It's probably up to the dev to decide what goes in a patch. But yes, Sony should make it easy to do differential updates for games if they are not doing it already, for example, detecting changes in a repository on Sony's side and send you only the changed / added bits?
That's exactly what I'm talking about.
That's like GIT downloading whole directories on every single pull instead of just figuring out what the exact state on the target computer is and only getting the differences (GIT actually does the latter, which is the only sane thing to do).
And was all that done by Id Software or was it done by Microsoft in MS-DOS or Windows 3? Because blaming Sony is like saying it's MS-DOS's fault if patching in a game isn't performed incrementally.
I disagree.
It's Sony's framework behind it. It's Sony's platform. It's not the dev creating their own patching system and using that one. It's using the standard Sony patch system, so it's of course Sony's job to make that work properly. It shouldn't matter what the dev actually does behind the scenes.
The dev could for example accidentally mark the whole game as patched. Is it a good idea to just take that and not check the input? It's even a simple thing to do. File didn't get changed -> do not upload it to the user's machines unless they didn't have the latest version already. Done.
My point was: this stuff was figured out over twenty years ago. It's nothing new. And it's simple.
You are also comparing apples and oranges. MS-DOS is an open platform. PS3+PS4 are closed platforms. You can't do anything on PS3+PS4 without Sony's approval. They fully own it.
Other games patch just fine, so why is Bethesda's game special and what part of that issue makes it the platform holder's fault?
Platform holders patching system -> platform holders fault.
It's as simple as that.
If they actually created their own patching system, used that one and skipped Sonys, then I would fully agree.
