Request the backup copy of a semi-randomly chosen file. It's been enlightening.
Crazy still that they’re tied like that.
I want to agree with this attitude, I really do. But with how crowded the indie game market is right now, I understand the urge to move fast and loose. Games already take years to develop and are incredibly expensive, and hiring additional developers is incredibly expensive. Considering the tiny chance your game will be successful and make its money back, why would you spend tons of time frontloading work to avoid future maintenance? In all likelihood, nobody will play your game and it won't matter! And in the off chance it does get popular, you can go back and clean things up later... definitely... right?
I suspect this is a case of inexperience as opposed to someone casting off established wisdom ( you should be able to rebuil your project, be constantly testing to ensure you can, enable automated backups for all servers )
Read the stardew valley chapter in "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels".
Turned out great, but it was harrowing for a while.
Personally, I'm getting really sick of the "software doesn't matter, do whatever you want, ship it" attitude in the industry. It creates a lot of needless toil because people do not want to learn how to do things properly.
Your software is your product. The primary cost of software is NOT the initial development: It is the ongoing maintenance. When you cut corners, you are taking out a loan against your future sanity and time. Higher quality code bases and better practices lead to stability, ease of extension, and more money.
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A while ago I was working for a start-up using Google Cloud SQL Server with Postgres.
I was relying on the built-in database backup functionality, sleeping peacefully at night knowing I effectively delegated that task to a higher power.
Then, one day, I deleted the dev database. Whoops! Hmm... I cannot find the backups...
So I go onto the google cloud slack:
Me: "Hey, where are these backups stored?
Them: "The backups are deleted with the database."
I felt a bit like Wile E Coyote running in mid-air after running straight off a cliff.
Needless to say, I dropped all current projects and took a week to developing a backup, restore, and testing solution for our product. WHEW. Terrifying stuff!