Kingdom Come: Deliverance is getting a massive day-one patch (update)

Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a role-playing game set in 15th century Bohemia that began life as a successful Kickstarter Campaign, is getting a massive, 23 GB day-one patch that makes changes to many aspects of the game. It launches tomorrow on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Day-one patches are not uncommon in this day and age of always-online PCs and consoles. What makes this one unusual is its size, which is far larger than other recent, comparable day-one patches that were criticized by players for being “huge.” For instance, 2015’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt had a 588 MB patch, while 2016’s No Man’s Sky had one around 824 MB.

Concerns about the size of Kingdom Come’s patch prompted a response from the developer on the ResetEra forums.

“The production realities of game development mean that a ‘release’ version has to be finalized some time before the actual release date,” said the game’s executive producer, Martin Klima. “We could have used this time to get some rest, or we could use it to create some additional content and sell it to you as DLC, but we went back to the version-to-be-released and worked on it. The results are obvious: quests are more balanced, RPG progression is smoother, the game runs faster and every facet of the game got more polish.

“The drawback of course is that most of the data in the old build was replaced and has to be downloaded as a patch. At a hefty size, it’s going to take some time to download and it’s a shame. Still, we strongly believe that after four years wait it will pay off to wait a little bit longer while the Day 1 patch is downloading.”

Commenters went after Klima for that statement, however, prompting publisher Deep Silver to speak up on their behalf.

“Let me stop the rumor mill dead in its tracks before everyone continues jumping to conclusions,” said senior manager of marketing and public relations, Will Powers. He went on to explain that the way the game’s data is structured requires that even slight changes to each 2 GB “archive” requires the re-download of that entire section of the game.

“That beings said [sic], this is a major patch that improves overarching mechanics throughout the game,” Powers said. “Essentially you are having to redownload the game to replace the existing files.”

Patch notes on PlayStation 4 indicate that the day-one update impacts nearly every aspect of gameplay including, but not limited to: new events in the open world, animations during dialogue, money and experience rebalancing, weapon and armor rebalancing, combat improvements, NPC reactions, sound and the user interface itself. It also includes the usual bug fixes and improvements common in day-one updates.

Kingdom Come has rocketed up Steam’s top-sellers list over the past few weeks and currently sits in the number-one slot. The game is not available to pre-load on Steam, but there’s a dedicated forum post about the possibility. Warhorse Studios has promised to put the latest information there when it’s available. It’s assumed that players will download this day-one patch when the game unlocks, at the latest.

Polygon has reached out to the developer for more details about when the patch will arrive for players on Steam and Xbox One.

Update: Representatives from Deep Silver’s U.S. public relations team tell Polygon that the 20-some GB day-one patch will be part of the initial download for users on Steam.

“As long as you see Version 1.1 (or higher) in the lower left of the title screen after launching, and NOT Version 1.01, the day one patch is installed,” said the representative.