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Any updates on the launcher revamp? There's been some talk lately about new additions to the launcher.

TL;DRThe launcher and patcher revamp is in progress with no date, aiming to deliver only changed files and build locally, cutting download sizes and speeding up patch turnaround.

Chris RobertsFounder, CEO and Chairman

Yeah, I don't particularly have an update as in it's going to come tomorrow or anything, but we're definitely working on it. That is the plan. We have a complete revamp of the content delivery plan that we're going to do. So people won't have to download nearly the amount of data that they download now every time we do a patch. Because right now it's just very inefficient, because basically the data is all broken up into two-gigabyte pack files, and if just one byte changes in one of those pack files, you have to give them the whole two gigabytes. So we're changing to a completely different structure that is only going to be about delivering the files that changed, and then the pack files are all built locally on your machine. So we'll actually have the ability, and this is also for our developer side as well as the front-facing delivery, that essentially every time a developer checks in some code or checks in an asset, it's getting built right then and there and added to what they call the object store in our system. And you'll be able to just say, okay, give me the build of this change list, and it can look up and go, okay, and it can just build it from all those. So essentially, it's almost like a, whatever you want to call it, Perforce or a Git of every asset, as it's getting checked in it's getting built. And so what will happen is when we deliver builds to people, the turnaround is going to be a lot quicker because it's basically getting built as it goes. And also we can look at what they have on their machine and just give them the bits they don't have or the bits that have changed. And so it will greatly reduce the amount of data. I think we did analysis on a few of our older patches that were like 30 gigs and determined that using this new system, it would have been seven megabytes. So the system when it's built, and this is the new patcher that's going to work with that, so everyone's working on this. But when it's done, it means our turnaround times will be a lot faster. Right now, when we want to kick off a full build, actually a full, full build where we build every single asset, it's about 12 hours. The reduced builds are about three hours or so. And if we do a code-only build, it's about an hour. But that doesn't include the amount of time to stage it for the QA department to sanity check it and test it and make sure it doesn't blow up. For us, when we're trying to get a patch out, a lot of times there will be fixes that won't make it, because we're like, if we rebuild it now, it's going to be four hours later before we can deliver it live. And that's assuming nothing goes wrong. That's assuming that QA doesn't get it and something that we thought was fixed is broken. And so with this new method, that could turn around way, way quicker. So I think quality of the patches [will improve], the turnaround will be faster, and data use for everybody will be fine. So it'll be better for us, because we spend a lot of money every month. I don't think people realize that. I know that everyone thinks we're still in development and all the rest of it, but we spend a lot of money every month on both data delivery and running the servers that we run. So we kind of behave like a live game in terms of some of our operational costs, which is cool, because I love the iteration. I love the feedback. And I think people definitely out there in the community can see that there is stuff that we only ever see when it goes to PTU or it goes to live that we cannot see internally. To be honest with you, I don't know how all these other big online games do it, because it's not like... we've got world-class people, and there are just things that you don't see until you're under scale. So whenever there's a big launch by whatever big publisher it is and it all blows up, I'm like, yeah, probably because some of these things you just don't see until you get to scale. So the way we're doing it, I think, is going to make a much better game long term. And people are asking about performance and desync issues. You normally would never even be worrying about that in development this early on. But since people are playing and using it, we are constantly having to keep our house in order, so to speak. And the new patcher and the whole build and data system is the next evolution of that. So it's in progress. I don't have specific dates when it will come out, but when it does, I think it will be really good and it will be a better experience all around.