Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning has spoken out about triple-A games and shareholders, suggesting companies (like EA) are releasing games (like Battlefield 4) when they're not finished in order to please investors.
"Fuck that business. I don't want to play with that business, because it was a losing business," Lanning said in a frank interview with VG247. "I'd rather not make games than go fucking be a slave for public companies who care more about their shareholders than they do about their customers."
Lorne then got specific, using Battlefield 4 as an obvious example of a game that wasn't polished enough before it was released: "Why did Battlefield 4 ship? You know that team was crying. You know that team knew that game wasn't ready to go."
"You know that team fucking spent a lot of sleepless nights building that shit out to look as good and play as good, when it was able to be experienced, being played as they were intending it to be played. Someone made a decision that the shareholders are more important than the customer. And we see a lot of that. How do you blow that? How do you take that fucking jewel and ship it with dirt all over it?"
Perhaps having learned from their mistakes with the launch of Battlefield 4, EA and DICE this morning announced that the latest DLC for the game has been delayed on PC while they try to solve some issues with the new content.