The developer often chooses to write highly detailed simulations of, say, realistic glacier movements rather than fix known problems. It's his game, he's behold

The developer often chooses to write highly detailed simulations of, say, realistic glacier movements rather than fix known problems. It's his game, he's beholden to no one, and when he wants to skip the boring bugfixes to work on things he finds interesting, he can just go for it. I think he'd continue to code the game even if nobody ever played it.