Gabe Newell on why game delays are okay: 'Late is just for a little while. Suck is forever.'

Half Life 3 is super late

My dude really just took one of gaming's most famous quotes, made it shorter, and it became news.

I really like Gabe.

Is Gabe slowly turning into a wizard

tbf that's a lot easier to say when you're the president of one of the richest companies in the industry. I don't disagree, but not everybody has the resources to just keep developing forever, and that's easy to forget too.

However, delay also doesn't mean a better product. It's possible for a game to be delayed a ton, and then still really suck.

Delay doesn't equal good. DN: Forever and Aliens: Colonial Marines made that clear.

suck is forever

Why is the consumer just expected to roll over and take it when a game sucks instead of the responsibility being on the publisher to release updates until the game resembles what was originally advertised? Games aren't on ROM cartridges anymore, you can still improve the game after it's released.

Look, No Man's Sky set the precedent for what you're supposed to do when your game sucks at launch. And we should expect nothing less from game studios with ten times the person-power and money.

The real question is... Can indie games publishers afford the delay of a game?

Counterpoint: Star Citizen.

I'm not being snarky there. If there are no deadlines and unlimited feature creep, you get Star Citizen. Or rather, you never get Star Citizen except as a janky hyper-monetized pre-alpha.

I mean, Miyamoto said pretty much the same thing long ago. Glad to see Gaben being on the same wavelength.

Me disappoint you long time

Game developers seem to be very afraid to change core features or the story of the game in a major way (even if the actual work would not be too extensive) after release. But there are enough examples where games improved a lot after release.

Sure, the initial impression of the game might be ruined, but that is more a consequence for the producers that most often where responsible for the rushed release, than for the gamers or developers, of the game is fixed afterwards.

“Suck is forever”

That’s some Gen X Yoda shit.

Joke on him, often game gets delayed under this exact pretext and it suck anyway.

While this was true in a pre-Steam world, it hasn't been true for a while.

See Terraria (which didn't suck, but was lackluster compared to how the game is now), No Man's Sky, Cyberpunk 2077.

Some basic things to note, that may or may not be obvious.

• Producers and shareholders are the ones still thinking gaming audience can be milked at the same rate as the past few decades.

• The alternative to current model of game launch + DLCs/features added over the year is that the game is not launched at all until ready and full featured.

• Gamer audience is privileged, consumerist and impatient. And most of the audience is either autistic or neurodivergent with impulsive and/or compulsive disorders, and have unstable hyperfocus and obsession issues.

Edit: "most" people are not but a significant number of people are. That was overestimated. Our generation's psychological patterns differ from the ones before that did not play these modern and/or 3D games.

Makes me think of old school Blizzard. Rest in peace.

I always thought that Miyamoto quote was real too!

Fair point, even with upgrades a la Cyberpunk 2077, the lost sales out of the gate are unlikely to be made up a year and a half later when they release the game they should have released in the first place

Is this Half-life 3 confirmed then?

Game delays are okay, but let's maybe have a conversation about why valve is incapable of producing the kind of content it used to. Half-life 3 isn't "delayed", it's not happening because of internal reasons.

Sick of hearing about this this loser, go away already

Such a great quote.