues that we had to get fixed for certain vehicles that we discovered post disc.
With Twisted Metal receiving an early patch, the game should only receive three more patches this year if Jaffe wants to lead by example with his four patch policy.
Twisted Metal, which has gone gold, releases on Valentine’s day in the US, and three days later on February 17th in Europe.
