Any idea why the PTB is for pc only?
I’ve been playing Dead by daylight on Xbox for over a year now and I can always expect to be annoyed when a new killer is announced as the PTB isn’t available on consoles, does anyone know why this is? I’ve seen a few years back they said it was due to not having enough people to spare for it, but since then the company has surely grown so I’m just left confused. Sorry if this is a bit long
Answers
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It might have to do with the PTB being a patch that has to be downloaded and patches on consoles require certification by the platform.
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PTBs are only available for Steam and not for every PC version (Epic, Windows store and Stadia don’t get access as well)
and yeah i think they said it’s because it would need approval from the platforms and it is actually quite time consuming to get that from specific platforms..
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So the PTB environment requires a patch that players on steam have to opt into to play as you basically switch from live servers to an imaged testing server. During a ptb it isn't uncommon for there to be a hotfix or two that gets patched in if there is something critically wrong as well.
Patching games on steam is pretty much at the discretion of the dev/publisher and can be done as needed. On console a patch must be validated by the console maker team to make sure it isn't going to break something or introduce a security risk. Devs have to pay for that if I remember correctly and the validation process isn't super quick so they update on a schedule. This process has to be done and paid for on each platform so it can get really expensive so most if not all games that run PTB environments do it on steam or their own launcher.
Overwatch has a constant player test realm through their battle.net
Rainbow Six Siege has a PTB server through the Uplay launcher
Same for League of Legends which until recently used to be invite only. You had to actually be somewhat decent at the game's ranked play mode to get in. Now anyone can get in and try stuff which ultimately is better for game health testing and that's a game that balances around competitive play first and foremost.
With the exception of LoL the other games have console versions that have no manageable way to access PTB realms due to the limitations of consoles.
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In short: steam makes it easier to put out PTBs
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