Even if people think they've done everything right in theory, the code will never have run (let alone gone through QA) on models with different timing, and publ

Even if people think they've done everything right in theory, the code will never have run (let alone gone through QA) on models with different timing, and publishers wouldn't be keen on having to go back and fix flaws. Going back some years, AFAIK, you didn't necessarily have developers or build infrastructure for a title that shipped a few months ago. I don't know whether online gaming and the need to patch bugs/vulnerabilities has changed this.