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The kind of bugs that hamper game sales aren’t the kind of bugs that speed runners exploit - which is what you were originally arguing about. Sure, some games

The kind of bugs that hamper game sales aren’t the kind of bugs that speed runners exploit - which is what you were originally arguing about. Sure, some games are released buggy. But even there, blaming the developers just demonstrates how little you experience you actually have with professional software development. You think developers are really that stupid that they don’t know when their own games suck? Usually bad games get released because of financial and/or time restrictions rather than a lack of pride from developers. And often bugs will just be placed on a snag list and prioritised in order of estimated time to fix vs the severity of the bug. Which means many of the bugs you described would just never be financially beneficial to patch. You keep talking about the monetary impact of bugs while ignoring the fact that software development is a business and thus saving will always be cut where needed. Having your development time prolonged by 12 months to fix bugs most people won’t even see is perhaps the single most expensive and unnecessary way to drive your development. Frankly I’m astonished anyone would believe development happens the way you idealise, let alone dare to call other engineers incompetent for not writing perfect software.

Retric 7y ago
It’s not a net savings if it’s costing vastly more money in sales. The tradeoff is not always obvious, and some bugs are beloved by fans, but my point is bugs have real costs. Further, excessive bugs always tank sales. Errors with collision detection are one of the most common speed running exploits and in excess can make games unplayable. Broken quest chains are similarly exploitable, but in excess result in an unplayable mess. Anyway, cost is really not the driver for most of these issues it’s poorly scoping what can actually be finished in a given time and budget. I have no idea what your background is in game dev, but it sounds like you don’t understand the overall development process.
- pushpop 7y ago
  > It’s not a net savings if it’s costing vastly more money in sales I’d already addressed that when I said the kind of bugs you’re complaining about wouldn’t have an effect on sales. > Anyway, cost is really not the driver for most of these issues it’s poorly scoping what can actually be finished in a given time and budget That is exactly what I’d just said except you’ve overlooked that development time is still an expense. > I have no idea what your background is in game dev, but it sounds like you don’t understand the overall development process. Not my current role but my previous job was a lead developer. So I was not only hands on but I also had to manage workflows and budgets. Basically all the stuff you’ve just claimed I don’t understand ;)

Retric 7y ago

It’s not a net savings if it’s costing vastly more money in sales. The tradeoff is not always obvious, and some bugs are beloved by fans, but my point is bugs have real costs. Further, excessive bugs always tank sales. Errors with collision detection are one of the most common speed running exploits and in excess can make games unplayable. Broken quest chains are similarly exploitable, but in excess result in an unplayable mess. Anyway, cost is really not the driver for most of these issues it’s poorly scoping what can actually be finished in a given time and budget. I have no idea what your background is in game dev, but it sounds like you don’t understand the overall development process.

pushpop 7y ago
> It’s not a net savings if it’s costing vastly more money in sales I’d already addressed that when I said the kind of bugs you’re complaining about wouldn’t have an effect on sales. > Anyway, cost is really not the driver for most of these issues it’s poorly scoping what can actually be finished in a given time and budget That is exactly what I’d just said except you’ve overlooked that development time is still an expense. > I have no idea what your background is in game dev, but it sounds like you don’t understand the overall development process. Not my current role but my previous job was a lead developer. So I was not only hands on but I also had to manage workflows and budgets. Basically all the stuff you’ve just claimed I don’t understand ;)