Quote:
Originally Posted by cartman
So the official agreement with developers states they can be charged for patches. If Sony felt so strongly that 'no charge for patches' was the way to go, why not explicitly state that in the agreement? As it stands, Sony could change their mind at any time, and enforce the agreement as signed. Not that they have a track record of doing anything like changing their mind from what they claim at launch at all (removing backwards compatibility and the choice to install a 2nd OS on the console).
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My guess is, they explicitly state it to keep the Big Boys honest. No, it doesn't hurt EA's bottom line significantly if they have to pay $20k or whatever to patch the game, but it's incentive to get it right the first time.
They can waive it for indie developers to reduce the burden of publishing for the Little Guys.
They can't do it the other way around, though, because if it's not contractually specified, they don't have a stick to hit the Big Boys with.
It's only a guess. I very much doubt anybody from Sony would verify that, but it passes my smell test. It's there to discourage fuckery from the bigger publishers but it doesn't, in practice, get applied to the smaller fish.