Why Video Games Have Launch Problems

This article completely ignores that single player, mostly-offline games have exactly the same launch problems.

The reason games have these launch problems is that publishers got away with it for too long. Having users who already paid for the game do the beta testing is much, much cheaper and more efficient than in-house testing.

I sincerely hope that steam's move to grant refunds (http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds) will sort this out. "Oops, 30% of our pre-alpha-published-as-final purchasers want their money back". Have one or two publishers file for bankruptcy over that and it might be a very valuable, albeit painful, lesson for the industry.

It doesn't ignore it, it's just a completely different issue. General awfulness of a game on a tight budget and deadline has little to do with backend scalability issues on large budget games...

I've seen two main reasons for this in my experience. The games industry is one where a 'chase the shiny' business mentality requires developers to frequently change their target platforms, development stacks, and desired core competencies for each project. Many of us are jacks of all trades, with little expertise in things like keeping a service standing under incredible load. I've seen developers go into this problem with a 'how bad can it be' mentality, and it never ever ends well.

The other side of things is where you actually have a team capable of delivering a solid, scaling backend service, who simply do not get the chance to do so because of poor production planning and overzealous development schedules handed down from on high. This is not an industry where the engineers get to define the development schedule or feature set. They can influence both, but on many teams the managers expect that crunch will solve all of their scheduling mistakes.

I think you guys at PlayFab are in a great space as this is work that is very difficult to pull off right and many, many developers will (smartly) choose to pay for a solution instead of rolling their own.

Which is why steam refunds make so much sense - as it's all digital, buying and refunding are the same couple of easy button clicks for the consumer. If this where to happen on the mobile app market it would be a game changer (because of the 100x more indie games there).

The issue Augustine raises is why games have launch problems. He pins the blame on backend issues and ignores other issues. (I think primarily he was just using failed launches as a vehicle to talk about gaming backends, but nonetheless he argued that backends were the primary cause of failed launches.)

Another issue the article failed to address is that many games fail catastrophically when servers cannot be contacted even for online features that are not necessary for core gameplay; or for DRM purposes. This is a flaw in the front end that contributes to the same problem.

All those "causes" are primarily fueled by the following:

"It's a major threat to their business. So why does it keep happening?"

This here should have clued him into the larger context. It isn't a major threat to their business. Getting a refund on a videogame is becoming easier, but has historically been difficult. Try returning an opened copy of a game to any retailer. Even explaining that it is the game itself that is broken does not always result in an accepted return.

The consumer, rather than the business, is bearing the cost of a failed launch.

So Augustine is correct in a technical sense regarding how backend issues contribute to failed launches. However, it is the market as a whole that is the primary driver behind failed launches. There is little incentive to fix the failed launches regardless of the technical means by which they occur.