Unofficial patch

An unofficial patch is a non-commercial patch for a piece of software, typically commercial, created by a user community instead of the original developer. Similar to an ordinary patch, it alleviates bugs or shortcomings. Unofficial patches do not usually change the intended usage of the software, in contrast to other third-party software adaptions such as mods or cracks.

Unofficial patches as user-created content which is typically distributed over the web can be seen as part of the Web 2.0 and the remix culture.

A common motivation for the creation of unofficial patches is missing technical support by the original software developer or provider. There are several potential reasons:

In the computer game domain, where unofficial patches are most common, unofficial patches are also sometimes called Fan patches, especially if produced by an individual person. Combined patches, including the work of several developers and authors from the community, are also called Community Patch. They are aiming typical for critical bugs in the program flow which could lead to program crashes and technical compatibility fixes, e.g. for newer operating systems, increased display resolutions or new display formats.

While unofficial patches are most common for the PC platform, they are also existing for console games e.g. in context of the emulation community.

As another kind of unofficial patches are fan translations of software, especially games, to local languages. Fan translations are most common for Japanese role-playing games which are often not localized for Western markets.

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