Patch Notes
A changelog entry for a game update — balance tweaks, bug fixes, and new content — written for players and grounded in the version-controlled design docs.
Patch notes are the published record of what changed in a game update. For players, they are a changelog. For the design team, they are a commitment — every item in the patch notes is a change that was designed, reviewed, approved, and implemented. The patch notes should never surprise the design lead.
In practice, patch notes are often written after the fact by a producer collating Slack messages and Jira tickets. This is painful, slow, and produces patch notes that read like they were written by accident. The better model: every design change that ships traces back to a design document that authorized it. The patch notes write themselves from the merge history.
The audit trail matters beyond patch notes. When a balance change causes an outcry two weeks after shipping, the team needs to know: who decided this? What data justified it? Was it reviewed? A design doc with version history and a merge record answers those questions in under a minute.
How it works in Gameframe
Gameframe’s merge request history is the foundation of your patch notes. Every design change that lands on the main branch has a merge record: what changed, who reviewed it, when it merged. A producer generating patch notes can filter the merge history by date and export the relevant changes.
The version diff between two releases shows exactly what changed in the design docs that drove the patch — damage values, encounter parameters, narrative beats, whatever was in scope.
Start free — the merge history is available on all plans.