Battlefield 4 vs. Call of Duty Ghosts: New Patch for Call of Duty, Annoying Ads for Battlefield
Infinity Ward has released a new patch for Call of Duty Ghosts on the PlayStation 4.
The 1.7 GB patch aims to improve the game's stability. According to a brief patch note, the update "fixed a crash that could occur at the start screen, if you started downloading Onslaught before launching the game."
Players were unhappy with the large size of the update, especially given such a brief and vague explanation from developers. Many people took to social media sites such as Reddit to express their discontent.
"I find it odd that every single patch for this game requires me to download over 1GB," said Reddit user Shantred89. "How is it even remotely possible that you have to overwrite 1.75GB of data just to fix such a minor issue? Even the patches with way more notes require about the same amount of downloading."
Activision Support was unable to offer any insight into the matter:
"Unfortunately we don't have information on why the patches are the sizes that they are. Most of the details are included in the patch notes, I know the notes released today were a bit small, we're sorry to say we wouldn't have the full details as to why a patch focused on stability was so large." They went on to add that the PS4's advanced hardware often required larger updates.
Battlefield 4 players have their own cause of frustration these days, as players are now forced to watch advertisements during loading screens.
Most gamers expect to see advertising in free-to-play games, given that that's usually their primary source of revenue, but Battlefield is one of the first paid titles to do so. Other games have found clever ways to implement ads into the game world -- such as sports titles that mimic real world advertising in stadiums -- but Battlefield 4 is forcing movie trailers of Need for Speed on players between online matches. Even premium subscribers who paid as much as $110 are subject to this.
People generally hate pop-ups and for EA to make the decision to do this following so many other issues with the game's launch is probably not the best move.
Twitter user Kit Emment writes, "I had to double check it wasn't April 1st when I read this. You guys are unbelievable. Pathetic."