Developer Releases 187MB Day-One Patch Containing Actual Game

AUSTIN, TX—Gamers who purchased Sector Collapse: Obliteration Edition at midnight launch reported Thursday that the 187MB day-one patch available immediately upon installation contained what multiple sources are describing as "most of the game." "It says 'Day One Patch' right there on the screen," said Cody Freel, 24, who drove forty minutes to a GameStop that had agreed to stay open until 12:15 a.m. despite all available evidence suggesting this was unnecessary. "But then it also says 'Downloading: Campaign,' 'Downloading: Multiplayer,' and 'Downloading: Physics Engine.' I assumed those were, like, updates to those things. Not the things." They were the things. NovaStar Interactive's community liaison Petra Vang confirmed in a statement posted to the game's Discord at 2:47 a.m.—timed, one assumes, for maximum unreadability—that the retail build "establishes the core launcher infrastructure and EULA acceptance framework that enables the full Sector Collapse experience," adding that the day-one patch "completes the player-facing content suite." Vang did not respond to follow-up questions asking what, specifically, the 187MB contained. A second message from Vang's account said simply "enjoy 👾" and then went offline. (The EULA, for the record, is 94,000 words. Sector Collapse's main campaign, according to NovaStar's own marketing, is "a 6-to-8-hour thrill ride." The EULA acceptance constitutes approximately four and a half minutes of the total experience, which is either a scandal or the game's best content depending on your tolerance for the combat tutorial.) The retail package—$69.99, or $89.99 for the Obliteration Edition, which adds a gun skin that the patch also downloads—does contain files. Specifically: a 112MB launcher executable, a 43MB splash screen asset that displays the NovaStar Interactive logo for six seconds before the actual launcher loads, a 28MB anti-cheat kernel module that installs without asking and runs on startup forever regardless of whether you play again, and a 4MB PDF of the manual, which describes features that exist in the patch. "In fairness to them," said Greta Poluski, a game developer who asked to be identified only as someone who has shipped under similar conditions and "does not want problems," "the disc had to have *something* on it. You can't ship a disc that just says 'go home and wait.' That would be too honest." She paused. "I mean the honesty would be unprecedented. No one would know how to handle it." Reviewers who received early access—and who, NovaStar's embargo document clarified, could not discuss "download requirements, patch sizes, or content delivery mechanisms" prior to launch—are now noting that the scores they assigned may have been based on a version of the game that shipped pre-patched, a circumstance that the embargo document also covered under the clause prohibiting discussion of "build version discrepancies." This publication's own reviewer, who asked to be removed from the Sector Collapse coverage after the embargo lifted and the patch size became public, described the experience of reviewing a pre-patched build as "playing a game and then watching strangers on Twitch discover it doesn't exist." NovaStar has confirmed a Day Two patch, currently unscheduled, that will address "audio mixing, performance optimization, and several campaign sequences that did not make the Day One content suite." When asked which sequences, a spokesperson said the team was "really excited to share more soon." *(To the editor who will cut this next paragraph: please don't, it contains the only sentence that justifies the word count.)* The game currently holds a 73 on Metacritic, five points of which come from a review that praises the launcher's "clean, responsive UI." The launcher shipped on the disc. The launcher works great. NovaStar Interactive is, technically, a good game developer. At press time, Cody Freel reported the patch had finished downloading and the game was fine, actually, though the ending "felt kind of rushed."