Devs aren’t “lazy” and game updates aren’t guaranteed | Opinion

If there were one trope of online discussion about video games I could cast into the depths of the ocean never to be seen again, well, it would be the various forms of casual bigotry, obviously. If I got to pick another one to join it, though, it would be the “lazy devs” genre of comment.

Aside from being such an obviously unfounded jab at workers in an industry famous for long hours and punishing crunch cycles (not to mention job instability and comparatively low pay), it is, ironically, an extremely lazy comment. It’s emblematic of the sentiments that have become the mark of this new, consumer-identity led form of “fandom”. The dancing monkeys didn’t do exactly the steps you wanted; what other explanation can there be other than that they’re feckless and lazy? Why else wouldn’t they be prancing to the tune demanded by you, their all-powerful consumer master?

I’m generally sympathetic to consumer comments even when they get a bit heated. I can see the perspective behind accusations of corporate greed, even if I think the blame for it often falls on the wrong shoulders. I understand the frustration of seeing development priorities drift away from the things that are important to you. I can even sympathise, if not exactly empathise, with people struggling to articulate that growing representation of other types of people makes them feel like they’ve become less important.

“The lazy accusation gets my goat, because video games only exist through the passion and dedication of the people who work at the coalface of development”

But the “lazy” thing… The lazy accusation gets my goat. Video games really only exist through the passion and dedication of the people who work at the coalface of development – passion and dedication that’s all too often abused by those in positions of power in the industry, who know that pursuing the dream of creating games can make talented staff accept worse pay and longer hours than their skills would earn them elsewhere. That accusations to the contrary have become common coin in online complaints about games feels repulsive, especially if you have any insight into the burnout rate of development staff.

Hats off, therefore, to the incredibly measured and carefully explained response from Landfall Games – creators of last year’s surprise Steam sensation Peak – when they were accused recently of having a “lazy dev cycle”. Clearly, politely, and firmly, the developers explained that their game has had a lot of free content updates since launch, but that it isn’t a live service game and that such updates, therefore, are a bonus, not a right.

Later, they released a video elaborating a bit further, and essentially pointing out that there’s a real disconnect growing between what studios like theirs do – creating games, launching them, updating them for a short while after launch if they have new ideas, but then moving on entirely to make something new and fresh – and what a certain contingent of players has come to expect, which is endless updates and content appearing for every single game.

Landfall’s comments are on the money, and they’re quite right to look past the obvious offense of the “lazy” jab and think about the underlying attitude which drives players to feel that way. They point to the expectations that have been created by live service games, and I think that’s definitely one of the root causes of this shift.

The language around games has changed in the past decade; people talk about single player games using terms that would only ever have made sense for live service or subscription titles in the past. People pore over Steam charts and declare that single-player games dropping in player numbers after a few months are “dead”; games with a solid, coherent 40- to 80-hour narrative experience are denounced as “abandoned” or “failing” when they don’t get DLC updates and content patches for months if not years after launch.

The transplant of live service expectations onto games that were never designed around those concepts naturally creates a disconnect – but I don’t think that change in expectations is the only factor at play here. Landfall, to be clear, is at pains to point out that they don’t think players complaining about the end of content updates to Peak are being “entitled” – but I do think those players are displaying an attitude to creators that has become increasingly widespread not just in games, but across all forms of media.

This is the new conception of “fandom” I mentioned earlier; the notion that buying something has made you a “fan”, and that “fans” are entitled to endless service from creators. That service doesn’t just mean that they should receive as much content as they demand. Their status as a fan and consumer even, they believe, means they deserve to be listened to and obeyed in their demands about the game (or book, or movie, or whatever) and its direction. It’s an offshoot, I suspect, of the horribly unhealthy parasocial relationships people are encouraged to develop with social media influencers; a closing of the gap between creator and consumer which leads some consumers to feel like the lines between those roles are actually becoming blurred.

“The expectation of endless service has been wilfully stoked by plenty of companies over the years”

Whatever role those attitudes play in souring relationships between developers and their players, however, we must also acknowledge that this shift didn’t happen in a vacuum. The expectation of endless service has been wilfully stoked by plenty of companies over the years; those in the live service space, yes, but this goes further than that.

Live service games have trained us to expect seasonal updates, to anticipate new patches. Longevity is treated as one of the most important markers of a game’s success. That’s a natural consequence of the live service business model. But I’ve often seen publishers and developers treat longevity of player engagement as a very key metric even for games that sell for $60 and don’t have any kind of live service monetisation.

To some degree that is driven by the desire to sell DLC – the profit margins on a decent DLC expansion are probably better than the margins on the base game, even if the overall revenue is much lower. There’s also a justification in terms of ensuring that a game stays in the public imagination to build anticipation for a sequel. Nonetheless, it’s a little curious to see publishers focusing so many resources on content and updates for existing games rather than moving successful teams on to build the next thing, as was the default strategy in the not-so-distant past.

“The wholesale shift to digital purchasing has changed the calculus for how single-player games succeed”

The real impetus for this change has come from the fact that the wholesale shift to digital purchasing has changed the calculus for how single-player games succeed. After decades of bemoaning the industry’s lack of a long tail – most games did almost all their selling in week one – we definitely have one now. Digital storefronts keep games available long-term and allow them to hold their price points for far longer than they used to in physical retail stores. The second-hand market, which used to exert a huge downward pressure on pricing and sales once a game had been out for only a couple of weeks, has collapsed. Even for older titles, avenues like the Steam sale, bundles, or being featured on a service like Game Pass or PS Plus are all important options to extend the lifespan, drum up more revenues, and potentially onboard new players who may purchase DLC or other add-ons.

Digital downloading is far from new (Steam is coming up on its quarter-century anniversary in a couple of years), but this landscape is radically different from what it was only a decade ago. As publishers have adapted their strategy to try to keep games in the limelight for longer, players’ expectations have shifted accordingly. Redemption stories like No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 are key parts of this shift. As incredibly difficult and unlikely as it was for those developers to snatch such victories from the jaws of defeat, they’ve given many people the notion that almost any game, no matter how flawed at launch, could become a classic if only those lazy developers would get their heads down and pump out major updates. Publishers are quietly happy to feed the beast; major updates mean new trailers, new media attention, a new chance to reset word of mouth.

There is a cost, though, and it isn’t just measured in forum posters trotting out “lazy” tropes about developers who have earned their ire this week. Development resources are finite; teams working on content updates and DLC aren’t working on new games. Developers, especially indie developers (but publisher studios too!) have the right to move on to new projects. In an ideal world, players’ expectations should be set as Landfall suggest – that a game is what you get in the box (or in the initial download), with everything else other than critical fixes being a bonus. That ideal world is unattainable, though, short of a reset of the same expectations that the industry has been only too happy to nurture for a decade.