Has an update made a game of yours unusable.

[mjs warlord]

Many years ago i got a pc game called crystal rift.

when the game was first released i helped the dev iron out things such as wrong coloured gems placed for doors , myself and the main man swapped patches to make the game bug free , i then did a full rerun of the game and as i helped debug the game i was the first person to complete it.. Despite posting this on the games steam page players were insisting it was full of bugs ???? and could not be completed which i found strange and i eventually stopped trying to convince players i had debugged and finished it on a clean run through.

I recently decided to take a trip down memory lane and launched the game for old times sake , and guess what it is now unplayable , some of the plinths did not have the idols to collect placed on them and some of the chests were either empty or would not open.

Their is no mention of update patch on steam but i did find a posting dated about 2 years after the game was released , i dont know why it was updated but i guess thats what broke it.

 

[apoth0r]

Any updates related to Warhammer 40K : Darktide on Steam appear to be pretty weak. Crashing all the time, regardless of whether they update or not.

Sometimes people just want to watch the world burn, how better than adding inherent bugs to a game someone may or may not still purchase. Who moderates this?

Sorry you were unable to reminisce

 

[Zloth]

Unusable? No. Updates can break mods for sure, and I've heard of plenty of people who's game seemed to be broken by an update because there was some leftover of a mod hanging around and breaking things.

Sometimes you can get a bad download. Have you tried validating files?

 

[Brian Boru]

The only one I can remember wasn't a game update, but rather a graphics card driver update which broke Civ4 in the 00s. I don't recall if it was an ATI or Nvidia card, but rolling back to the previous driver version solved the problem.

ETA: oh yeah, another non-game one was when I moved from XP to Windows 7, the original Royal Envoy game was unplayable—but the later 3 other games in the series were fine. That problem remained until I moved to Win10, when both that game and another old program I liked, which Win7 didn't like either, both started working fine again.

I stopped buying new-ish games around the same time that digital distribution took off, so I haven't been exposed to many chances for updates to break games. Games I buy have mostly had all their updates and DLCs etc finished when I get them.

 

[Pifanjr]

Maybe check out this thread about updates ruining games as well:

Question - Has an update ruined a game for you?

I was listening to a Planet Money podcast about printers getting firmware updates that cause malfunctions with 3rd party ink cartridges in order to protect the company's ink sales. A point they drove home was that we're in a weird period of time where an item you once buy may have its...

forums.pcgamer.com

 

[ZedClampet]

I've seen a lot of updates that broke games, but they were usually patched fairly quickly. I play a lot of solo developer games and mistakes happen. I usually just wait an hour and come back and there's been a new patch that fixes whatever was wrong before. Astro Colony is the latest game I played where that happened. That developer is very good, though, and he got it fixed promptly.

I've also had games that became unplayable after an update because the game just got considerably worse. For instance, in one update for Osiris New Dawn, your hunger meter went down so quickly that you couldn't stay alive for more than a minute. I had logged out at a mine some distance from my base. I had a little food on me, but not much. I started running towards home, and in less than a minute I had to eat, and then again, and then again, and then I was out of food, and then I died. There was no way to get more food where I was, and it was impossible tor me to make it home on the amount of food I was carrying.

Then I've had games that weren't unplayable after an update, but they changed in such a way that I didn't want to play them anymore. 7 Days to Die is the one I'm thinking of.

 

[mainer]

Maybe I've been lucky, but I've never had a game update make any game unplayable, and I go back to the years where I had to download updates or patches manually and then install them myself. As @Zloth said, modded games are always at risk, especially if you have "auto-updates" enabled, but there are usually ways to disable that feature, at least with the modded games I've played.

 

[mjs warlord]

Hello Brian .... you mentioned g card drivers screwing your game.
It does not happen very often now but nvidea drivers sometimes cause problems because now instead of making drivers for individual cards they make them for " series " exaample , 10 series will now 1050 , 60 , 70 , 80.

For the last 20 years if have had an aquarium program and yes it still works in compatibility mode.
After a new card driver is installed i open the aquarium , if i see any weird lines on screen i know i will have a problem in a game.

 

[DXCHASE]

Any updates related to Warhammer 40K : Darktide on Steam appear to be pretty weak. Crashing all the time, regardless of whether they update or not.

I was having trouble with Darktide during its closed beta and at launch, but havent had crashing in the last month or two of playing. Thats not to say darktide cant use more optimization though because its ray tracing is garbage.

As for me OUTRIDERS is probably one of the worst with game breaking updates for me. Losing accounts, weapons, gear, not doing dmg, crashing. This game had it all and even when it does work it still manages to screw up in game like not progressing missions or locking me out of missions to the point where i have to leave the game and reload it for it to work.

 

[ZedClampet]

One of the games I mentioned, Osiris New Dawn, has launched into 1.0 and the devs have apparently said they aren't going to work on the game anymore. According to most of the new reviews (Mostly Negative), the game doesn't really work....

Osiris: New Dawn on Steam

Osiris: New Dawn is an unforgiving near future space survival game with a cinematic feel and elements of horror. Play as a Mission Specialist in single or multiplayer to build your planetary base, pilotable vehicles, and controllable drones as you explore a dangerous solar system far from Earth.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Zloth]

It's past 'mostly negative' and into 'overwhelmingly negative' now. Only 17% positive. Looks like they got off to a good start but just couldn't get it done, for whatever reason.