When the recent update introduced a few new bugs the reaction from the community prompted me to write a little rant, but I also started a discussion on the forums of my friends of and around Clan WDG about this topic, basically following the same line of saying “errors happen, don’t make such a fuss about it”. Quite naturally I was provided with a lot of thoughtful counter-arguments and also was offered some facts I hadn’t initially considered. All this led me to revise my initial statement and in the following I will try to offer a more differentiated take on the matter.
Yes, Valve should do whatever humanly possible to release updates bug-free.
As why this didn’t happen in the first place we can only speculate. Perhaps they were sloppy. Perhaps they rushed the update [1]. I also wonder if the constant expansion and adapting of the game may by now have created a structural problem (meaning the game code being a constant construction site which would be in desperate need of an overhaul). And sure, extensive testing should have revealed at least those obvious bugs like the broken overtime or the rocketjump-bug.
I have no idea if Valve tests new content strictly in-house or if they have a group of people in the community helping them on occasion. Given what we’ve witnessed here suggests no. Perhaps it would be wise for Valve to do so [2].
By now I’m under the impression Valve likes to play their cards close to the chest [3] which is understandable from a PR standpoint, but it’s something like the recent update when this policy backfires.
In that regard it’s understandable when the community is disappointed in Valve introducing new bugs with their updates, and its criticism is valid. Still I think without knowing the background and any details it’s neither fair nor realistic to blame Valve for not working perfectly 100%. Nobody does. Errors happen, even under the best of circumstances. So my point is: Unless you are able to do a complicated job without ever making an error or screwing up don’t sit on a high horse and demand from others to be perfect.
I stress again: This should not excuse errors being made nor should it keep people from criticizing others (in this case: Valve) for the errors. But criticism (always) should be constructive to motivate others to do better.
Also the reaction to such errors should be proportionate to the dimension of that error. The fuss made about the bugged drop-item-system was way over the top and in little proportion to the problem at hand. Also Valve has – after all - a good track record of correcting errors fairly quickly, so even a bug like the rocketjump-bug was fixed on Valve’s next workday.
However, here indeed a basic and relevant problem rears its ugly head.
Valve has gotten used to release their major updates at the end of a week [4], which leaves them little to none reaction time to correct serious bugs quickly. I am the first to promote that a bug which isn’t completely game-breaking (and even the rocketjump-bug didn’t qualify for that) should be able to be endured for a weekend as far as pub games are concerned.
BUT while I usually don’t care much about the competitive scene, something like that can pose a huge problem for competitive games or even friendly matches. So a bug which affects gameplay can cause problems for any kind of serious matches for a weekend, and that’s far less acceptable.
This brings us to the next point: Updates are forced on the players, unlike many other games where you have to manually install those. So players can’t evade an update even if they’d prefer to.
Basically the forced updates are a good idea, since it keeps the code base for all players at the same level (unlike the mess you can witness on other games after an update exactly because people have to apply updates manually). Especially fixes of bugs or exploits should be done automatically.
However, Valve should seriously consider distinguishing between fixes and new content, and should apply those in two separate processes. And the update of new content should be confirmed via a prompt with the option to delay it (“Not now, offer again in 24 hours”). This might not avoid all problems, but I could imagine some people would appreciate the chance to delay a non-vital update until after an important match.
This leaves one last important point:
In a discussion Junta (one of the leaders of clan WDG and guest-author here) pointed out that the recent update broke popular servermods Beetlesmod and SourceMod. The developers claim that this happened because they had no information about the changes beforehand to make the necessary adjustments. I may quote from a link to the Beetlesmod forums Junta provided:
As Team Fortress and Day of Defeat server operators have noticed, Valve released an update tonight that broke SourceMod.
Usually we are able to handle updates very quickly. This one was different. There was no public beta, so we had no way of testing or preparing. To make things worse, Valve actually forked their Orange Box engine, broke compatibility, and didn’t release new headers or any information about the changes.
With absolutely no warning, we had to reverse engineer these changes and update our source/build infrastructure for a new engine configuration.
It has happened several times that updates broke those mods and by all sympathy and understanding for Valve this is something I find unacceptable.
A lot of people use these mods to manage their servers and to provide options for the people playing there. The server admins are of course the pillars on which this game is functioning and flourishing, and Valve should do everything in its power to make their lives easier (after all, a lot of them are doing this for free and in their spare time). So Valve should really stay in touch with the developers of at least the more common and popular mods and enable them to adjust their mods BEFORE an update comes out. I have really no idea about the technical side of mods, but I doubt this would be a problem if one would only set his mind on it 
.
On a closing note:
While I’m very tolerant and full of understanding of Valve making the occasional error and missing the occasional bug I sometimes would appreciate if they would acknowledge that it happened and would let the community know that it matters to them.
I don’t think they shrug this off as irrelevant. I’d like to believe that Valve is very concerned about the quality of their work, but they would be well advised to reflect on their self-conception more publicly, so the community knows instead of having to assume
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