Digital downloads of games are here, and getting bigger. But there's still a few problems with them. Read on for more.

There's been a bit of confusion around the place lately about digital downloads and the differences between them and a "real" (boxed) copy - most notably, why the patches don't work. So we figured it might be a good idea to provide a bit of information and insight into what is going on.

What is a Digital Download (DD) game?

Just to make sure everyone is on the same page, a "digital download" game is something that you buy online and download to your computer. At no point do you get a physical medium from which to install your game - no DVDs, no CD-ROMs, not even a 5 1/4" floppy disk.

There are several online stores that sell DD games - here's a quick (and by no means comprehensive) list:

- BigPond Games - BigPond and GameArena's online store.
- Direct2Drive - GameSpy/IGN's online store.
- Steam - Valve Software's direct download client-based system.

What differentiates a DD game with a retail game?

First and foremost, the obvious fact that instead of buying a box with a disc inside it, you're buying a download - a random collection of bytes that will spew forth from some service on the Internet down to your PC.

Typically, game retailers like relying on the physical medium for some sort of copy protection. There's often some form of copy protection on the disc that prevents (or at least makes it difficult) to copy the game. As there is no disc in a DD game, there's no way to tie copy protection to something phsyical, so they need to find another way. DRM - Digital Rights Management - is that way.

Your normal DD game will have some form of copy protection that binds the game to your computer. There are several copy protection systems of ranging invasiveness - the technical details are not worth going into in this article, as they are not really relevant to the main point - but it should be noted that one of the typical ways of implementing this DRM is in different executables for the game.

The practical upshot of all this is that - from a software perspective - the DD version of the game is different to the retail version of the game. They are, for most practical purposes, different software packages. I'll put the next bit all in bold, because it is important:

You almost certainly cannot use the regular retail game patch in a digitally downloaded version of a game. You will almost certainly have to wait until a separate patch for your particular version of the game is released.

This means that often when a publisher releases a DD version of a game, they need to maintain two separate software packages - the normal retail version, and the DD version. "Maintenance" in this context includes supporting it with patches - meaning you often have two separate patches available: one for the retail version and one for the DD version.


Download options for Silent Hunter 3 showing both the DD patches and the regular patches side by side

Getting users to patch at the best of times is a difficult and complicated process (see: Windows Update). First of all you have to let them know a patch is available, then you have to make sure they can download the patch (some patches for modern games are hundreds of megabytes in size!), then you have to pray to some spooky digital god that the patch will actually run properly. Take that scenario, and then add in two versions of the same patch.

Multiple patches means more time

Having multiple patches to support means more time to create and distribute those patches. As retail still outnumbers DD game sales quite heavily, it is unsurprising that game publishers choose to maintain the retail patches first and foremost - only a few publishers are awesome enough to release DD patches at the same time as retail patches.

This is, of course, hugely frustrating to those purchasers of DD games who want to take advantage of the latest version - a common scenario is that the new version makes the game incompatible with multiplayer, and you can't play online properly until you've upgraded. Even a lag period of as little as a day can be extremely painful if you're an avid gamer - that's 24 hours worth of fragging you're missing out on!

So what can you do?

First of all - don't abandon digital downloads as a way to buy games. It is awesome for many reasons:

- preloading means you can have the game the instant it is released
- it is often cheaper
- you don't have to risk skin cancer by leaving the house during daylight hours

Secondly, take a hint from the Guide:


Seriously, it'll be fine.

Be aware off the issues. Understand that there will probably be multiple versions of patches. Simply knowing that you can't use the normal retail patch will often save you a lot of heartache. Your investment in a bunch of digital bits isn't wasted. The patch will come out.

Don't blame the retailer that you bought it from. This makes as much sense as buying a boxed copy and walking in and getting pissed off at the guy that sold it to you because it won't work on your PC. It's not his fault - he didn't make the game. He can't fix it.

It's almost always up to the developer or publisher of the game to make it work.

The retailer is your conduit to happiness in the sense that they can take your complaints back up the chain to the publisher, who will then whale on the developer to churn out the patch. Be polite, but be vocal and make sure your complaint is heard.

[DISCLAIMER: Yes, one of the things I do is work on BigPond Games. No, I don't care if you get pissed off at us, or me. I'm just saying it won't help if you spew vile invective at anyone.]

The real problem is that many developers and publishers are still prioritising the DD patch below the retail patch, unknowingly (hopefully) treating their DD customers as less important. As I stated above, they have a good reason for doing this - but we need to send a message that the DD version of the game should be treated with as much significance as the retail patch.

Conclusion:

Digital downloading of games is here to stay. There's already options for gamers - which is good, because it fosters competition, and the more competition the better it will be for everyone because it'll encourage people to make better and better systems.

While there's a few issues, they can largely be resolved with a bit of patience and some understanding of the situation.