Let's say you are known as a handy person in your neighborhood, and one of your neighbors says he'll pay you $500 to build a permanent lemonade stand at the corner of his lot. At that price, the money is going to be tight, but you agree because you could use all the money you can get and you enjoy building things. And if you do a great job, maybe some other people in the neighborhood will want you to build things for them.
When you are done with your work, you are pretty pleased with it, but the neighbor gives you a list of things that are wrong. Two of the shelves aren't completely level and the door to the stock closet was supposed to swing closed on its own and it doesn't. You apologize and fix those problems. It takes more time and money, and you've made almost nothing from the job.
Then the neighbor says he'd like a small conveyor belt coming from the closet to the counter. He's not willing to pay for it, and says you should have done it that way to begin with. You are trying your best, and you want him to be happy with your work, so you put in a small conveyor belt. You've now lost money on the job, but at least you did great work and maybe someone else will hire you for something bigger.
The next day your neighbor presents you with a list of things he'd like modified. You take the list but tell him you don't think you can complete it. He accuses you of abandoning your job. He walks all over the neighborhood and tells everyone that you took his money and then abandoned the lemonade stand before it was finished.
Like it or not, we're the neighbor here. We demand the world from developers, but they have to deal with reality. Most of them are not some megacorp with endless money. They are scraping by just trying to eke out a living. If a game isn't selling anymore, and they have most of the money they are ever going to get from it, they have to stop working on the game after a reasonable amount of time. It can't become an endless time sink and money pit. They've done the best they could. Is it perfect? Nothing ever is. But expecting them to continue working forever is unrealistic.
I've seen so many people calling finished games "abandoned" that I felt like I really wanted to make a thread about it.
When is it okay for a developer to call a game finished?
We can't require the game to be completely bug free. Out of tens of thousands of games on Steam, the number that are bug free is probably very small. Fixing major or game breaking bugs is a reasonable request, though, even if the game isn't making money.
QoL features? Gameplay additions? General player requests? All of these things are nice, and if the game is selling well, I'm sure most developers will try to do all these things. But they aren't necessary to the game being complete, and if the game isn't making money, can we really expect the developer to just keep working on the game until we can't come up with any more ideas? That's just not realistic.
When you are done with your work, you are pretty pleased with it, but the neighbor gives you a list of things that are wrong. Two of the shelves aren't completely level and the door to the stock closet was supposed to swing closed on its own and it doesn't. You apologize and fix those problems. It takes more time and money, and you've made almost nothing from the job.
Then the neighbor says he'd like a small conveyor belt coming from the closet to the counter. He's not willing to pay for it, and says you should have done it that way to begin with. You are trying your best, and you want him to be happy with your work, so you put in a small conveyor belt. You've now lost money on the job, but at least you did great work and maybe someone else will hire you for something bigger.
The next day your neighbor presents you with a list of things he'd like modified. You take the list but tell him you don't think you can complete it. He accuses you of abandoning your job. He walks all over the neighborhood and tells everyone that you took his money and then abandoned the lemonade stand before it was finished.
Like it or not, we're the neighbor here. We demand the world from developers, but they have to deal with reality. Most of them are not some megacorp with endless money. They are scraping by just trying to eke out a living. If a game isn't selling anymore, and they have most of the money they are ever going to get from it, they have to stop working on the game after a reasonable amount of time. It can't become an endless time sink and money pit. They've done the best they could. Is it perfect? Nothing ever is. But expecting them to continue working forever is unrealistic.
I've seen so many people calling finished games "abandoned" that I felt like I really wanted to make a thread about it.
When is it okay for a developer to call a game finished?
We can't require the game to be completely bug free. Out of tens of thousands of games on Steam, the number that are bug free is probably very small. Fixing major or game breaking bugs is a reasonable request, though, even if the game isn't making money.
QoL features? Gameplay additions? General player requests? All of these things are nice, and if the game is selling well, I'm sure most developers will try to do all these things. But they aren't necessary to the game being complete, and if the game isn't making money, can we really expect the developer to just keep working on the game until we can't come up with any more ideas? That's just not realistic.