Why are game updates not delivered as a separate patch?

[Praisejesus]

However, the most common reason is something you can see every day, people starting with high expectations and zero experience.
Once they realize just how much work they should put behind their idea and perhaps be done after a couple of years, they will abandon ship.

yeah a lot of people don't realize how much it takes to create a functional game, let alone something that isn't shovelware

Spoiler: Charactersheet

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thats one character sheet i am testing out, about 60 more pages for the main character 200 for side characters 1 hour per sheet, i have jumped multiple engines, ripped apart multiple games on this website and read multiple comments from "freeloaders" and developers alike, i pull in information from every possible direction, my goal is to create content that stands above the garbage shovelware on this website.

 

[redknight00]

But for engines that compile the data, like RPG Maker, or rely on compiled code, it should just be forgot.

RPG Maker MV doesn't actually need to be compiled unless the dev wants to or they are using some very specific plugin that requires compiling. In fact, for your average game, all that is needed for a patch are the new arts and sounds plus the data folder.

 

[Meushi]

Exactly, if you had the previous versions... And in that case it was only 4 versions to download (2,3,4,5).
It is still annoying, but in games where there are more builds than simply 4, it would not be flexible.

As Holy Bacchus said, a few devs have done patch updates (Glassix, BaDIK, City of Broken Dreamers etc.).

Generally they offer both a full download and patches though, so new users can start with the full download.

Sorry but unless you are paying IMO you don't have a say, possible supporters are not supporting nothing. Money talks and bullshit walks.

They do it for their paying customers, not pirates - the aforementioned Dr PinkCake hates pirates.

They mostly seem to offer patches where the file size of their game is quite large, which is a barrier for some of their customers (Glassix 5.25 GB, BaDIK 8.2GB, CoBD 4.7GB).

One apparent issue with patches around here at least is that many users are clueless about how to apply them (despite packaged instructions), so there are numerous posts about the game being broken, how to patch etc.

 

[Droid Productions]

Most of my testers use Steam (across Win32/Win64/OSX/Linux), which does patching. Since I build every 2 days or so that's easier on them. I don't have the infrastructure to properly host an auto-patcher, and no intention of relying on a bunch of "if you have build XX.XX.b use this patch, if you have XX.XX.a, use this patch" nonsense, which is fragile and will generate more pain than it's worth.