discussion How long until a game should have an abandoned tag?

[UStinky]

I'll see a few sites slap on an abandoned tag for a game that hasn't been updated in a long time. But if a dev mentions taking a break, how long into this before you think the game should be considered truly abandoned?

 

[Dragonmede]

I would consider a game to be abandoned once you lose contact with the Dev, or the subscribers cancel their subscriptions.
As long as a Dev is discussing or posting updates, and there are subscribers paying monthly it's not really abandoned.
It may be on life support though.

 

[UStinky]

Sounds pretty fair

 

[Dean Wincester]

Personally I'd say 6 months. I appreciate some Devs make games as a hobby in their spare time but I think if they cant produce something, no matter how small, in that time frame then they've either lost interest, their life is too busy for them to create a game or they are just trying to milk money out of those who have some belief in them. Of course I'm not saying this is an 100% rule but for the majority it's what I go by, unless the dev's have earned my trust to believe otherwise.

 

[IFF01]

I wish never but sadly not true. I agree with the reason up top

 

[User_111574]

If the developer has become MIA. There is no news from him on any of the platforms, or he himself has openly stated that he has stopped working on the project. However, if he continues to give signals about the project development process, you can wait a year. As an example, the development of the latest version of Radiant. More than 11 months have passed since the previous update.

 

[Silicon12]

6 months after losing contact with the dev, many forums respect the devs and don't release premium content on their sites, but there have been some cases afaik, about devs being arrested because they produced a loli game and charged for it in a country where loli is illegal, thus releasing any premium content and paid versions for free to the site while considering it lost media

 

[Naugus]

I'd say 6 months, but I've seen a couple instances where a game would go a year without an update only for the dev to pop up outta nowhere with a massive content drop... and on the other hand, I've seen a game get bugfixes on a fairly consistent schedule but only release minuscule amounts of content that don't even warrant booting the game up just to see two more lines of dialogue.

 

[rocketsheep]

I don't like it when games are marked as abandoned when there is actually a chance that they are still under development. Instead of marking games as abandoned when there is no certainty, I would rather see them marked as something like "no recent update" or "slow development". But even with that I would prefer caution. The general idea would be that for unfinished games one normally expects an update at least every 6 months, and if development is slow, then still at least once every 12 months. To allow for delay, I would add 3 months in both cases and tag games as follows:

• "no recent update" after 9 months without an update
• "potentially abandoned" after 15 months without an update, even if the developer occasionally still posts somewhere, and after 9 months without any sign of life from the developer
• "abandoned" after 15 months with no sign of life.

Are some abandoned games picked up by other developers?

I think this almost never happens. But there is a chance of this going on right now with Stray Incubus.

 

[Dario]

I say nine months, but if devs could be more transparent about timeliness, some are rally good btw, we wouldn't have to think about this.

 

[deviator555]

I personally think an "abandoned" tag should only be applied if the dev themselves confirms they will not finish the game. The information that a game hasn't been updated in 6 months or a year or whatever can easily be extracted if you look at the release date of the latest update. I do get the point that warning people about games that have not been updated in a while could be useful, but in my opinion it would make more sense to add a different tag for that.

 

[Redyscom]

It's not a question of time, it's a question of activity.

A developer can go months without updating their game, but if you go to their social media (Patreon, Subscribestar, Twitter, Discord, Pixiv, etc.) and the developer is active and posting progress, then the game isn't abandoned.

For example, we all know that Ecchi Sensei is abandoned because before BlueCat disappeared, all he posted were excuses and messages about how he was working on the game, but he never showed what he was working on or gave dates for upcoming updates. That's a type of inactivity.

 

[Petermax77]

6 months.

 

[jeisjor]

If the dev cannot be truly reached or they just don't respond, then probably 6 or so months. Half a year is a long time to disappear on the internet.

 

[Animazon]

I think it should somehow depends on how often it was updated in the past. If game was regullary updated every 2 months than half of the year without any info would be a good indication of abbandoned. But if game had in the past update every 4 months - half of the yaer would not be enough.

 

[MattShizzle]

I think Fuck95 gives them too long. As long as they keep posting like pictures or other bullshit (even if it's old stuff or not related) on their Patreon, etc they can go a year and a half without an update.

 

[ghostmaster]

Half a year seems to be a norm - it turns update frequency into "once a year" and people easily recognize it as abandonment.
On the other hand there should be some sort of tagging for increasingly small updates, where game is being stretched for years without an end in sight.

 

[pornmustache]

should be 4 tags for dev status imo:

Active - Game is in active development.
Backburner - Deprioritized but still gets some work done on it in spare time.
On-Hold - Developoment paused until further notice.
Canceled/Abandoned - Development has stopped entirely, dev has been unreachable for comment for 3+ months.

 

[User_151364]

I'd struggle to come up with guidelines that apply universally - for example, something like Summertime Saga undergoing a rewrite in another engine is under very active development, but there's no updates while that happens. Developing the game and talking about developing the game are to an extent mutually exclusive in terms of time spent, though incorporating community feedback on direction on those updates seems valuable in keeping the dev more grounded, and in avoiding the community eating them alive due to impatience. It's tough when so often there are very small teams and no set update or post schedule - these are usually not very professional teams, even if they do work very hard. Too much variance to hold everyone to a rigid timeline.

 

[Fri3dChick3n]

imo its 2 or 3 missed update cycles