Treyarch explains COD patch procedure

Call of Duty: Black Ops developer Treyarch has explained why it can take as long as five weeks for reported bugs and glitches to get patched up.

In a lengthy post on the game's official site, Treyarch community manager Josh Olin painstakingly described each stage of the patching process.

First up, "As soon as the game is released, we scour the forums and play online with fans to gather feedback."

All reported problems are then reported to the QA team that reproduce the issues in a test environment. This can take up to two weeks apparently.

Next comes another stage of internal testing. "Once the highest priority reports have been resolved, the updated game goes through a rigorous internal testing procedure," Olin explained.

"If new issues are discovered or the original issue is not fixed appropriately, more time is needed to research and implement new solutions. Videogames are highly complex pieces of software.

"Every change made has a potential impact somewhere else in the game, so the entire game has to be tested with each update."

This secondary testing phase takes a minimum of a week to complete.

The third phase of the patching process sees updates submitted to platform holders for approval, which takes up at least another week.

"If the game update is approved by the console manufacturers, the cycle is done and the update is prepped for release," explained Olin. "If the game update is rejected, an accelerated version of the entire process starts again."

Finally, the update is then prepped for release. "This is a very short phase," said Olin, "but it can add time to the process depending on a number of variables."

Olin was also keen to point out the difference between a full update and a "hot fix".

"The description above outlines the process for publishing permanent game updates and does not apply in the same way to hot fixes.

"Hot fixes are temporary, server-side fixes that are used to patch in simple adjustments to the game. These are not permanent fixes, and they only apply to online portions of the game. Most significant changes to the game cannot be made with a hot fix.

So, now you know. These things don't happen over night, so be patient. Especially all you disgruntled PlayStation 3 users who have been demanding a refund for the allegedly hobbled version they shelled out for.

Call of Duty: Black Ops launched on DS, PC, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 on 9th November – less than four weeks ago.