Ubisoft's Day-One Patch For 'The Division 2' on PS4 is 90 Gigabytes (eurogamer.net) 124
When The Division 2 launches on March 15th, PlayStation 4 owners will also need to download a day one update -- that's 90 gigabytes. Eurogamer reports:
That's according to a new official support page (as spotted by Game Informer) in which Ubisoft warns PS4 players who've opted to purchase The Division 2's physical edition that they should expect an 88-92 gigabyte download on launch day.... Ubisoft also notes that the the final HDD install size on PS4 will be between 88-92GB, for both the digital and disc versions. In other words, it sounds like physical owners are essentially being asked to download the entire game from scratch when release day comes.
The site jokes that when the game launches, PlayStation 4 owners "will have plenty of time to, say, read a book or learn a language or transcend entirely to another plane, while you wait for your download to complete."
The site jokes that when the game launches, PlayStation 4 owners "will have plenty of time to, say, read a book or learn a language or transcend entirely to another plane, while you wait for your download to complete."
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What's funny is that the Unreal Engine, along with many other engines, have supported diff updates for a long time yet nobody utilizes them.
It's almost as if they were in bed with the telecom companies to make updates take so much fucking data so that they can effectively charge for that data once they go over-cap. Your steam library needs updating? My last update took 700GB, over fifteen games. Guess what most of those updates actually were? EULA updates. They literally made me redownload the entire goddam
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Incompetence is more likely. Once the game is released to manufacturing all the senior devs are moved on to the next one, with the more junior ones left to handle post-release patches and DLC.
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It's possible for a game to stream data from both the optical drive and the hard-drive in parallel, improving reading throughput. GTA V did this. But most games do indeed seem to treat the disc as essentially a hard-to-copy auth token.
I wonder why they don't just press CDs. Much cheaper than shipping Blu-Rays, no?
Patches (Score:2)
Ideal patch: Just a handfull of file diffs and new files.
As implemented: Giant compressed .zip files to "save on data transmission" that requires the entire .zip to be downloaded.
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You can still diff encrypted files as long as you have the keys. Holy shit this is basic data handling 101.
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If it's encrypted and the user at the end can't decrypt it, it can't be used, and the user at the end doesn't have to have it.
For example: every DVD player has the capacity to decrypt a DVD. If you decap the chips or otherwise get into the player, you can retrieve the key. The software decrypts the video as it plays.
So you can sign all the data (encrypted or decrypted) with your private key, then use the session key to decrypt, patch, re-encrypt, and verify that the result is the same as the signatur
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What's really sad is that the PS4 already supports delta patches.
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The PS4 itself does not support delta/diff patches. This is purely the game software/engine, and has nothing to do with the console hardware or its operative software.
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The PS4 itself does not support delta/diff patches.
[citation needed]
Even if you were right, and I don't believe that you are, you could work around the problem through an intelligent loader which could handle looking in multiple files for a resource — it would look in the newest file first, then the older one, etc etc.
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It all has to be swapped out with an update?
Whats more expensive?
1. Making users download 10s of gigs on their own networks?
2. Learning to code and getting better upgrade support into the code?
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Up to 92 GB, they say? Are they sure they don't mean 92 GiB?
Otherwise they should be saying 99 GB ... which looks worse.
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It's a day one patch. There are no prior incremental patches, so this is just the diffs from the previous version.
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And why buy their games? I see "ubisoft" anywhere and I avoid it like the plague.
Maybe game was not ready (Score:3, Funny)
And they just made the DVD with a download prompt so they could ship in time.
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Old spec sheets for the PS4 say they are compatible with 4-layer disks, so either 100GB if original Blu Ray format, or 133GB if BDXL.
Re: Maybe game was not ready (Score:1)
Bro, when I played Doom it was on three floppy diskettes.
Maybe not accurate (Score:2)
In any case, large patches on first day have been a norm for a while. 50 GBs is a lot for just a code patch. Game assets need to be downloaded. I cannot tell whether the game on the disk is complete as this is an online only game. The reason I tell you about this is because of the Tony Hawks game disaster. You had to download a large game patch even when p
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Agree and they would get the benefit of doubt if this was the first time a patch was this size. Unfortunately it's actually a very real trend, not just a once off with Tony Hawk. Fallout 76 also had a day-one patch that was actually larger than the total install size of the pre-patch game.
Game assets need to be downloaded.
When most assets need to be redownloaded it's no longer a patch, it's a complete re-issue.
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Fallout 76 also had a day-one patch that was actually larger than the total install size of the pre-patch game.
That was just for the Playstation version, the PC patch was a few gigs.
This seems to be specific to the PS4 or at least its dev tools.
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It might be an update to optimize all of the textures in order to improve performance. Turns out Skyrim modders figured out that the textures were in an unoptimized format, and were able to make a mod that optimized them, improving performance and reducing file size, while keeping the quality identical. Optimization tends to come at the very end of development, so it's plausible they needed to replace every texture file in the game.
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Turns out Skyrim modders figured out that the textures were in an unoptimized format, and were able to make a mod that optimized them,
AFAICT this is true of every Bethesda game. It's been the case for every fallout FPS, for example. Anyone who pays full price for any of those turds is part of the problem. I waited until it was ripe and got FO4 plus season pass for twenty bucks from cdkeys. And guess what? I still had to go to the console over and over again because of quest-breaking bugs. God help the dedicated system gamers, they're just fucked since they don't get a console.
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One more reason my last Bethesda game was FO3.
Problem is, what game isn't totally half-assed? It's a great reason not to pay full price, but where do I spend my gaming dollar and not have do deal with incompetence? I'd go for a walk, but it still hurts the toe I crushed, and the ground's too soggy right now to go for a bike ride.
Obligatory Penny Arcade (Score:2)
Also, the first Penny Arcade: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/18 [penny-arcade.com]
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Also relevant... https://www.penny-arcade.com/c... [penny-arcade.com]
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I heard they were going to be delivering the internets right to our door with a drone!
There was one minor bug (Score:2)
They couldn't fit the 90GB game on a 50GB disc, so you have to download the whole thing.
Pardon my French (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuck that shit. If I were a gamer (I'm not) and I was told that after spending money on the game to have a physical copy, that before I could play the game I'd have to download the entire game because of a "patch", I'd be demanding my money back.
I've read comments on here, both in this story and others, that large "patches" have become the norm, but again, fuck that shit. A patch is a fraction of the size of the program.
If your "patch" is the same size, or larger, of the game, it's not a patch. It's a complete and total fuck up.
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Content patch a few months down the line? Full expansion like in MMOs? Of course those are big.
A NINETY GIGABYTE PATCH BEFORE RELEASE is not a patch, that's a complete do-over of every last file that makes up the game.
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No you won't. You'd complain, you'd be ignored, and then you'd capitulate and download the pat... errr... game because ultimately you've parted with money as a signal that you actually want to play it. And the reality is a download is a minor annoyance.
People are very tough online when they don't have any skin in the game.
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Or maybe he just wouldn't buy it. Maybe he really is tough, just not like he thinks. Maybe that's why the whole AAA industry is moaning about profits dropping. Who would have thunk that treating your customers like shit through microtransactions and insane DRM requirements would lead to a drop in "legacy" revenues (people buying fucking games). Spend less money on game mechanics and more time on microtransactions leads to a worse product. And it's leading to a loss in existing revenue. I dream of a world wh
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Or maybe he just wouldn't buy it.
Which implies he wasn't very interested in the game to begin with and likely to just pirate it anyway. Seriously if downloading the game is what turns you off buying it they are probably lucky not to have you as a customer, because you're just going to be full of complaints.
Or you legitimate live in the bush without internet.
Maybe that's why the whole AAA industry is moaning about profits dropping.
If you think that's the reason then you're not a gamer. Have you had a look at AAA titles in the past year? Gamers have happily put up with DRM, microtransactions, large downloads, and
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well, it's the same price, and you get to have a physical backup. you get to download the same game someone with a digital copy has, so in the end you are not really getting screwed.
i would still like to know what happened to delta patches.
lazyness or console weakness (Score:2)
They borrowed a leaf from Microsoft (Score:1)
You see, there was a time when a Microsoft patch was larger than the entire Operating System. And those were the days before fat internet pipes we currently have.
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Name one patch that MS has ever released that was bigger than the whole OS? Not even the Windows 10 service releases are as big as the OS is - and they are the biggest patches I've ever seen from them.
Before fat pipes I remember getting service packs for Windows NT on CD in the mail - those weren't as big as the OS either.
Re: They borrowed a leaf from Microsoft (Score:1)
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Yep, the absolute smallest Windows 7 install image is 1.5GB for the 32 bit version, more for the 64 bit version. Installation from multiple CDs is not supported. That's also a single language minimal version too.
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idk about 'bigger than the entire OS', but MS Office 365 'patches' now redownload the entire Office suite. I recently found that out when I tried to install a language pack (you know, hyphenation and dictionary for Word, maybe 10 Mb in data). The damn installer removed my entire Office installation and reinstalled it.
Reminds me of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 (Score:1)
This reminds me of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5, where they rushed out the game because the license was about to end, and only finished the tutorial and park editor on the disc, with the entirety of the game finished by patch.
That's no patch (Score:3)
Fwiw (Score:2)
Is that even unusual? (Score:2)
Can't remember what the day one patch for Spider Man on the PS4 was, but I think it may have been nearly that large... it kind of makes you wonder if it's meant to help push you into buying games online since you are essentially downloading most of it anyway...
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If they've had to change a lot of the content then a diff patch is going to be larger than the content you want to diff (diff patches generally have to contain some element of the original file for matching, plus what you want to change that to... sure, you can do it with indexes and offsets but that assumes that the entire world has one base version that you can refer to, and if you get it wrong you corrupt *everyone's* game).
How do you diff, say, a megatexture atlas which you've tweaked some of the dimens
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Steam does have differential updating. But I still see gigabyte+ updates on a regular basis.
The main time I see this happening is when some game releases DLC. Rather than selectively install the DLC they pack it into their data files and inflict the download and footprint cost on everyone whether they want it or not.
For example Planet Coaster does this so the game is 2-3x the size on disk that it needs to be for most people with massive updates from time to time to compound the issue.
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The main time I see this happening is when some game releases DLC. Rather than selectively install the DLC they pack it into their data files and inflict the download and footprint cost on everyone whether they want it or not.
In a similar sense, I've frequently suggested they should profile or self-profile games and stream content.
Think about something like Breath of the Wild, 13 gigabytes. Do you need 13 gigabytes to play the opening scene?
When you start the game, the very first assets you need are identifiable. You can profile the loading screens and such, or you can speculatively identify assets by predicting what the next screen will load based on where menu entries go etc. and what assets (and code!) they call up.
So
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I think WoW does this, it lets you play with just assets for the starting areas, then downloads the rest while you're grinding away
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How do you diff, say, a megatexture atlas which you've tweaked some of the dimensions to remove an unused image and repack the rest?
You use the original file as a dictionary and designate the locations of each texture, with procedural instructions to reconstruct the output.
(i.e. changing the compression on the textures to improve performance or avoid a licensing cost, which means changing the code, plus all of the texture atlases, plus re-optimising/recompressing everything)
Now that one you need to reissue the files. You could theoretically write a deterministic decompress-compress procedure, though.
There are only 2 ways the patch can be this big (Score:2)
b) They've repacked all their data files rendering everything that went before as obsolete.
Either way it stinks.
What the hecking heck?!! (Score:2)
COMCAST CAPS (Score:1)
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My monthly possible download is around 100 GB, and that's maxing out the connection so I can do nothing else in the meantime.
This is absolute bullshit and a clear assumption that everyone is sitting on uncapped fiber connections today. If you don't then your money clearly isn't good enough for this company.