[harrison_clarke]

i think a big part of it is that their audience isn't just other gamedevs, it includes gamers

those gamers often have strong emotional attachments to games/characters that very few people have for google sheets

studios get crazy backlash for nerfs and other changes, so i can see not wanting to attach your name and face to that. in the other direction, i wouldn't want a horde of gamers using my words as evidence that my employer is dogshit, unless that was the goal of my message

[ashoeafoot]

Thats white washing the whole opium den , not to put the industry into a lootbox. Silence just is the appropriate level of shame.

[johnnyanmac]

Yeah it's a bit of both. Last thing gamedevs in industry wants is a bunch of players hounding them over things they 99.9% cant control anyway. That's why any devs that reveal themselves are long gone from an older game, perhaps not even in games anymore.

And yes, the NDAs on a game are bizarrely strict. For B2B stuff like engines and tools, they usually don't care too much what you discuss as long as you don't make a show out of it. For Game studios, you basically cannot say much more other than "I work here" in public unless you're PR.