  Multiplayer online games are ideal settings for studying the effects of
technological disruptions on social behavior. Software patches to online games
cause significant changes to the game's rules and require players to develop
new strategies to cope with these disruptions. We surveyed players, analyzed
the content of software patch notes, and analyzed changes to the character
selection behaviors in more than 53 million matches of Dota 2 in the days
before and after software patches over a 30-month period. We found that the
severity of patches is correlated with the magnitude of behavioral changes
following a patch. We discuss the opportunities of leveraging software patches
to online games as a valuable but overlooked empirical instrument for measuring
behavioral dynamics.
