So, suppose you are playing a single player game that is still actively getting patched, and that is long enough for you to not finish on a single session.
* Do you update the game as soon as a new version is released, possibly with bug fixes, new features (and possibly new bugs), and balance changes (that could improve your build or ruin it)?
* Or, do you prefer not to update unless there's a fix for a bug you've encountered, or are certain to have encountered, or if you're in-between playthroughs?

That would require me to know if there are patches in the making ... and deactivating auto-updates (sry, I kind of do use galaxy atm).

If I am interested in a game, so much as to buy it day one, than I might simply start playing it (would be actually wise, looking at the invest... though that's happening more often not than it does (backlog, time, backlog, did I mention backlog?).

But if I knew, there is the possibility of bigger balance patches, that even could drastically nerf my build - I likey would wait until that "threat" is over (but probably not for a game I might be kind of desperate to play).

Today, to me most games don't feel worth of being replayed anymore. So I don't have time for most of them to start over again (and again). Also one of the reasons I am not playing early acces titles (there might be exceptions).

What's you're take on that?

I've been PC gaming for over 30 years and had a patch negatively impact my experience twice. So it's not really something I worry about too much, and I leave auto updates on.

That said, those two times it was super annoying.

That would require a lot of supposing, as I try to avoid such games on purpose these days.

But if I ended up in that situation anyway, I would err on the side of caution and not update, so I wouldn't lose any progress in the game.

If there are game-breaking bugs, then it's probably unavoidable to update, but some minor updates probably wouldn't be worth it.

I guess this has been happening to me with Wrath of the Righteous. I've decided to just take a break from the game because I have so many other things I could be playing and I'll return to it (starting from scratch) when things settle.

But if I wanted to continue playing right now I'd update right away.

^ Personally, I'm half-way between this option and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Half the problem with this stuff on GOG is missing changelogs not just a few but these days nearer 80-90% of the time. And when you do look up patch changelogs 'elsewhere', quite often they are for stuff like "we added Chinese language support" which is of little benefit to anyone outside that region yet increases the file size for everyone. And there's been examples of this on GOG, eg, Divinity Original Sin where adding a language also added a bug that affected everyone that went unfixed for years.

Same goes with "we added more Galaxy stuff to offline installers that can't use Galaxy features" which was responsible for the wall of "update spam" a while back (ie, hundreds of those changelog entries of "updated internal installer structure, no changes to game files"). I still have installers using the old filename naming scheme (2.0.0.x) and even 10 year old GOG installers work fine. For games removed from sale from the store, this is normal anyway. So not only do I not rush to update a game in the middle of a play-through, unless I can find changelogs that actually give a meaningful reason to update, I often now don't update them at all and simply view "outdated" backups as Long Term Stable versions.

Unless an update breaks ongoing playthroughs (i.e. incompatible save games) I update as soon as the update becomes available.

Since I rarely buy games at release this is usually not an issue.

I essentially never update.*

The only games that I do update with no qualms are small, in development fun titles, where I may be heavily invested in them, but have no qualms about starting anew. (Such as: Infraspace , Kingdoms and Castles or Factory Town .)

Games that I treat *serious* I don't update; and if, then only after a great deal of time has passed, I have read the changelogs, I have searched whether the patch brakes anything and I have managed to backup anything that might need saving.

^ So much this. 'Update Spam' is bad enough on smartphones without PC's needing to follow the trend. For old games that were finished years ago, a lot of it is 'make-work' anyway, ie, files from 30 year old games like say Dune or Sam & Max Hit The Road, etc, backed up from floppy / CD-ROM work fine with 10 year old DOSBox / ScummVM versions. But the minute you start recompiling games to include galaxy.dll's, GOG are forcing themselves into a position where they may have to go back and update every single game (potentially thousands) every time they change Galaxy enough (eg, Galaxy 1 -> 2 -> 3). Meanwhile those 30 year old files will probably still work in another 30 years time with barely one or two DOSBox updates (if that)...

Now add on that time where GOG made those "g" suffixed installers that contained Galaxy installers inside the offline installers, then went back again and had to undo them all due to a huge backlash, and I'd love to know exactly how many man-hours have been wasted on unnecessary 'sidegrade' non-update updates purely of the "digital cellophane wrapper" the game comes in (even ignoring the game itself). Something that never used to be an issue when stores sold games as the developer packaged them (same for all stores) without needing to repackage them for each individual store.

I am not sure if it was the backlash from us that got GOG to reconsider, rather than someone at GOG finally realized that their first solution would more than double their need for mass storage capacity compared to just offering the installer for the Galaxy client separately and including a few small Galaxy related files in the offline installers just in case their customers would want to import offline installed games later to client.

Bugfix only patches, I will install right away.

However, if a patch changes the balance or gameplay in any way, I will first finish the game in the original form. And when/if I return to it later, I might install the update. I've been burned by updates enough times in the past that I never just blindly install any update that comes out. Especially for RTS games, where it's usually multiplayer centric balance changes with no regard whatsoever for the single player part of the game/campaign. Battle for Middle Earth 1 was pretty much the game that made me study every patch very closely.

This hardly ever happens to me, as I'm rather unlikely to play a game during that phase, when big updates are still to be expected, but I guess it would depend on whether the update would be compatible with my savegame or not. Actually, knowing myself, I think if this happened to me I would probably stop playing the game altogether and wait for either what others report about the changes or the update phase officially being concluded, before I played on.

If it's a new game, that I bought at (or close after) release, and that gets updated while I'm playing it, I look what exactly the update(s) bring(s).

If something game breaking gets fixed (in other words: if something gets fixed, that could affect my ongoing playthrough), I will update it.
After all: not updating it, could prevent me from ending the game.

If the update(s) are something that isn't necessary to play through the game successfully - I won't update.
After I played the game, there's still enough time to update to the latest version.

Another example today - I just had an update notification for Dishonored. No changelog here on GOG. Rather than download it, I look elsewhere. No changelog there either but multiple people are now complaining that the game crashes on the main menu. And this is why I don't "update for the sake of updating" anymore...

Edit: It looks like all the update did was add more Bethesda server telemetry to the game. That's no "upgrade" at all for the end user.

Sometimes an update is incompatible with existing savegames. Nevermind, restart, try different things, enjoy.