Are bugs always addressed?

[tinpan70]

Seems like the bug forums are full of open cases so wondering if some never get looked at. Keyflower for example obviously has a major issue for many subscribers who are no longer able to play but appears nothing being done. Just open cases galore with not reproduced.

[Meeplelowda]

Seems like the bug forums are full of open cases so wondering if some never get looked at. Keyflower for example obviously has a major issue for many subscribers who are no longer able to play but appears nothing being done. Just open cases galore with not reproduced.

If it is a bug about a game, it entirely depends on whether there is still an active developer for the game. For the most part BGA staff do not develop games themselves. Many developers are volunteers, and even those who get paid don't get paid enough to sign up for a lifetime of service patching bugs. I can see in BGA Studio that the last update to the Keyflower project was on 2024-08-16, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

But as Kayvon is fond of saying:

As with the rest of the gaming industry, there are always more ideas and wishes than there are people to actually fulfill them.

The good news, though, is that you can be the change you want to see in the world. If this means a lot to you, create a BGA Studio account and work through the steps to makes the improvements you want to see.

Here's a link to get you started:
https://studio.boardgamearena.com/

Hope that helps!

[Kayvon]

It's true. I am fond of saying that.

[MarkSteere]

Most definitely not. If it's the bug of a conscientious, professional programmer, or a conscientious amateur programmer (like me) who has no idea how to fix it but can find someone to help, it'll get fixed.

I don't know the overall percentage of bugged out games, but there are definitely programmers who took the money and ran. Who will fix their bugs? No one. That's who. Everyone else is busy with their own projects and couldn't care less about other programmers' bugs, big and small, far and wide. I'm just speculating here. There probably have been cases of roving bug fixers being good Samaritans. But I imagine they're exceedingly rare.

[tchobello]

Most definitely not. If it's the bug of a conscientious, professional programmer, or a conscientious amateur programmer (like me) who has no idea how to fix it but can find someone to help, it'll get fixed.

I don't know the overall percentage of bugged out games, but there are definitely programmers who took the money and ran. Who will fix their bugs? No one. That's who. Everyone else is busy with their own projects and couldn't care less about other programmers' bugs, big and small, far and wide. I'm just speculating here. There probably have been cases of roving bug fixers being good Samaritans. But I imagine they're exceedingly rare.

Do you expect developers to fix new bugs, brought by BGA framework upgrades, 9 years later ?

[cigma]

Seems like the bug forums are full of open cases so wondering if some never get looked at.

Don't rely on the forums if you want a developer to check a possible bug (or a suggestion). That's what the bug system is for: https://boardgamearena.com/bugs But sadly this won't guarantee someone will take care of it either.

[Meeplelowda]

Seems like the bug forums are full of open cases so wondering if some never get looked at.

Don't rely on the forums if you want a developer to check a possible bug (or a suggestion). That's what the bug system is for: https://boardgamearena.com/bugs But sadly this won't guarantee someone will take care of it either.

Given that there is no actual "bug forum" and they referred to "open cases," I'm guessing when the OP said "bug forum" they were already referring to the bug system.

[nik592]

I don't know the overall percentage of bugged out games, but there are definitely programmers who took the money and ran.

What money? Most games on BGA are volunteer developed (and/or maintained). While there are some paid implementations (where I think usually a publisher pays for their game to be developed), I assume these are contractual - the dev is paid for a certain period of time, or maybe to a certain level of quality (but that is harder to define). I suppose you could say they took the money and ran, but a contract only pays for a certain amount of work, not infinite maintenance. I work for a software company, we've obviously had devs come and go, and while I might curse one of the guys who wrote the code that's now bugged (or possibly was always bugged under certain conditions, just never noticed) and has left the organisation, none of us are literally expecting that those devs are responsible for the bugs in their code. Similarly, I suppose one of these days I'll be "taking my money and running" too, but I suspect none of my coworkers will be feeling resentful about my leaving my bugs behind (not that they don't already fix bugs I introduced already, since mostly, everyone is responsible for maintenance, whether or not they originally implemented a particular feature).

If BGA had a set of paid devs for game maintenance, that might be another thing, but as far as I understand it, they do not. So bugs in games are at the mercy of volunteers. That said, even if BGA had a set of paid devs, they would still need to pick and choose which bugs are worth the effort and time to fix. The one most important to you may not be a priority, for a variety of reasons. Some bugs are harder to fix than you might think. Some bugs are so intermittent, a dev can't even figure out why they're happening. Some bugs are literally only affecting one person. Some bugs have a workaround. Bear in mind, I'm speaking generally about the nature of bugs and why they sometimes get "ignored" in the software I maintain, but since devs here are volunteers, they can mostly choose what bugs they fix, or don't, so it's likely to be even more arbitrary. But as Kayvon (and Meeplelowda) say, if a particular bug bothers you enough, maybe see if you can learn to fix it yourself.

[Kayvon]

nik592 hit the nail on the head. I've developed loads of BGA games. One of them was Gaia Project, for which I was paid a one-time fee and asked to support bugs for some time after the launch. Here we are over four years later and I still respond to most bug reports within a half hour (as a volunteer, for free), not just for Gaia Project but for the other dozen games.

Now, you may expect that all developers should do this for free in perpetuity, but you're also missing the other half of it: 95%+ of bug reports are false reports. People who couldn't bother to read the rules, ask at the table, read the FAQ, or post in the forums. Seriously, go check out the Gaia Project reports from the past year. Many players are vocally irate when they find out their interpretation doesn't match the errata they've never read. Should developers have to support that in perpetuity as well?

Maybe you'll say they should only support "real" bugs, but there's no way of knowing what's real without investigating and debugging for several minutes per report. And sometimes publishers will post new errata that changes rules. Are we also on the hook for that forever? Ofttimes, developers and publishers will post informal rules clarifications in online forums, sometimes "clarifications" that conflict with one another. We take a lot of hate for not following all of that, too.


tl;dr: No one's asking you to do work for a job you left five years ago. You "took the money and ran", right? It a little unreasonable to expect otherwise of freelancers and volunteers, even when lots of us still do it for free.

[danielvictor]

As players,we're encouraged to report bugs,so then it's a shame that some never get fixed,and get loads of confirmations.