this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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[–] iamthetot@piefed.ca -1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

That would be nice in a perfect world but bills need to be paid. I'm not defending crunch time, but not every project can afford to be "ready when it's ready". I don't think many companies would survive like that.

[–] LifeLikeLady@lemmy.world 8 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Concerned ape can afford to put this game out in 2035 lol.

[–] iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 points 11 hours ago

Well yeah, but not every dev and company is ConcernedApe. I reckon the same can be said of Balatro dev, and Team Cherry, and a few others. It's awesome for them who can afford to do this, but that's definitely not the norm. Most companies can't afford to sit on a project for 8 years without releasing a product.

[–] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

The above comments were talking about how this policy should apply to every game development project. Which is a nice thought, but not realistic for every situation.

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Oh yes, I'm sure all those billion dollar companies would have all shut down by now if they had to wait a few weeks to put out a game. Putting out buggy unplayable shit was an absolute necessity.

[–] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Let's look at the initial comment in the chain:

all game developers need to put their foot down and say “it’s ready when it’s ready.”

No marketing deadlines, no “crunch time,” make the game until the game is made

It isn't saying publishers should be more flexible about deadline delays, it is saying there simply shouldn't be deadlines at all.

Shoveling infinite money at a developer who tells you it will be ready when it's ready is the Chris Roberts model of game development. While it certainly produces interesting results, it is unrealistic and undesirable to expect it as the standard.

Games that are developing well but need a little more time to fix issues should be given flexibility by publishers, but at the end of the day there are stretch ideas and content that has to be cut. Doing that cutting and keeping the project focused is what a lead on the dev team should be doing throughout the entire development. If a game has a realistic deadline given the expected scope and the dev team comes back and says they actually need another year of production, then it is worth looking into if that extra time is going to make the game a year's worth of investment better or not.

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Rather than choosing an arbitrary time, you should choose a state of the game to call finished. Limited time will always lead to crunch inevitably.

[–] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

In a publisher fronting money to developer situation, without a fixed time limit (or money limit, which functionally translates to a time limit) is the publisher just infinitely on the hook to pay for dev time "until it's done"?