There are definitely cases where the latest update outright breaks the game and that is bad QC.
But what people generally refer to here are games with a modding scene. A vocal part of the userbase rely heavily on mods and/or custom DLLs. So when the game updates, all of those break until the modders and tool writers are able to catch up.
There are a lot of implications to this for games with (meaningful) online components. But for predominantly SP games? It is a fun time when you sit down to play a game in the evening and see it was updated and know you can’t go back to that save/game for at least a few days. And there very much SHOULD be a way to opt out or freeze a version for those.
Devs are able to include the ability to run past versions of the game. If they push an update that breaks mods without doing that, I feel like thats their own fault.
Also, even if the dev doesnt do this, there are ways to download previous versions of the game using the steam console.
Cool.
Maybe they can also stop forcing updates that break my game, too?
Fortunately, GOG exists. Which proves that Steam doesn’t need to force the updates on us, but chooses to.
If your games are breaking on update, isn’t that the game devs’ faults?
It varies.
There are definitely cases where the latest update outright breaks the game and that is bad QC.
But what people generally refer to here are games with a modding scene. A vocal part of the userbase rely heavily on mods and/or custom DLLs. So when the game updates, all of those break until the modders and tool writers are able to catch up.
There are a lot of implications to this for games with (meaningful) online components. But for predominantly SP games? It is a fun time when you sit down to play a game in the evening and see it was updated and know you can’t go back to that save/game for at least a few days. And there very much SHOULD be a way to opt out or freeze a version for those.
Devs are able to include the ability to run past versions of the game. If they push an update that breaks mods without doing that, I feel like thats their own fault.
Also, even if the dev doesnt do this, there are ways to download previous versions of the game using the steam console.