Re:BioWare co-founder: game execs "have never made a game" a...
by tancop on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @02:08AM
(#50348984)
> if you can't deliver a project, you have to deliver less, not add employees
In most games you can't just fully drop a feature because other systems are designed with it in mind. It will end up broken like Veilguard or Andromeda. You can eat the cost and finish it or spend even more time cutting it out properly. The only cheap solution is release the unfinished game in early access, add the delayed features after and then do 1.0 with the original scope.
AAA publishers can't do that because they love their movie style reveals at industry shows and building up insane hype before launch. They also don't want to sell the game at a discount during EA which is standard practice for indies.
And selling an unfinished game with the promise that it will get fixed later is a bad look when you have thousands of employees, no matter what actually happened behind the scenes.
In most games you can't just fully drop a feature because other systems are designed with it in mind. It will end up broken like Veilguard or Andromeda. You can eat the cost and finish it or spend even more time cutting it out properly. The only cheap solution is release the unfinished game in early access, add the delayed features after and then do 1.0 with the original scope.
AAA publishers can't do that because they love their movie style reveals at industry shows and building up insane hype before launch. They also don't want to sell the game at a discount during EA which is standard practice for indies.
And selling an unfinished game with the promise that it will get fixed later is a bad look when you have thousands of employees, no matter what actually happened behind the scenes.