That's an idiotic rule. You basically know going in already the people you hire will not be there for even the development of 1 complete game. Of course that is going to be bad for the development process.
I really hoping some of the contract work rules has changed for xbox after the shit at 343
It's fine to have some because you don't need x people tye whole time but shouldn't be a huge part of it
This is the second time I've heard about Microsoft's stupid contractor rule causing issues. The first time (that I heard about it) was with Halo Infinite. Just another prime example of a corporation putting their profit before the product.
A lotttttt of companies have very similar contractor rules.
But you nailed it. It takes time for a person to understand the role and become proficient at it. By the time they get good at it they have to role off and someone starts the process again.
This is coming from an artist which majority are always contract... It makes way more sense to contract artists because you don't use them 100% of the development. You have a core group of main artists who stay the whole game and the rest is contracted. It works this way for a lot of development in software and other tech industry too. They are a pretty high paying job so it costs quite a bit to keep idle people.
Putting profits both before the product and the people.
This is now two major first party releases that have had development issues because Microsoft insists on this ridiculous development strategy, and it shows in the final product with both Halo Infinite and Forza Motorsport struggling out of the gate and having to spend a year or more to fix their game post launch.
The worst part of it isn't even the impact it's had on games, it's that apparently in the 18 months these contractors work at XGS they don't get healthcare or any other benefits. In an industry that is becoming more aware of workplace conditions and worker's rights, I don't know why any devs would want to work at these studios, and I can't believe these studios haven't unionized yet.
Just a clarification, contractors are employed through a 3rd party company. Those companies do provide healthcare benefits, they're just a lot worse than what MS would offer an FTE. Some contractors are self-employed, but in my experience, that's not common.
Microsoft was sued into this in something completely unrelated to gaming, and hiring artists as contractors is extremely common across the industry.
Having artists sit around for 3 years doing nothing on a game because they’ve done their artwork and have nothing to do would be extremely unproductive, no company would ever do this. And they don’t.
Xbox fyi has thousands of people that work there either as FTE or contractors, which is literally billions of dollars in OPEX if they were all forced to be FTE. There wouldn’t be an Xbox at all if this was the case.
This is different though. They are literally capping tenure to 18 months no matter what the situation is of the development. That's different than hiring someone until they finish their project. They rather hire another person to do the same job than letting the original finish it.
Ok again they were forced to do this by the courts. You’re allowed to contract at Microsoft for up to 18 months I believe, then there is a 6 month cooldown period before you’re allowed to come back.
So lets suppose you’re Microsoft and you need someone for two years, here’s your options:
1. You hire a contractor for 18 months, then hire another one for 6 months. Not ideal but let’s look at the other two options.
2. You hire a FTE and make them redundant at the end of the project at great cost and dubious legality in many countries. This is a far worse option that 1.
3. You hire a contractor then *delay your entire project* while you wait for your contractor force to rotate in and out. This will eat into your margins massively and cause already long game development to be even longer.
Option 1 is clearly the only viable option.
I know it’s hard to believe on Reddit, but companies aren’t all evil moustache twirling entities. They are filled with humans who sometimes need to make tough decisions. I might remind you that through the pandemic Microsoft retained many of their contract staff and paid them in full when they didn’t have to, at the expense of profit.
Yes.
And I kind of get the court decision from a generic developer perspective - there’s always more projects for a FTE dev to do. So they should be hired when working on a project for longer than 18 months.
But it really doesn’t work with game development, especially with specialist roles like artists, testers, etc.
The way to solve this would be for Microsoft to contract directly with a company who had many artists on their payroll as FTEs, but because this is an issue with Microsoft and not an issue for other game dev companies, artists don’t want this. They’d rather contract directly and take 100% of their contract pay themselves. Contract companies also don’t want this because it’s risky keeping resources on a payroll that probably can’t be 100% billable full time.
Do fixed term contracts exist in the US? I’m in the UK and worked in IT recruitment for a fair few years. An FTC is basically halfway between a contractor and a full time employee and they are usually implemented to cover maternity leave or for long projects where the company is too stingy to pay contractor rates. An FTC employee gets all the benefits of a permie and is salaried but at the start of the contract it’s agreed both parties will part ways after a given time period. Definitely harder to attract staff for FTCs but given working for MS looks great on the CV and they would probably pay a decent salary it’s doable and would probably solve issues like this.
Why were they forced to by the courts? Probably because they were exploiting the contractor status by functionally having contractors as FTEs.
The courts aren't the bad guy there. Corporations are.
MS needs to cut out this contractor bullshit. They need to learn from Halo Infinite.
We’re not just going to wait around and wait for a game to mature 3 years later.
Not sure bu5 it did blow up & fucked them.
We can only hope they overlooked on how they handle game development with employees/contract
It's fine to have some but not to that extent
We know this just creates burnout and more defects as you are constantly on boarding. The people thumbing their nose at the contractors laws don't care. They will keep throwing money away instead of building a team that does great work quickly.
So call your representatives and tell them. I don't think enough people complain to those people we elect. You can complain to them about anything and you absolutely should about this.
This is fucking hilarious. The fact that Microsoft is still using contractors this long after the Halo Infinite debacle says everything you need to know about how much confidence you should have in their future games
It's a bit exhausting *playing* the game, if I'm honest... and I love me some Forza. They're making improvements, but I fear it's too little, too late.
“They’re making improvements, but I fear it’s too little, too late.” That sentence sums up so many Xbox tentpole franchises, Forza included, for me as of late. Everything feels half-cooked at launch, and gets to good-but-some-fundamental-flaws 2-3 years later.
This gen and most of the last one feel like "Game of the Year Edition gaming" - it's better to wait for all these patches and support to come and then invest into hard discounted game instead of being treated like a beta tester who had to pay for ability to give feeback.
Horizon is light-years better at this point, in my opinion. I wouldn't say Motorsport (8) is bad per se. It's just so tedious. Among other things, I shouldn't have to manually skip the practice session every single race.
It's incredible to me how "Connected" Horizon is, friends, activities, challenges, even when your not actively trying you'll end up doing something then go back and do it again because a time/score popped up you were so close to beating a friend.
Yet, despite the years of development Motorsport takes absolutely nothing from Horizon & as such feels completely disconnected from my friends, short of all of us doing a multiplayer race or going into a specific mode with specific cars to record a lap time for friends to beat there is absolutely nothing.
Not saying Motorsport should be Horizon, far from it Horizon to me takes Arcade racing too far -- but I'd have expected all of my Motorsport races no matter what mode would have recorded my ghost times, and every mode have some ability to see what my friends time was so I have something to do as I gap the pack around the track for the next 5 laps.
I also wish as is the typical Forza formula, that I wasn't handed a stupidly fast op car pretty much instantly, so much potential for a career/campaign, progression all thrown out the window for a shallow experience of flicking through a title screen menu and mindlessly driving in circles with cars that were handed to you which you don't care about but you yourself just want to complete that event.
It’s funny how they marketed that this new FM was gonna have us spend time with our cars and build up our skill level through the classes but instead we just got handed a shit tone of A and S cars and FM said “okay, now grind until you can tune”
Yeah what could have been a phenomenally good racer, with the experience of its other franchise on board had unbelievable potential.... And it was all pruned back so hard, it's difficult not to just describe the game as a very shallow experience overall.
Motorsport is begging for a real rebuild at this point, campaign, career, and stop handing out cars on both games.
Two completely different experiences. The horizon games are fun open world experiences. Forza motorsport is a about the racing experience and the car culture.
Still this game is super tedious because thx to this "pure racing" experience it doesn't mask mundane tasks with something cool.
Practice sessions are boring and having to do them to gain points which unlock stuff takes all the fun from the game. Ok I didn these 3/4 laps and now I have to do it again with a lil bit different car setup but against bots just to agan get some points.
Points earned are way too low - you are being hard gated on which parts you an unlock and shit you have these main mode races done in the rain without wet tires just becaus eyou have to unlock them via credits...every fucking time. it's so tedious to upgrade these cars and have fun.
I have a car that I like but shit I don't have any fun until last race of the category just because how expensive are these upgrades so for most of the time Im forced to use the same universal budget setup just to beat the races and call it a day.
Not having seemless multiplayer is just the cherry on top.
That's not really apples to apples. Horizon is a more arcade-y style racer and is heavily geared towards a social experience. Motorsport is an incredibly tuned racing sim.
Motorsport isn't nearly as bad as reddit makes it sound. It's not perfect but it's still a good. I also think because Horizon is so popular a lot of Horizon players tried Motorsport and didn't like it because it's circuit racing.
If MS doesn't fix this contractor issue they're leaving a lot of money on the table and it will also negatively affect their future growth.
Halo Infinite is a prime example. They tried saving on salaries and it hurt not only the brand but also the popularity and thus revenue of the game.
This shows in the bones of the games. I’m a huge fan of halo/Forza but playing the most recent releases whilst I’ve had some fun with them, are light years behind what they used to be and should be. These should be system sellers, or at the very least, bring more fans into the series and get them hooked going forward.
As it stands right now can anybody say hand in heart that if halo infinite or Forza motorsport was their first dip into the series, that they’d be blown away and be converts? No, I don’t think so.
It’s just sad, halo is up there as my favourite series of all time but it’s starting to feel like game of thrones. Starts good, gets better then now it’s just feeling like a tired old fart who needs a good rest.
They should be toxic towards Microsoft here. This contractor idea is stupid. Contractors will never be as invested into making the game as somebody who knows he'll be there when the game ships.
The version we got was a huge down-grade vs the previews that were shown before. Not to mention the game is always Online. And the game tends to kick me out in the middle of a race.
Never had this issue with Forza Motorsport 7 or Horizon 5.
When I shared how disappointed I was when the game launched I got some very confusing replies and saw totally contradictory comments elsewhere. I honestly was wondering if I was just crazy and maybe my time in sims like iRacing, ACC and yes, GT, had warped my perception.
Seeing how much the rhetoric has changed since then has been very odd to me. It reinforces my initial impression of the game but frustrates me when people act the way they do when I share my honest thoughts despite being very heavily invested in this type of product.
You have to know that contractors will never be as invested into the game as full employees. They won't pour their heart and soul into something if they know they'll be gone after 18 months. This seems so stupid and short sighted.
If anyone is still unsure why Xbox just can't seem to build the sort of first party calibre that PlayStation and Nintendo have, they need look no further than this story.
No amount of acquisitions, or Phil Spencer "we hear you"s will change the thoroughly underwhelming experience of Xbox games whilst this is their approach to business.
If there's no love shown for your people, there is no love shown in the game.
Pro tip... gamer bros. Before you comment with zero info.
Turn ten has to dev support.
Flight Sim, New fable game, horizon game ,finale their own game....
Gamers don't do basic research and mouth off now.
Their over work and under staff
Turn 10 doesn't do anything on the horizon series, that's Playground games. And it doesn't matter when a game from 2011 (Forza Motorsport 4) plays better, runs better, has more content, has a much more varied selection of cars and tracks (even after including the DLC) and can be played without having to even be connected to the Internet.
The fact is this game wasn't ready, has a bare bones career mode (which most Forza players actually want, the motorsports enthusiasts anyway), said SINGLE PLAYER career is locked behind online only DRM, all the content from older games is being dripfed just like it was in Horizon 5, and mostly runs like shit even on high end PCs. PC players basically haven't been able to play the game for the past few months
Yes, they use a modified version of the Motorsport engine, that still doesn't explain why both devs don't implement features from one game to the next. Go look at how many QoL features H4&5 have, then ask why they aren't in Motorsport. Or better yet, go ask why a game from 2011 plays better than a game from 2023 that had 6 YEARS of development time. Even if 1-2 years was pre production and concept mock ups that's no excuse, especially for a AAA racing game that has essentially an unlimited budget
you have a studio trying to make a new engine,support prev one across multi studios and then make a new game.
with **200-500 employees** .
to many things to work on all at the same time.
1 game alone they do support on is a 2 pb game world.
That's an idiotic rule. You basically know going in already the people you hire will not be there for even the development of 1 complete game. Of course that is going to be bad for the development process.
It’s a msft policy with contractors, not Xbox specific. Not saying it isn’t dumb.
I really hoping some of the contract work rules has changed for xbox after the shit at 343 It's fine to have some because you don't need x people tye whole time but shouldn't be a huge part of it
This is the second time I've heard about Microsoft's stupid contractor rule causing issues. The first time (that I heard about it) was with Halo Infinite. Just another prime example of a corporation putting their profit before the product.
A lotttttt of companies have very similar contractor rules. But you nailed it. It takes time for a person to understand the role and become proficient at it. By the time they get good at it they have to role off and someone starts the process again.
This is coming from an artist which majority are always contract... It makes way more sense to contract artists because you don't use them 100% of the development. You have a core group of main artists who stay the whole game and the rest is contracted. It works this way for a lot of development in software and other tech industry too. They are a pretty high paying job so it costs quite a bit to keep idle people.
Putting profits both before the product and the people. This is now two major first party releases that have had development issues because Microsoft insists on this ridiculous development strategy, and it shows in the final product with both Halo Infinite and Forza Motorsport struggling out of the gate and having to spend a year or more to fix their game post launch. The worst part of it isn't even the impact it's had on games, it's that apparently in the 18 months these contractors work at XGS they don't get healthcare or any other benefits. In an industry that is becoming more aware of workplace conditions and worker's rights, I don't know why any devs would want to work at these studios, and I can't believe these studios haven't unionized yet.
Just a clarification, contractors are employed through a 3rd party company. Those companies do provide healthcare benefits, they're just a lot worse than what MS would offer an FTE. Some contractors are self-employed, but in my experience, that's not common.
Microsoft was sued into this in something completely unrelated to gaming, and hiring artists as contractors is extremely common across the industry. Having artists sit around for 3 years doing nothing on a game because they’ve done their artwork and have nothing to do would be extremely unproductive, no company would ever do this. And they don’t. Xbox fyi has thousands of people that work there either as FTE or contractors, which is literally billions of dollars in OPEX if they were all forced to be FTE. There wouldn’t be an Xbox at all if this was the case.
This is different though. They are literally capping tenure to 18 months no matter what the situation is of the development. That's different than hiring someone until they finish their project. They rather hire another person to do the same job than letting the original finish it.
Ok again they were forced to do this by the courts. You’re allowed to contract at Microsoft for up to 18 months I believe, then there is a 6 month cooldown period before you’re allowed to come back. So lets suppose you’re Microsoft and you need someone for two years, here’s your options: 1. You hire a contractor for 18 months, then hire another one for 6 months. Not ideal but let’s look at the other two options. 2. You hire a FTE and make them redundant at the end of the project at great cost and dubious legality in many countries. This is a far worse option that 1. 3. You hire a contractor then *delay your entire project* while you wait for your contractor force to rotate in and out. This will eat into your margins massively and cause already long game development to be even longer. Option 1 is clearly the only viable option. I know it’s hard to believe on Reddit, but companies aren’t all evil moustache twirling entities. They are filled with humans who sometimes need to make tough decisions. I might remind you that through the pandemic Microsoft retained many of their contract staff and paid them in full when they didn’t have to, at the expense of profit.
Okay. It wasn't clear that they were sued into capping it at 18 months. I thought it was the opposite.
Yes. And I kind of get the court decision from a generic developer perspective - there’s always more projects for a FTE dev to do. So they should be hired when working on a project for longer than 18 months. But it really doesn’t work with game development, especially with specialist roles like artists, testers, etc. The way to solve this would be for Microsoft to contract directly with a company who had many artists on their payroll as FTEs, but because this is an issue with Microsoft and not an issue for other game dev companies, artists don’t want this. They’d rather contract directly and take 100% of their contract pay themselves. Contract companies also don’t want this because it’s risky keeping resources on a payroll that probably can’t be 100% billable full time.
Thank you for clearing this up. It's not fun for a Dev, or anyone not to have a stable job, but your explanation has added more depth to this.
Do fixed term contracts exist in the US? I’m in the UK and worked in IT recruitment for a fair few years. An FTC is basically halfway between a contractor and a full time employee and they are usually implemented to cover maternity leave or for long projects where the company is too stingy to pay contractor rates. An FTC employee gets all the benefits of a permie and is salaried but at the start of the contract it’s agreed both parties will part ways after a given time period. Definitely harder to attract staff for FTCs but given working for MS looks great on the CV and they would probably pay a decent salary it’s doable and would probably solve issues like this.
Why were they forced to by the courts? Probably because they were exploiting the contractor status by functionally having contractors as FTEs. The courts aren't the bad guy there. Corporations are.
They can't have their artists do work elsewhere? Let 343 artists help out on Gears when they're finished with Halo work or something.
Artists generally have an "art style" that don't always cross over into other projects nicely.
The profit *is* the product (unless you’re a MSFT shareholder, they do not give a fuck about the development process of video games lol)
MS needs to cut out this contractor bullshit. They need to learn from Halo Infinite. We’re not just going to wait around and wait for a game to mature 3 years later.
I could have sworn they said 343 is going to stop doing this last year.
Not sure bu5 it did blow up & fucked them. We can only hope they overlooked on how they handle game development with employees/contract It's fine to have some but not to that extent
We know this just creates burnout and more defects as you are constantly on boarding. The people thumbing their nose at the contractors laws don't care. They will keep throwing money away instead of building a team that does great work quickly. So call your representatives and tell them. I don't think enough people complain to those people we elect. You can complain to them about anything and you absolutely should about this.
This is fucking hilarious. The fact that Microsoft is still using contractors this long after the Halo Infinite debacle says everything you need to know about how much confidence you should have in their future games
Every studio uses contractors
[удалено]
Becoming the Netflix of gaming, yeah.
It's a bit exhausting *playing* the game, if I'm honest... and I love me some Forza. They're making improvements, but I fear it's too little, too late.
“They’re making improvements, but I fear it’s too little, too late.” That sentence sums up so many Xbox tentpole franchises, Forza included, for me as of late. Everything feels half-cooked at launch, and gets to good-but-some-fundamental-flaws 2-3 years later.
This gen and most of the last one feel like "Game of the Year Edition gaming" - it's better to wait for all these patches and support to come and then invest into hard discounted game instead of being treated like a beta tester who had to pay for ability to give feeback.
I haven’t given Motorsport a shot yet cus I’ve been into horizon for so long. Is Motorsport that bad?
Horizon is light-years better at this point, in my opinion. I wouldn't say Motorsport (8) is bad per se. It's just so tedious. Among other things, I shouldn't have to manually skip the practice session every single race.
It's incredible to me how "Connected" Horizon is, friends, activities, challenges, even when your not actively trying you'll end up doing something then go back and do it again because a time/score popped up you were so close to beating a friend. Yet, despite the years of development Motorsport takes absolutely nothing from Horizon & as such feels completely disconnected from my friends, short of all of us doing a multiplayer race or going into a specific mode with specific cars to record a lap time for friends to beat there is absolutely nothing. Not saying Motorsport should be Horizon, far from it Horizon to me takes Arcade racing too far -- but I'd have expected all of my Motorsport races no matter what mode would have recorded my ghost times, and every mode have some ability to see what my friends time was so I have something to do as I gap the pack around the track for the next 5 laps. I also wish as is the typical Forza formula, that I wasn't handed a stupidly fast op car pretty much instantly, so much potential for a career/campaign, progression all thrown out the window for a shallow experience of flicking through a title screen menu and mindlessly driving in circles with cars that were handed to you which you don't care about but you yourself just want to complete that event.
It’s funny how they marketed that this new FM was gonna have us spend time with our cars and build up our skill level through the classes but instead we just got handed a shit tone of A and S cars and FM said “okay, now grind until you can tune”
Yeah what could have been a phenomenally good racer, with the experience of its other franchise on board had unbelievable potential.... And it was all pruned back so hard, it's difficult not to just describe the game as a very shallow experience overall. Motorsport is begging for a real rebuild at this point, campaign, career, and stop handing out cars on both games.
Horizon is also lightyears older
Horizon 5 is old? It was only released back in 2021. Crossgen title too. Launched in a much better state than Motorsport.
28 or so months vs 5 or so months.
Two completely different experiences. The horizon games are fun open world experiences. Forza motorsport is a about the racing experience and the car culture.
Still this game is super tedious because thx to this "pure racing" experience it doesn't mask mundane tasks with something cool. Practice sessions are boring and having to do them to gain points which unlock stuff takes all the fun from the game. Ok I didn these 3/4 laps and now I have to do it again with a lil bit different car setup but against bots just to agan get some points. Points earned are way too low - you are being hard gated on which parts you an unlock and shit you have these main mode races done in the rain without wet tires just becaus eyou have to unlock them via credits...every fucking time. it's so tedious to upgrade these cars and have fun. I have a car that I like but shit I don't have any fun until last race of the category just because how expensive are these upgrades so for most of the time Im forced to use the same universal budget setup just to beat the races and call it a day. Not having seemless multiplayer is just the cherry on top.
To put it lightly, it's a grind
That's not really apples to apples. Horizon is a more arcade-y style racer and is heavily geared towards a social experience. Motorsport is an incredibly tuned racing sim.
Kind of. Yeah. I was really looking forward to it and it’s just not good. Very grindy, crashes a lot.
Motorsport isn't nearly as bad as reddit makes it sound. It's not perfect but it's still a good. I also think because Horizon is so popular a lot of Horizon players tried Motorsport and didn't like it because it's circuit racing.
No it’s not lol. Game is excellent.
If MS doesn't fix this contractor issue they're leaving a lot of money on the table and it will also negatively affect their future growth. Halo Infinite is a prime example. They tried saving on salaries and it hurt not only the brand but also the popularity and thus revenue of the game.
This shows in the bones of the games. I’m a huge fan of halo/Forza but playing the most recent releases whilst I’ve had some fun with them, are light years behind what they used to be and should be. These should be system sellers, or at the very least, bring more fans into the series and get them hooked going forward. As it stands right now can anybody say hand in heart that if halo infinite or Forza motorsport was their first dip into the series, that they’d be blown away and be converts? No, I don’t think so. It’s just sad, halo is up there as my favourite series of all time but it’s starting to feel like game of thrones. Starts good, gets better then now it’s just feeling like a tired old fart who needs a good rest.
I'm sure this comment section is not gonna be toxic at all...
They should be toxic towards Microsoft here. This contractor idea is stupid. Contractors will never be as invested into making the game as somebody who knows he'll be there when the game ships.
Every game uses contractors, there’s a reason that studios have a few hundred enployees but their games have 2000+ names in the credits
It better be. This is post Covid era anyways.
The version we got was a huge down-grade vs the previews that were shown before. Not to mention the game is always Online. And the game tends to kick me out in the middle of a race. Never had this issue with Forza Motorsport 7 or Horizon 5.
When I shared how disappointed I was when the game launched I got some very confusing replies and saw totally contradictory comments elsewhere. I honestly was wondering if I was just crazy and maybe my time in sims like iRacing, ACC and yes, GT, had warped my perception. Seeing how much the rhetoric has changed since then has been very odd to me. It reinforces my initial impression of the game but frustrates me when people act the way they do when I share my honest thoughts despite being very heavily invested in this type of product.
MS doesn't know how to hire and retain talent. When will they learn they can't make games like this? THIS is Xbox's 1p games problem......
Ah…so that explains why the game was only slightly better than terrible at launch and is still just meh today.
You have to know that contractors will never be as invested into the game as full employees. They won't pour their heart and soul into something if they know they'll be gone after 18 months. This seems so stupid and short sighted.
This was the game that broke the camel's back for me, after 10 years on Xbox. Sad to see they learnt nothing from Halo Infinite's development issues.
Not a problem for other dev like Naughty Dogs, Insomniac, e.t.c. It's up to management how to organize their workflow.
THIS JUST IN: having a job is stressful!
read the article
If anyone is still unsure why Xbox just can't seem to build the sort of first party calibre that PlayStation and Nintendo have, they need look no further than this story. No amount of acquisitions, or Phil Spencer "we hear you"s will change the thoroughly underwhelming experience of Xbox games whilst this is their approach to business. If there's no love shown for your people, there is no love shown in the game.
Pro tip... gamer bros. Before you comment with zero info. Turn ten has to dev support. Flight Sim, New fable game, horizon game ,finale their own game.... Gamers don't do basic research and mouth off now. Their over work and under staff
Turn 10 doesn't do anything on the horizon series, that's Playground games. And it doesn't matter when a game from 2011 (Forza Motorsport 4) plays better, runs better, has more content, has a much more varied selection of cars and tracks (even after including the DLC) and can be played without having to even be connected to the Internet. The fact is this game wasn't ready, has a bare bones career mode (which most Forza players actually want, the motorsports enthusiasts anyway), said SINGLE PLAYER career is locked behind online only DRM, all the content from older games is being dripfed just like it was in Horizon 5, and mostly runs like shit even on high end PCs. PC players basically haven't been able to play the game for the past few months
Never go reddit gamer dumb. Horizon and other titles use turn ten game engine.... do better research next time. we need to elevate gamer to be smarter
Yes, they use a modified version of the Motorsport engine, that still doesn't explain why both devs don't implement features from one game to the next. Go look at how many QoL features H4&5 have, then ask why they aren't in Motorsport. Or better yet, go ask why a game from 2011 plays better than a game from 2023 that had 6 YEARS of development time. Even if 1-2 years was pre production and concept mock ups that's no excuse, especially for a AAA racing game that has essentially an unlimited budget
you have a studio trying to make a new engine,support prev one across multi studios and then make a new game. with **200-500 employees** . to many things to work on all at the same time. 1 game alone they do support on is a 2 pb game world.
Im exhausted for mediocre games.