Why should I care to file a bug if developer seems not to be interested?

[Alex_tgiu]

I just had a bug with Carcassonne, the most played game here and asked myself if it's worth spending the time to file a bug, if there are a hundred open ones and partly since years.
I picked this as a prominent example, no offence meant to the developer, I know for myself that people have other things to do or might have reasons to not being able to care anymore, but I think the platform should have an interest that bugs are being cared about and games are maintained just like other software.

[nccc]

I agree with u.
Such as super fantasy brawl( over 6 months without update)
Season(that dial of colof bug)
Roll for the galaxy.....

[RicardoRix]

It's a community driven thing. Without the developers there wouldn't be most of the games. Most are doing it in their spare time.

If you want to help out then you'll get some free membership:
https://studio.boardgamearena.com/bounties

[Ze Monstah]

[robinzig]

Not wishing to point any fingers, but I'm pretty sure Carcassonne, amongst many other games - especially those that have been on BGA for a long time - was actually developed by the core BGA team, rather than being done by a volunteer developer as the majority of new games are now.

I agree that BGA should devote more attention to fixing bugs in games, both ones that were implemented by BGA themselves and those where the dev appears to have gone AWOL (no criticism intended, people have lives to get on with!) - but I am sure they would say they don't have the time/staff/money to employ new staff, etc. Such is life - other than raising bugs and making polite requests in places like this, it's not clear what can be done.

[thoun]

Someone might replace the original dev one day, if original dev isn't here anymore. Just for that, keep caring to file a bug

[KongKing123]

I agree with the previous posters and think it is one of the site's biggest issues. Even more infuriating is when your report automatically gets moved to "notupdated" status for supposedly not being relevant anymore when it was just ignored for a year. I do understand the solution is not easy.

I believe much of the problem can be avoided at the source though. A lot of games are being pushed through beta and released with many open reports. After release there is obviously less incentive for the developers to fix them. The developers then stop working on the game and it remains in an imperfect state until someone takes over (which is very rare).

BGA should be a lot more stringent on this and focus on quality over quantity.

Not wishing to point any fingers, but I'm pretty sure Carcassonne, amongst many other games - especially those that have been on BGA for a long time - was actually developed by the core BGA team, rather than being done by a volunteer developer as the majority of new games are now.

They should look for maintainers for these projects, at least the most popular ones. A flagship game like 7 Wonders really shouldn't have glaringly obvious bugs that have gone unfixed for ages, but BGA themselves understandably don't have the time to deal with this anymore.

Someone might replace the original dev one day, if original dev isn't here anymore. Just for that, keep caring to file a bug

That's true, Connect 4 for example was graciously updated by ufm: https://boardgamearena.com/bugs?game=1186

[alexsim]

There are a couple of reasons to create a bug report, even if there's almost no chance a developer will see and work to correct it.

Other players might see the bug and better understand what the game is doing and understand or maybe avoid the problem. (This is rather like knowing that a printed edition has a misprint on a card. You can't change it, but you can deal with the problem ("James should have had two bonus points from the Blue Fortress, so the final score was really 67-62".)

There's a decent chance that what you're seeing isn't really a bug, but a correct implementation of the rules. Many players have learned that they've been playing rules wrong (sometimes for years) after playing a game online. (I've also been very impressed that most game designers seem very willing to step in and clarify grey areas and corner cases for developers. Even if this only happens when the game is first being developed, it increases the chances that things which seem weird are actually working as intended.) So posting a report might get a response from someone who can explain what is going on.

And finally, a bug report shows that someone cares about the game. And maybe that increases the chances, however small, that a new developer (or even the old developer) might step in to fix the problem.

[Silene]

I think if the bug system itself would be better, people would be more motivated to create a report and especially to update existing ones.

Right now search function doesn't work well and often does not lead you to the bug you were actually searching for. That leads to a lot of multiple-reports on the same thing with neither of them collecting many votes.

Also it should be possible to rename a reported bug later with more information. Sometimes first report is from one player's perspective from what they experienced in the game. But the bug itself persists in several different situations. So the wording of the title should be more general. I often find myself in a situation where I find a report that I feel like "the source of this problem could be the same problem as I experienced but the title totally doesn't cover my situation".
Maybe for this it would be good if different bugs could be grouped and a collective vote would be shown.

I tried to make a report for this stuff but it didn't get many votes ^^
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=51906

[Alex_tgiu]

Thanks for those interesting answers.
I myself developed a game here and know how much work it is and that sometimes you just have no time or other reasons for leaving the project.
And yes, I agree, the bug tracking is more than awful, BGA themselves don't care about bugs, which is a shame for a platform as big as that and which is backed by a large company and gets income from premiums.
At least for the most popular games, they should make sure to find maintainers and see bugs being cared of.
Concerning my question, I tried to find a similar bug report and voted that plus referring to my situation, only that I have no big hope it will get fixed.