Yep. I’ve noticed that pretty much every game I was interested in has been delayed this year. Dying Light 2, Warhammer 3, Darktide, Back 4 Blood, Age of Darkness, etc. Shame, but thats a pandemic for you. Delays are not a good sign though, so I hope the games use the time well.
Honestly very few businesses suffered for more than 2 months worth of backlog of work as home setups for development were quickly implemented in most cases (blizzard is a famous example where this wasn’t the case) Bunge are a great case where this was the case.
The larger problem I believe is devs have seen the vitriolic feedback and hate from gamers regarding unfinished games.
Look at cyberpunk 2077, 4 delayed release dates and it was still bad at launch.
And CDprojeckt red up until that point thanks to witcher 3 were the golden boy gamers would tell other devs to act like and use as a standard to judge others against.
Devs dont want that level of hate and fecal matter on their doorsteps. So the answer? do what used to be done 7+ years ago and release full games that work on launch.
while im 100% onboard with you, the sucess of halfassed games and games as service modells prove you wrong. older generation gamers totally don’t fall for the sh*t and transition to indie and nieche games where the standards are more in line with their morals, but the younger more naive generations grew up with predatory systems like lootboxes, major content cuts just to re-sell behind moneycurtains. etc
a great example would be paid-cosmetics, most people, even older generations, accept and tolerate it as part of modern gaming culture, and because publishers and chairmen know they can get away with it, almost all new games employ some form of paid-cosmetics system even tho it totally could be part of the “normal” content. (games as a service is somewhat excluded here).
but pay to win, or “pay for shortcut” is rarely employed in nieche games, because they often rely on older generation gamers as their core-community, and would flop instantly when they would try anyway. great example for this happening would be Dawn of war 3, a decendant of nieche games, that didnt cater to their corefanbase and flopped hard.
I have to wait to commit exterminatus upon all the Zenos??? UNACCEPTABLE!!! Just kidding I’m sure it’ll be great and honestly I hope they take their time on it it’s better for the game that way.