Bug handling

[ufm]

I know but it's BGA responsability to ensure there's a solution to this issue, isn't it? It's part of their business model, or at least it should be...

I'm curious to know their opinion on this matter.

Ghorghor

https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 52#p174752

Anachrony definitely has some critical bugs and QoL issues. I don't think that it is maintained. I haven't seen any reaction to bug reports in the last six months.

You're correct. It's not being maintained.

[Tisaac]

Nothing is bug free. So it's not a mater of having bug-free games, but rather to have bug-free-enough-to-be-playable games.
So, as GTSchemer said, many games are made by volonteers and for these there is very little guarantee except from the fact that at some point the bug list was small enough that BGA considered it was ok to move to beta/to release the game.
For freelance work (Anachrony is one of them iirc), there is slightly more control : the usual freelance contract includes a delay of ~3months after the release for maintenance, so if a critical bug were to be found within that timeframe, then BGA could make the developper fix it.
After that timeline though, you are back to "no guarantee", and BGA is not investing money into this because it's just not worth it. You mentionned the increase of premium subscription, but I dont think you fully realize how much it would cost for debugging some games, especially complex ones, when you are not the one who made the code in the first place. You could pay a full time dev to do only this (you would need to find a dev crazy enough to do that first) and in a year it would only clear maybe 200 bugs ? And how many new bugs would be silently introduced in the meantime with the >100 new games ?...

I clearly know the cost of finding and fixing bug in someone else codebase, as I'm a full stack developer myself and I know thatn othing is bug free. I don't speak about QoL bugs, temporary bugs, or bugs which have a workaround but about blocking/critical bugs which force an abandon, for example.

Sorry for assuming you had no knowledge on fixing bugs costs. I would still argue that you might underestimate it a bit in this case because BGA has absolutely 0 coding standard (whereas in the usual world of web dev it's often the case) so each game is a completely independent project that you have to get familiar with before being able to debug it.

Anyway, as you said, bugs create frustration, so some players will maybe stop playing that game with bug, but which proportion of them ? And they can still play other games, so which proportion of bug-annoyed players will just cancel their premium subscription ? I think that number is relatively low (especially compared to players negative reaction to other recent changes like ELO or some redesign of lobby pages), whereas having a large number of "playable-enough" games is attractive to increase the players pool. So I dont think that from a purely economic point of vue, this is a viable strategy.
Do that means that I think it's a good strategy? Heck no. I would personnaly prioritize quality over quantity, and some games would have stayed in beta if it were only for me to decide (and I am including some of my own games here like The Crew Deep Sea that still have couple of bugs).

[ufm]

So, in short:
- There are some games with critical bugs, but BGA is NOT responsible for the quality control of individual games and it is not economically worth it
- Even if they wanted to do so, they don't have sufficient time and workforce to invest
- The publisher is responsible for the quality control, only they can authorize (or cancel) the beta and stable release of the game
- There are some games pulled out by the publisher due to the quality issues, but usually the publishers won't take such measures

[Ghor2Bey]

First, the good news, Amalfi bug was indeed a defect and is now fixed, which is great. Thanks for reaching out the dev.

Second, does that mean that the bug reporting system isn't really working, as we had to take another way to expose the bug?
The dev is clearly reactive as the bug was quickly fixed but the way we report bug seems inefficient.

As a side note, I took part in various online dev project, in PHP (was I was much younger and less careful about my code's quality) and in JS (more recently) and I really understand the difficulties of handling this kind of stuff.

At work, we have a part of the team that want to focus on bringing new functionalities, and the other part that want to focus on improving the quality of the product (robust product, more testing to avoid regression, improving performance, avoid technical debt, better UX,...)
I'm in the second part, obviously, and I understand well that choices must be balanced by the economy and other external factors.

My point here is that BGA seems to totally ignore the quality part and let it in the hands of the (unpaid) dev, which is a shame.

They should have an employee, with a technical background, who should be in charge of reviewing bugs, extracting critical ones and propose paid missions to fix them, for example (this is one solution, other exist) but current solution of leaving it on the good will of the dev, with a pretty useless bug reporting system full of false positive is not a good idea.

I'm pretty sure that as long as they keep getting new subscriptions, they don't bother about the reasons why paid customers stop their subscription, and we can't guess about that without real statistics. This will work for some time, but won't last forever...

I hope it'll get at least BGA attention.

Ghorghor

[Ghor2Bey]

So, in short:
- There are some games with critical bugs, but BGA is NOT responsible for the quality control of individual games and it is not economically worth it
- Even if they wanted to do so, they don't have sufficient time and workforce to invest

They should be responsible as they ask some subscription fee to play games, they provide a service.

If you buy a product and it's not working fine, who's responsible? It's the company who sell it/provided the service to you, which can of course check with their own provider. I don't see the point on removing BGA responsability here. They are accountable for the service they provide.

Ghorghor.

[ufm]

Second, does that mean that the bug reporting system isn't really working, as we had to take another way to expose the bug?
The dev is clearly reactive as the bug was quickly fixed but the way we report bug seems inefficient.

It is definitely working (the dev will receive a mail whenever somebody posts a report or comments).
Some devs have received tons of mails on a daily basis.
If the dev was unaware of the report, probably they didn't read it due to a spam filter or something.

They should be responsible as they ask some subscription fee to play games, they provide a service.

Seems you didn't read the post I linked above. I'll copy it for you:

BGA is a platform. Think of other game platforms: the platform developers do not fix individual game codes.
The developers and publishers who add their games do not 'join' the platform to fix bugs. They are not hired BGA staffs.
But you're right, if the developer leaves, the game is likely to be abandoned.
Because BGA is not obliged to guarantee permanent maintenance after all: BGA ToS section 11.
This is the same for other platforms as well. Users don't expect platform developers to fix individual games.
If you want to fix something yourself, here's the link: https://studio.boardgamearena.com/studio

They should be responsible as they ask some subscription fee to play games, they provide a service.

If you buy a product and it's not working fine, who's responsible? It's the company who sell it/provided the service to you, which can of course check with their own provider. I don't see the point on removing BGA responsability here. They are accountable for the service they provide.

Again, the publisher somehow decided to release the implementation with defects, so it's on them.
They could have avoided it with ease (by not approving the release), but they authorized the release anyway.
I always ask publishers to test the game themselves if possible though.

[Ghor2Bey]

I did miss it, thanks for bringing it to my attention. As you expect, I didn't read ToS. I won't argue about legal matters here, I'm not competent on the subject.

Anyway, this is, imho, a bad thing, and it looks more a legal way to protect BGA than a good business practice. (in my personal and insignificant opinion)

I don't blame dev here, I mostly blame BGA policy on this subject, this give me a feeling like Uber (and others) employees who work in awful conditions. (maybe I'm wrong and dev here are really well paid for their jobs, and they're just bad people leaving bugs in their games - just joking, of course)

Regarding the bug reporting system, it's a bit clumsy, I've tried to make some requests (sorting isn't working great) and I keep getting errors, as I wanted to check how many bugs are open and unchecked. In the last 10 days, at least 1000 new bugs were created, based on bug number, if relevant. (90% false positive means there's at least 100 real bugs found

BGA (AD2G Studio) has a really good EBITDA (source : https://www.pappers.fr/entreprise/ad2g-studio-803287150), which means it's a profitable company (and rather stable even though the CA drop off a lot between 2022 and 2023, the EBITDA stays stable) which means that they have money available but choose to invest it somewhere else, no idea where. I don't know if their (re-)investments are available/visible somewhere.

Maybe fixing old games's bugs isn't profitable, and maybe it's a commercial move to keep them on their catalog even if they're buggy and not maintained anymore, but it's not good for their image, as paid customer don't bother who's accountable, as they pay BGA, not the dev behind. Maybe it's a single drop in the ocean, maybe not. My point was only that I won't neglect it if I was them.

Ghorghor
PS: it was nice to discuss with BGA game dev a bit and get a small peek of what's going on inside.

[fruktansvärt]

while BGA may be profitable, they're owned by Asmodee, who was just given a lot of debt by their owners.
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36267

[fruktansvärt]

how much does it cost to develop a game for BGA?
say a complex one such as Anachrony, and the developer is given a reasonable salary for their time.

and how much money from premium subscriptions are shunted to the publishers?

what i'm asking is, is it profitable to publish a game on BGA?
(that many games, such as Anachrony, are published without expansions, may be a hint towards how profitable it is)

[ufm]

Anyway, this is, imho, a bad thing, and it looks more a legal way to protect BGA than a good business practice. (in my personal and insignificant opinion)

While I agree some games need quality control, ultimately the publisher decides the release. BGA needs their approval to release the game.
Maybe the publisher had schedules to keep, they thought the current implementation is OK, or they approved it for some unknown reasons.

how much does it cost to develop a game for BGA?
say a complex one such as Anachrony, and the developer is given a reasonable salary for their time.

It depends. Some are done for free and some are paid projects.
However, imo the quality of freelancer projects is better on average.

and how much money from premium subscriptions are shunted to the publishers?

what i'm asking is, is it profitable to publish a game on BGA?
(that many games, such as Anachrony, are published without expansions, may be a hint towards how profitable it is)

You're unlikely to get a firm answer here, probably...