I can agree that higher-ups can make very stupid decision that makes development harder.
However, when a game like GZ is released with a collectors edition, advertising itself as a finished product that will improve “over time”, is it unreasonable to ask them to fix long time bugs? Especially when they ask for more money through DLC packs during that time. Sure, I understand that no game will truly be bugfree. Not everything can be fixed, but why should a well documented bug just be ignored? Why would it require too much time to fix? That’s what I don’t understand. Just in a few months, GZ will be 6 years old. I struggle to remember a time when GZ didn’t have performance issues one way or another.
If it’s early access then it’s fine if the game isn’t well optimized at first. But recently the amount of games coming out broken or badly ported is increasing. No Man Sky is probably the prime example and they managed to rebuild trust and earn it’s positive reviews. Should Generation Zero be excused too? I dont think so. Yes, I know the EULA is like “oh we aren’t obligated to fix or maintain the game” but I’m not exactly gonna recommend a studio’s products if the games barely work. With how Second Extinction turned out, I do not want to give SR more of my money. The so called love letter they released, was a love letter to themselves not the fans. And I didn’t even play SE, because I wanted to wait for it’s 1.0 release.
Yes I know that SE isn’t from the same team as GZ, but as a company that doesn’t give them a free pass. If anything that should have shown that maybe more resources should be placed into GZ and prove that they could finish a game. The more a company gets a free pass from doing shady stuff, the more it’s gonna happen. To me personally the flashlight FOV bug represents more of the visual issues, that I think is important too like game performance. Things like ground textures bugging out, floating fences, the render distance and other things that Burgerplayer reported etc etc. If things like that are too hard to fix, takes too much time. Then for transparency’s sakes there should be a proper reason given. Especially now that when GZ has had it’s final update.