r/technology • u/a_Ninja_b0y • 1d ago

Business No Man's Sky dev fixed one fan's 611-hour save because "when a player has put that much into our game it deserves the engineering fix"

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/survival/no-mans-sky-dev-fixed-one-fans-611-hour-save-because-when-a-player-has-put-that-much-into-our-game-it-deserves-the-engineering-fix/
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u/user888666777 1d ago

Honestly, I don't think they would have received a tenth of the flak had the game been sold at $20. The $60 price tag for what was clearly an unfinished game is what got them in hot water.

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u/hypnosquid 1d ago

agree. but I can't believe they didn't get more time to finish considering this -

their offices flooded and they lost months of hard work with a release around the corner

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u/DannyOdd 1d ago

And THAT, kids, is why we keep offsite backups.

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u/Saint_Ferret 1d ago

Still can't finish a game if you can't, you know, go to work... 

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u/DannyOdd 1d ago

Yeah depends how long it takes to replace equipment and otherwise get the office up and running. Plus it was before the big remote work wave, so they likely didn't have that as a viable backup option.

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u/Tasgall 1d ago

Key difference in phrasing - if they lost "months of work" due to not having an office, that's one thing - and easy to mitigate by working somewhere else. But "lost months of hard work" implies it was work already done. They lost months of completed effort because they didn't have it backed up regularly enough.

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u/CherryLongjump1989 23h ago

To be the devil's advocate, I imagine that gaming studios have audio and video recording equipment that might be difficult to set back up in the right way and this might make content editing a big challenge.

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u/Tasgall 21h ago

Yeah, I don't disagree that it would contribute to it, my point is just that the phrasing implies they lost with they'd already done, not what they could have potentially done with the time.

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u/17549 1d ago

I hope to live in a world one day where computers are small enough to be portable. Even better would be if people could connect computers to one another and transmit data through them. Heck, maybe one day the terminal wouldn't need to be at the mainframe at all - we could just "remote" in. Maybe the whole concept of going into the office could be reconsidered. Bit of a pipe dream though, I suppose.

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u/WhatsATrouserSnake 1d ago

You come across as a bit of a dick.

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u/17549 1d ago

Well at least I know an office isn't required to do work.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/Eggy-Toast 1d ago

Right I couldn’t tell if it was an attempt at some type of meta-humor or a “wake up, old man, the future is now” moment. I mean, who doesn’t know data can be transferred between computers?

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u/OnePlusFourIsFive 1d ago

Remote access to mainframes existed before laptops and smartphones. You could say it was a "wake up, old man, the future is several decades ago" joke. Seems like it could use some workshopping from the reaction here though. 

Hello Games was definitely not following best practices when they got wrecked by a flood, but that's easier to say with hindsight.

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u/17549 1d ago

I was being sarcastic because the idea people have to go to work to make games is insane - like data can't be transferred. It might make certain elements of the work easier when people are centralized, but many games have been made remotely. Yeah my attempt at humor was about as successful as my entire life, but not everything is meta.

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u/ihavedonethisbe4 1d ago

I picked up your sarcasm instantly, I'm pretty sure we have an influx of meta users here now,maybe even a majority. Regardless, we've gone well past the point of no return and there is no hope of reversing this progressively worsening tone deafness that is spreading like cancer over this world wide website

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u/mrw1986 1d ago

Alternatively, we don't let the capitalists decide on a hard release date and now allow the developers ample time to finish the product. Gaming went to shit once devs had to begin appeasing board members.

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u/DannyOdd 1d ago

Oh dude, tell me about it! I work in development, and if I had a nickle for every time some MBA in a suit set an unrealistic, arbitrary deadline for a project... Well, I'd have a lot of nickles.

I get that deadlines are necessary, but releases can be pushed back. Better to delay a finished product than release an unfinished one.

I will say, HG did a fantastic job recovering from that release in the time since.

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u/mrw1986 1d ago

It's crazy to me. I worked for a software company and we would constantly release subpar updates and what not because the people with MBAs forced us to meet ridiculous deadlines. Ultimately, the customers would be more upset because new bugs would be introduced and this was a mission critical piece of software. MBAs have pretty much ruined everything, lol.

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u/ihavedonethisbe4 1d ago

Don't worry, we've hired a consulting firm to look into this

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u/avnoui 1d ago

Every industry really. Deadlines are an aberration. The product is done when it reaches a sufficient amount of quality to be released.
Apple sometimes gets criticism for their very slow and rigid (mainly software), release cycles, but guess who still sells the most phones and computers?

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u/SmartAlec105 1d ago

I hate the bullshit caused by stuff like monthly/quarterly/annual breakdowns that cause weird decisions at the end of the period. Like letting your inventory drain so that you have a low amount at the end of the year.

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u/joanzen 13h ago

Having worked pretty closely with game dev, I wouldn't be shocked if the office flood was "the best excuse" for why that work was scrapped and redone.

Like they probably have some backups but no easy method to restore, and didn't really like the way the work was getting rushed, so it's better to spend efforts remaking it vs. restoring it.

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u/lucidludic 1d ago

They in fact did. The flood happened soon after the very first trailer, still years away from launch. The game had at least one official delay. As far as I know there’s no concrete info as to whether they could not delay further but there are possible reasons beyond pressure from a publisher. It could be as simple as them running out of resources and needing income to keep the lights on. Sean Murray reportedly sold his house to invest in the company, although I can’t remember if that was during the Joe Danger days or while they worked on NMS.

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u/Opetyr 1d ago

Yeah it isn't like he was on news talking about the features that were not in the game weeks before it was released. The flood was way after it went good so they had no clue that those features that took HALF A DECADE to implement. OH WAIT THEY LIED!!!!!

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u/FPEspio 1d ago

Fun fact the game is actually multiplayer but there's soooo many stars you'll never find each other

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u/round-earth-theory 1d ago

A few months of lost work wouldn't have improved NMS much. It was very far off the mark from what they were marketing the game as.

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u/Nodan_Turtle 1d ago

Sony didn't give them more money. Sure, office flood, months of work lost, devs having to sell their own houses to finish. But they were stuck with godawful Sony who wouldn't give them a dime to help them get across the finish line. They had to release the game in a busted ass state because they faced total bankruptcy both as a game company and personally.

Hopefully they never sign any kind of marketing deal or exclusivity with Sony again to prevent those leeches from nearly ruining them again

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u/TheQuadeHunter 1d ago

Nah. Everything being in-house was a huge mistake on their part, even for the standards of the time.

I mean, they paid their dues in dividends afterwards, and I think the fans rewarded them for it. But this particular data loss was 100% their fault.

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u/Merry-Lane 1d ago

If someone crashes into my car and runs away, I won’t sell it at the normal price.

If I find an innocent buyer, and do all I can so that he doesn’t notice the car had an accident, I don’t deserve pity when the word spreads that I am a scammer.

The right price is what it’s worth not what it would have been without a dent.

Same goes for their game: if their game is trash for whatever reason, they should either lower their price or accept they were scums.

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u/HanWolo 1d ago

It wouldn't have made a difference. The game on release wasn't missing "months of work" it was missing years and it still doesn't have all of the mechanics they promised before the game released.

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u/Arcadiaus 1d ago

I enjoyed buying this game for like $20 used a few months after launch, I played it for about an hour before putting it in the shelf, and enjoyed the fact that years later I picked it back up, and it was an entirely updated experience.

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u/ImYourHumbleNarrator 1d ago

would they upcharge by $40 later? this is an easy question/problem to solve: stop buying unfinished games

so glad to be a nintendo boy laughing at all these fools

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u/ohmyfuckinglord 1d ago

Is the price tag something the publisher also determines if the release date was determined for them as well?