‘Let us normalize delaying games’: DayZ creator says players ‘have the power’ to tell platform holders delays are okay

The creator of DayZ has asked players to play their part in no longer stigmatizing video game release delays.

Dean Hall’s latest game Icarus was originally launched on PC in 2021 and has received frequent updates since then.

In late January, it was announced that the console version of Icarus would be released on February 26, but just three weeks later it was announced that this has now been moved back to March 26 to give the team time to “polish the gameplay and ensure the best possible launch”.

On Tuesday, Hall launched an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit, inviting players to ask question about Icarus and the survival genre in general, with a specific focus on game delays.

Introducing the session, Hall listed four notable examples of delays on the games his RocketWerkz studios have worked on – the Dangerous Horizons DLC for the PC version of Icarus (which “has been delayed many times since we first announced it”), Stationeers (“has been in Early Access for ten years”), Kitten Space Agency (“we delayed the public build many times to ensure quality”) and now the console version of Icarus.

He then explained that players need to make their voices heard and make it clear that they don’t mind games being delayed, because developers and publishers obsess too much over hitting target release dates.

“Games cost a lot of money to make,” he said. “Timing makes a tremendous difference to the cost of a game, so there can be huge impacts with delays releasing a game. Players want quality and certainty, but it is my belief that developers latch onto this and get ‘target fixation’ about launches.

“Some of this is because of revenue pressures, but much of it is wrapped up in perception. We are here today to break this perception.

“Failure to delay also leads to ‘crunch culture’. So I am here today on a mission – let us normalize delaying games. You as consumers have the power to make it clear to platform holders (Xbox, PlayStation) that delays are okay.”

Elsewhere during the Ask Me Anything session, Hall was asked to give examples of some of the reasons delays happen with games, which are less known by the public.

“I think most delays happen due to a failure to hit quality,” he replied. “And even when devs want to provide quality, they don’t have the money they can spend to hit it. So they try and hide it, or ignore it. This is what happened with the Icarus launch and we paid the price of going to Mixed [reviews on Steam].

“As the studio got more fund security, we tried to break this cycle. But it is hard. We play the game, as a consumer would (no cheating), in the lead up to launch. Then we do ‘go/no-go’ meetings where we discuss if we met the quality bar we wanted.”

Later in the session, Hall addressed a suggestion from one player that delays often “seem more like complaining about a symptom instead of calling out the root cause”.

“This is very true,” Hall replied. “And part of that is because developers tend not to talk with communities – they talk at them via many layers of marketing, lawyers, management and ‘community managers’.

“I think it is really important to be genuine when talking to community. Which means sometimes you have to tell people what they don’t want to hear (e.g. we can’t fix X because we made Y decision early).

“If you can establish that rapport with your players, then it makes it easier to have genuine conversations about delays and why you are doing them – without all the corporate doublespeak. Like ‘we are delaying the game because we felt there wasn’t enough missions’, or ‘there were just too many bugs taking away from the experience’, or ‘the rewards in the missions were just not good enough’ (all true reasons for us delaying stuff).

Icarus is available to pre-order now on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. “Personally – don’t pre-order games, folks,” Hall said, adding: “Commercially – please pre-order games, as it’s the only way PlayStation / Xbox notice us.”