Treyarch explains PC patch process

By Robert Purchese Published 16 January, 2009

Helps fans cope with lengthy wait.

Treyarch has explained to the Call of Duty: World at War community why patching the PC version has taken so long.

The conclusion of a lengthy post by community manager JD_2020 (Josh Olin according to Kotaku) is that desktop updates take a minimum of eight weeks from start to finish.

This process involves listening to fans, reproducing the issues to engineers, testing, submitting the patch to Activision, more testing, and then finally building an installer and distributing the files.

"The minimum estimates of time listed above are best-case scenarios, and on average, it takes longer than 2 months. In rare emergency cases, this time can be trimmed down, but this is very rare, and depends on what is being addressed," explains JD_2020, who could be a robot with lasers for eyes.

He goes on to explain that hot fixes (title updates) familiar to Xbox 360 or PS3 owners are not possible on PC, as there's no overarching service such as Xbox Live or PlayStation Network to take care of them. Valve and Microsoft might disagree.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (23) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • richardiox #1 3 years ago

    Treyarch are jokers. Played COD5 online for the first time last night and was horrified to see the "clipping into the ground" glitch on roundhouse is still there from the Beta. It's not like it's a small bug fix that they can take their time on, it's a major glitch on one of the biggest selling titles of the last 3 months and its a disgrace that - what, 10/12 weeks after the Beta - they still havent patched it. Jokers.

  • Bilbo_bobbins #2 3 years ago

    so what about the PS3 patch? For christ sake Treyarch, pull your finger out and design a game worth playing. I am fed up with CODwaw and decided to give it in, since I can't connect to anything without getting chucked out or just hanging.

    Load of crapola !

  • Bilbo_bobbins #3 3 years ago

    Treyarch are a joke and I will never be buying a game made by them again.

    Congrats Treyarch, you won.

  • Buztafen #4 3 years ago

    Who gives a shit about COD5.....wheres the frickin L4D 360 patch and DLC!?!?!

    /eyeballs Valve....

  • Wolfman #5 3 years ago

    Im not defending Treyarch because I think COD5 is awfull.

    ... but having said that if they rushed out a patch really quickly and it was just as buggy as the original verion you lot complaining about the lack of patch now would just complain about how bad the patch was. Things take time to fix and go through the cogs of a large company.

    Of course they should have just released a game that didn't require a patch in the first place ...

    -wolfman

  • richardiox #6 3 years ago

    Wolfman - over 12 weeks after they would have known about a serious exploit and still no hot-fix. All they need to do is fix some geometry clipping issues in specific spots on a couple of levels. Under 12 weeks would not constitute a rush job by any stretch of the imagination. I can partially understand why badly selling games dont get continued support from the developers but with so many online players accross the 3 platforms it's outrageous to have not addressed it.

  • Buztafen #7 3 years ago

    Back when i used to Daytona and Guardian Heroes on the saturn, and MGS an Resi Evil on the PS1, patching anything was unheard of....games just used to work! Miss those days.....

  • smernicki #8 3 years ago

    slow day for news then?

  • hiddenranbir #9 3 years ago

    I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt after having immense fun flamethrowing the banzai-ing enemy but they 'ave lost it.

  • sneetch #10 3 years ago

    He goes on to explain that hot fixes (title updates) familiar to Xbox 360 or PS3 owners are not possible on PC, as there's no overarching service such as Xbox Live or PlayStation Network to take care of them. Valve and Microsoft might disagree.

    Or Ubisoft or EA or HP or Logitech or just about every else in the PC arena who has a noddy that checks for updates before starting the game/device driver/virus scanner/electronic doohickey dispenser.

    What he probably means is "coding is haaaard, no-one has done it for us and we don't wanna" maybe next time they should try writing some code themselves rather than reskinning some models and riding off the hard work of Infinity Ward. Or do they want us to hold their hands for them? Shall we go over, sit them down and explain the very fucking basics of software engineering and network communication to them? Would that help?

    Sorry, a bit aggressive of me there but this kind of bullshit excuse from someone who should know better is just pathetic.

  • dr_faulk #11 3 years ago

    @ richardiox

    Well said.

  • Bursiene #12 3 years ago

    @ richardiox

    Agree mate, totally pissed of with everyone trying to jump through the f**king wall to get under the map all the time! Never played a game with so many problems. Think on most maps I have had some arsehole under it shooting at me!

  • Artemis_Matsas #13 3 years ago

    @ richardiox +1

  • rupert #14 3 years ago

    rofl at that valve patch games in hours

  • IronCladChicken #15 3 years ago

    Yes, but Valve are professionals

  • Bilbo_bobbins #16 3 years ago

    I liked this game at first, but not fixing these relatively small glitches has really put me off, infact I am trying to sell the game. I find it really annoying. It's bad that Treyarch haven't even said they are trying to patch it, thats poor customer service and is making me think twice about even purchasing the next COD by Infinity,mainly connection issues.

    Back in the old days, games came out without glitches, you never really got a problem, so why are these new ones all so horribly bad?

    Treyarch give up and stop developing bad games.

  • Ryze #17 3 years ago

    @Buztafen

    The problem with Saturn and Playstation games was:

    1 - they were basic in comparison - no network or online play to speak of

    2 - the bugs in their games just were not fixed. You had to live with them.

    I can't recall any game-breaking bugs, however - but point 1 explains the reason for this.

  • urban #18 3 years ago

    lol!

  • Skurmedel #19 3 years ago

    I don't think Infinity Ward is much better. The same famous map glitches is still in the CoD 4 maps, almost a year later. I can still go down in the basement and "walk" through the grating and hide in the pipe models on "Pipeline". Also, in my eyes, a host of balancing issues left which most probably never will get fixed.

    Avoid the Call of Duty series, and you'll feel much better.

  • paketep #20 3 years ago

    No wonder they're taking forever with the 1.2 patch. They have no fucking idea about PC gaming!

  • smoison #21 3 years ago

    LOL

    You can't make this shit up!

    What a joke of a developer.

  • gaselite #22 3 years ago

    What a bunch of pissy bitches.

    (The EG commenters, not Treyarch. Well, maybe them too.)

  • bu5hhead #23 3 years ago

    I cant play it mulitplayer without getting a mulitude of errors given up on it, they would have been better just releasing a mod for cod4 at least it wouldnt have felt half baked