In my experience working with devs at game studios, it is rarely them that is so against open sourcing code, or giving fans of the game the tools needed to keep it going on their own once the devs move on.
It is nearly always the executives looking to make sure no one manages to enjoy something the people that work for them created without them getting paid for it.
eupraxia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I crunched like hell in my mid 20s on a live service game that I enjoyed playing, was well loved by a few fans, and had a few unique ideas in its niche. I gave up a lot of life for that game to see the light of day, under extremely tight timelines and wavering support from a flakey publisher.
It lasted less than a year in release because of a few mistakes in early access and it inhabited a saturated market that seems near impossible to penetrate now. The console ports that caused the worst months of the crunch never even saw a release.
Me and the rest of the devs would love to just play the game again, but the game’s kinda just rotting somewhere in storage of a publisher that long ago tried to pivot toward NFT/metaverse bullshit, to predictable results. Outside of a few early playtest builds a few people have (and definitely aren’t supposed to) we have basically no way of playing it ourselves, much less letting others play it. It makes me really sad and I’m very happy to no longer be in tech professionally for that reason.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
Devs geting screwed over by management (not even just game devs but all devs) is a tale older than time, sadly.