1263
Gabe Newell on why game delays are okay: 'Late is just for a little while. Suck is forever.'
(www.pcgamer.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
1263 points (98.1% liked)
Games
16697 readers
790 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
A lot of the time in the industry, developers are using money loaned by publishers. Things like getting more development time, which means asking for more money is a negotiation that the devs aren’t guaranteed to win.
Valve is one of the successful developer & publisher companies that managed to survive. The 90s were a much smaller time for video games, and a small startup like Valve could compete with the big names out there. They had more freedom in a sense, but they also were taking quite a gamble. Other companies tried the same and didn’t survive.
It’s easy to simply say “only release a game when it’s 100% done” but it’s a lot harder when you’re watching money that keeps your company afloat dwindle with each delay. Also, “100% done” is a very flexible concept. Games almost always have to cut content or make concessions in some way, so figuring out what a done version looks like while working on it can be difficult.
The modern version of a small Valve style startup would be something like a Kickstarter funded development. Again, unless you are (for some reason) a Star Citizen dev, people are going to stop giving you money and you have limited funds and thus limited development time.
And just because you delay to try and release a superior game doesn’t mean it will be a smash hit.