A couple decades ago, video games were developed fully, and released on a cartridge. Once that...

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A couple decades ago, video games were developed fully, and released on a cartridge. Once that cartridge was finished, no bugs were ever getting fixed. As such, developers had to make sure they had a fully finished and polished result. Nowadays, it has become sadly common to release a game before it is done, and then update it with patches to bring it up to the game it was intended to be. This has also been leaking into other types of software as well. The question is, is this process moral? That is to say, is it ethical to release an unfinished product for full price, and then patch it later? Does it make a difference if a company has a reputation of patching games/software quickly and effectively, or has a reputation of never finishing the games? Please explain your reasoning. A couple decades ago, video games were developed fully, and released on a cartridge. Once that cartridge was finished, no bugs were ever getting fixed. As such, developers had to make sure they had a fully finished and polished result. Nowadays, it has become sadly common to release a game before it is done, and then update it with patches to bring it up to the game it was intended to be. This has also been leaking into other types of software as well. The question is, is this process moral? That is to say, is it ethical to release an unfinished product for full price, and then patch it later? Does it make a difference if a company has a reputation of patching games/software quickly and effectively, or has a reputation of never finishing the games? Please explain your reasoning.

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The question of whether it is moral or ethical to release unfinished products and then patch them later is a complex one and can be subject to differe... View the full answer