Absolutely! Happy to learn from an industry veteran; hard to argue with that pedigree (part of why I like HN). I figured you might have been, but wanted to push back a little because I think it is important.
Here is my impression. 2001 feels like it was still within a golden era of game development; "AAA" games of that time would have been made by smaller studios still, and budgets could be very large, but not catastrophically so. The industry was still expanding. Post-GFC, once graphics scaled, demands seemed to scale, and costs blew out. Games had to reduce risk as a consequence, become more consolidated, more live-service. But the model was never sustainable at that scale. The tech improved so that costs for basic games went down, but big-budget AAA live service costs went to the moon. Volatility skyrocketed, leading to rapid hiring-firing phases. Now it is at its most extreme and the AAA side of the industry is in crisis. Demands for long-term support could be the straw that breaks the camel's back, but it always seems like that back was going to break eventually anyway. What I hope is happening is that talent is falling into the hands of smaller publishers, but that might not be true. What I do think is that the nature of development may need to change so that studios are able to facilitate these requirements while remaining profitable. Some have shown it can be done, anyway.
That's my impression from a semi-outsider perspective. Happy to be corrected though.
First, thank you so much, I so appreciate when somebody cares what someone else has to say!
Second, I think you're right. The games industry is in really bad shape right now. That's part of why I'm so concerned about putting new requirements on studios. If they have to pay someone to package up software to preserve it like this, that's one less person to generate them revenue, and that means someone gets laid off.
Whether their back breaks or not is not binary. It's measured in careers, and time. Most studios aren't profitable at all, or they're very temporarily profitable after each release. That's why publishers buy them, to keep them afloat during the time when they are losing money, and that's an investment with an expected return from those good times.
If you tell a studio they suddenly have to keep something going when it was already a financial failure, there's no way they can plan for that. They did that planning years ago.
Thanks for continuing the discussion! It's not often an outsider would get to speak with someone with your experience.
I definitely agree that it is not tenable in any studio to have a full time staff member dedicated to packaging software to be in line with this legislation. The solution has to be similar to a toggle in the engine code itself at the very earliest design phases. That means there has to be sufficient advanced notice and can only apply to future titles. There is hope that an inexpensive industry of third parties may arise to easily handle this aspect upfront with new software, but it would be great if there was a tangible demo of this.
Good point about publishers providing the cash to get the studios through the bad times. I think where this falls apart now is in the modern big-budget live service model itself, since these projects are expected to be so long term, so expensive, and gain so much income, that their lack of success now seems to end up in a studio turning the lights out altogether. Concord comes to mind here. Bungie's reliance on the new Marathon is not something I would wish upon any studio either. These kinds of game development strategies do not seem to be healthy for the industry anymore, and some diversification is really needed. These comments here are not really an SKG thing, it just feels like a far bigger issue from the dev side right now. I hate that devs are constantly losing their jobs in the current market, and I think gamers do too. I just can't see the status quo as sustainable. I guess that's why I treated the "back breaking" as binary, but it is true that there is a whole range of suffering inbetween.
A studio should never be forced to keep something going when it is deemed a financial failure. Again, it has to be an upfront design decision during the early planning years so that the end of life version is mostly a compilation target. Latest version goes out, no more updates, no more servers to run. There were more specific solutions discussed by other devs in a video on Ross Scott's channel, but that's the general idea. Does this seem even remotely possible from your viewpoint? Maybe not on current projects, but for projects five to ten years in the future?
If it is too hard to implement in this way for the team, the legislation may force to accept that the nature of the project may be so inherently risky with the current staff resources that it should not come to fruition until new software developments have made it less risky. But you are right that it might just end up as one less person with an actual dev job at the studio, which isn't great in the current economy. Either way, I think many users feel their hands have been forced by the publishers as I understand.