[hexatin]

Valve seems to have an interesting solution of their own to this problem, which is just to not tell anyone that they’re working on a game until it’s basically done. This removes the pressure on them to meet a certain deadline, but it doesn’t look very good from a public perspective. But it might be better in some cases than a Star Citizen scenario.

[bogwog]

Valve barely ever releases anything. This means that players don't get shitty rushed games, but it also means that players get no games and the company gets no money. That's only realistic for a company like Valve, which earns in a minute what Star Citizen earns in a year.

A company/studio that actually needs to make games to survive can't afford to be perfectionists.

[tsimionescu]

Before Half-Life: Alyx last year, Valve hadn't released a major game since Dota 2 in 2013. I wouldn't call that a solved problem.

[Asooka]

Valve also basically have the entire PC gaming industry pay them rent. They could just work on Steam for the next 100 years and not want for money. That creates some pretty bad incentives, which coupled with their very informal management style can lead to the current situation. If rumours are to be believed, something is being done internally to address the problem and turn them back into a videogame company. I would personally love to see the Steam team split off into a completely separate entity, but I can see why that won't happen. In short, Valve's premiere product is a software delivery platform, and they sometimes spend some money to make a videogame. Sometimes that videogame even gets released.

[noduerme]

I believe this is the way to go. There's a cycle that sets in once you set expectations and open a project up for public feedback. In the SC case, it means you're never finished; in the CD Projekt case it means no one is satisfied when you ship. It's not that a game can't live up to expectations, it's that the goalposts move further the longer it is left to the public imagination. tl;dr I think fan service is what kills projects. In the end, it isn't what makes or breaks a great game. But the temptation to hype what you're working on - and raise money from pre-sales, which requires constant fan pleasing - is hard to resist.