Yes they don't do it with 10 devs because the complexity is high. You don't think you need a larger team to handle complexity? Or you think the 500+ team normalized to complexity actually tell that AAA are understaffed.

I imagine at one of these 500+ companies the majority of those are in the art department.

I'm thinking about say DICE. DICE has made essentially the same game (battlefield/battlefront) about 10 times. The 3d engine does get upgraded game to game, but clearly the majority of the delta between games is simply the art.

I do think you need more dev to handle more complexity.

But more dev to have less bugs, or to develop faster is like saying that with 9 pregnant women, you can deliver a baby in 1 month.

So you are saying in a large complex project there are no impact on bugs by number of devs? I'm not saying there is a linear relationship but it's naive to say that having a large team does not help you handle bugs.

> If big studio could launch an AAA game with only 10 devs, they would do it.

They could, if they gave themselves 8 years. Factorio has been in development since 2012.

AAA games ship on a deadline; naturally the work is divided as much as possible among many teams. More devs can in fact mean faster development if you're OK compromising on quality.