In general publishers have been the factor behind it, yes.
The thing is, you come to a point where you look at what you have and then make the call.
I assume Fatshark is a decent Publisher, after all they’ve been around and we’ve enjoyed their games.
What will have happened is this:
They looked their available budget, they had the annual development cost for the entire dev team + other expenses such as office space, energy, etc pp
The Covid stuff happens. They get on thin ice and realize “Well, if we don’t publish soon, things will get awkward”. So they make the call the release this year no matter what. And since that release has to make bank, they plan it for Christmas Season.
Whatever happens, happens. If the launch is slightly botched, whatever. It’s collateral. And so they go ahead, fire the dev team a little up with an internal memo (“This is it guys, it’s ride or die. Release is 2022, make it or break it!”) and that’s how we ended here.
I personally understand that. In an optimal world things would be different. But this world isn’t optimal. I know this looks like a good bunch of shilling, but I felt like pointing it out because too often Management and Leadership is not given any consideration for. It’s always “poor devs” and “poor us”. Thing is, if the cash register is empty, any project is immediately halted and nobody will get anything anymore. No checks for the employed, no chance at redemption.
Bankruptcy is the worst for a company, because it affects everyone involved. Am I saying Fatshark might have been close to bankruptcy? No, I don’t think so. But just because you have reserves doesn’t mean you should throw them around like candy, either.
I don’t think they had any idea how rough things would get. I don’t know how badly they were affected, but they were in Sweden right? The dev team? Europe did have some rigid lockdowns and since Sweden has this Feminist government, I’m sure they had tougher guidelines.
There’s propably people who has been waiting the game for years and followed development who are the most dissapointed and possibly leave negative review, but I honestly think those who simply jump in without expectations will have a good run for a 40€ game, if the servers hold and there are no massive days long launch issues.
Personally my only concern will their update schedule, I did not follow the development much and had no expectations so this “early access” experience is quite good at core, but the game will run out of content in few weeks unless they have a very solid update and/or event schedule lined up.
People seem to think longer development time guarantees a better game. 2077 proves this isn’t true. Most recent example to my mind is the difference between Abe’s Exoddus and its remake Soulstorm. The first being cranked out in under a year while the later is a buggy mess that took half a decade to make that is a pale imitation of the original but is somehow the creators “true vision”. I do sometimes think you need a hardass publisher to say “no, now’s the time to get your arse in gear and get this shipped.”
The only problem now is that with microtransactions coming to this game in what way will it be, simply cosmetics (not really necessary if its just cosmetics) or will it be linked to grind mitigation. We’ll now need to wait until the end of December to find out, I do not feel confident. Which is a shame because I’ve encouraged several people to play this game. I hope I’m wrong and will apologise if I am come the new year.