Another Update?! Why Staying All Patched Up is Important
It seems that every time you log on to play an online game, try to send a ‘WhatsApp’ message, or even check your online banking app, there’s a new update to install.
Whilst this can be tiresome, it’s really important to keep regularly updated. Hackers and providers are in a constant battle to outsmart each other and updates are the direct results of that competition.
Safety & Security
A couple of months ago, hoards of Fortnite players reported a surge of account hackings. Fortnite is an enormous multiplayer co-operative game, where players compete in their hundreds to firstly survive a shootout and secondly scavenge for materials to build structures with.
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Hackers were leaving players with enormous charges for purchases that they had never made, with most players having absolutely no idea how these purchases could have even happened.
Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite, were proactive in offering refunds to those affected and it transpires that fairly well-known hacking techniques were used.
- Whilst the Fortnite attacks were awful for the players affected, they are by no means the most serious of their kind. Recently $42 billion worth of currency was wiped out in an exchange hack.
- The best way to protect yourself from hackers is by taking simple precautions. Don’t use the same password across all of your online accounts, register for two-step verification when logging in and always install new patches.
User Experience
As well as safety, one of the often overlooked reasons for consistently updating is to improve the experience for customers. The best online games platforms listen to players and make changes that will benefit everybody.
There’s little more annoying than spending good money on a game, only to find it disappointing. In 2012, Diablo III was released (to put it politely) to pretty poor reviews.
Whilst lesser developers could have let this release slide and moved onto a new project, Blizzard listened to the fans’ outcry and worked hard to change the game for the better.
Various patches removed the initial problems that consumers had and by 2014, their Reaper of Souls expansion pack completely overhauled the core of the game and made what could have been a disastrous release into a hugely popular RPG, that is still played competitively to this day.
Removing Glitches
An obvious, but the important reason to always install patches is to remove glitches. Plenty of gamers find humor in spotting glitches in new releases, but for the rest of us, they can become tiresome. Stuttering actions, weird graphics and occasionally misplaced horses (see below!) are often only found through hours of gameplay – they’re the kind of things that sometimes can’t be spotted before release.
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Thankfully, once the hours of game-time stack up, so too do the number of people noticing glitches, which makes these mostly annoying, occasionally amusing defects much easier to ‘patch away.’
If all of this hasn’t convinced you to keep updating and patching your online games, then there surely can’t be much that will! From the serious issues of cybersecurity to the simpler ones of improving gameplay, developers work hard to ensure that consumers have the best and safest experiences possible.
So, the next time you let out a sigh when asked to install an update, just remember that it really is for your own good.
