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What to do about abandoned bugged games?
Posted: 05 October 2025, 16:23
by FocusFocusFocus
Just wanted to start a solution-driven discussion. Some games have pretty game-breaking bugs, like Dungeon Petz Employee of the Month issue, but the developers have since moved on with their lives (understandable; coding BGA is a hassle and I'm pretty sure unpaid).
What can we as a community do to get some of these bugs cleaned up? I figured we could come up with a solution together. I don't think the company has any intention of hiring staff to clean games up (or do they?). What else can we do? Because the Bug Report only goes so far if there's no developer around to read them.
Re: What to do about abandoned bugged games?
Posted: 05 October 2025, 16:54
by Strode
"We?" Most of us probably can't do anything.
Someone with developer skills needs to jump in. In an FAQ somewhere, it says...
"You want to take over abandoned game
Please first ask the dev (in PM, dev forum or discord) - it may not be actually abandoned
Contact the Studio support to ask for access to this project via
https://studio.boardgamearena.com/support"
https://boardgamearena.com/doc/Contact_BGA_Studio
It doesn't say what happens if you don't hear from the developer. Does BGA make it easy to pick up where they left off? Regardless, someone with developer skills would be needed, which is a very small percentage of us.
Re: What to do about abandoned bugged games?
Posted: 05 October 2025, 16:54
by FrankJones
FocusFocusFocus wrote: ↑05 October 2025, 16:23
Just wanted to start a solution-driven discussion. Some games have pretty game-breaking bugs, like Dungeon Petz Employee of the Month issue, but the developers have since moved on with their lives (understandable; coding BGA is a hassle and I'm pretty sure unpaid).
What can we as a community do to get some of these bugs cleaned up? I figured we could come up with a solution together. I don't think the company has any intention of hiring staff to clean games up (or do they?). What else can we do? Because the Bug Report only goes so far if there's no developer around to read them.
Perhaps a post in the "developers" forum asking if anyone wants to become the developer for that game and fix the bug.
Re: What to do about abandoned bugged games?
Posted: 05 October 2025, 23:48
by nik592
Strode wrote: ↑05 October 2025, 16:54
It doesn't say what happens if you don't hear from the developer. Does BGA make it easy to pick up where they left off? Regardless, someone with developer skills would be needed, which is a very small percentage of us.
I would assume if you haven't heard from a dev after sometime (having made at least a couple of contact attempts), you could consider them no longer active (or at least not currently active). If they were away for some reason, hopefully someone in the forums (for that game) may know that.
As to how easy it is to pick up, I haven't done so, but any code is only as easy to maintain as the person before you left it. I'm sure some code is super easy to walk into (well-commented/named, logically structured) but some is probably enough to make anyone weep and/or run. I say this as someone who writes code professionally and has seen all aspects, including code written by my younger/less experienced self that makes my current self weep, or at least shake my head in disbelief - it's not always because the dev didn't care or wasn't trying their best, but writing code that works (for your immediate goal) and writing code that's easy to maintain are two entirely different things.
Re: What to do about abandoned bugged games?
Posted: 06 October 2025, 11:30
by FrankJones
nik592 wrote: ↑05 October 2025, 23:48
Strode wrote: ↑05 October 2025, 16:54
It doesn't say what happens if you don't hear from the developer. Does BGA make it easy to pick up where they left off? Regardless, someone with developer skills would be needed, which is a very small percentage of us.
I would assume if you haven't heard from a dev after sometime (having made at least a couple of contact attempts), you could consider them no longer active (or at least not currently active). If they were away for some reason, hopefully someone in the forums (for that game) may know that.
As to how easy it is to pick up, I haven't done so, but any code is only as easy to maintain as the person before you left it. I'm sure some code is super easy to walk into (well-commented/named, logically structured) but some is probably enough to make anyone weep and/or run. I say this as someone who writes code professionally and has seen all aspects, including code written by my younger/less experienced self that makes my current self weep, or at least shake my head in disbelief - it's not always because the dev didn't care or wasn't trying their best, but writing code that works (for your immediate goal) and writing code that's easy to maintain are two entirely different things.
Well said. When I was learning Java, I would submit a project and then be able to see other people's code for the same project. And even though all the posted solutions functioned the same way, other people's code looked like nonsense to me much of the time.
Look no further than Terraforming Mars on [other gaming site] to see how difficult it is even for professionals to walk into someone else's spaghetti code and untangle it.
And, yeah, the more I learned, the more I would look back on my earlier code and shake my head.
(I'm not a professional developer.)