Patches are both a blessing and a curse for games. What has been daily routine for PC gamers for years, is now even affecting the consoles. But a game that is often patched isn't necessarily bad. Quite the contrary is the case: Many developers offer new content or features with the patches. An example is Company of Heroes that received a DirectX 10 mode via patch. In C&C Red Alert 3 the multiplayer balancing has been tuned with more than ten patches and the game was upgraded with new maps. So patches don't necessarily are bad news. But of course there are also negative examples, like the unfortunate Gothic 3, which actually had been a good game but the flood of bugs in the release version made it almost unplayable. Furthermore there are games that are patched even before they hit the markets - such updates are called Day Zero Patches.

PC Games Hardware assembled a list of games that have been patched most frequently. Of course all numbers and details are not guaranteed. The ranking is based on the following rules: Only individual patches count - roll-ups and beta patches were not taken into account. The Steam platform games Counter-Strike and Half-Life 2 haven't been taken into account either. Due to the easy issuing of patches that can be applied in parts the number of patches is rising enormously.

Special case: Online Games
Given their structure online games are patched really easy and thus rather often. They are constantly improved and balanced or upgraded with new content. Especially RPGs receive a lot of updates since there always are tiny bugs in new or adjusted quests etc. Nevertheless the patches are an indicator for the quality of the work delivered by the developers. There still has to be decided if a patch fixes bugs or delivers new content and solves minor problems - like balancing - and thus should rather be classified as an update.

The accelerated development of the Internet is supporting the game developers nowadays. Today everyone can go online almost everywhere in the world to get the latest patch for a game. 15 years ago things look a lot different. Distributing a patch was more complicated and more expensive forcing the developers to work more accurate. Due to broadband internet access new patches can now be several hundred megabytes big or reach even sizes of more than a gigabyte - but not everyone has a fast internet connection and those people can only hope that the patches will also be distributed on the optical media of gaming magazines.

But now let's get to our hit list of games with the most patches. In the gallery below you will find a screenshot of the tiles and the number of patches it has been updated with. If you think a certain title is missing, just tell us in the comments.