I could see the trouble with a single game being that a game breaking bug discovered in November could bankrupt the company by missing Christmas release, or releasing a broken product.
A company with a few other games in the pipeline has a chance to advertise and release one of the others, which might be missing a planned level, but not actually be broken.
What I really wish is for some way for game developers to gain a cut of the secondary market* so that they weren’t so financially dependent on a treadmill of output. Developers should have a vested interest to continue to support and work on their games for as long as there’s an active fanbase. Access to the secondary market (i.e. a cut of used game sales) would enable that while also supporting consumer ownership rights. The fact that I have hundreds of dollars (more? no idea) of illiquid assets in the form of digital-only games is an undue burden on the consumer. /rant
*not through expensive DLCs, subscriptions, or the way Skyrim did it, preferably
I could see the trouble with a single game being that a game breaking bug discovered in November could bankrupt the company by missing Christmas release, or releasing a broken product.
A company with a few other games in the pipeline has a chance to advertise and release one of the others, which might be missing a planned level, but not actually be broken.
I doubt Square Enix is at risk of bankruptcy. If Larian can do it, Square Enix won’t have issues.
What I really wish is for some way for game developers to gain a cut of the secondary market* so that they weren’t so financially dependent on a treadmill of output. Developers should have a vested interest to continue to support and work on their games for as long as there’s an active fanbase. Access to the secondary market (i.e. a cut of used game sales) would enable that while also supporting consumer ownership rights. The fact that I have hundreds of dollars (more? no idea) of illiquid assets in the form of digital-only games is an undue burden on the consumer. /rant
*not through expensive DLCs, subscriptions, or the way Skyrim did it, preferably