[fyrabanks]

There were 20 people working on this game when they started development. Total. I think they expanded to a little over 100. This isn't some huge game studio that has time to do optimization.

GTA5 had well over 1000 people on its team.

[onli]

Not sure GTA 5 is the right example to list here. Remember https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times.... At least for a while they didn't optimize at all.

[reactordev]

Size of team has no bearing in this argument. Saying they were small so they get a pass at preventing obscene download sizes is like saying “Napster was created by one man, surely he shouldn’t be accountable” but he was.

When making a game, once you have something playable, is to figure out how to package it. This is included in that effort. Determining which assets to compress, package, and ship. Sometimes this is done by the engine. Sometimes this is done by the art director.

[WheatMillington]

Amount of resources absolutely has a bearing on how resources can be allocated.

[reactordev]

This isn’t a resourcing issue. It’s a lack of knowledge and skipped a step issue.

When I did this. My small team took a whole sprint to make sure that assets were packed. That tilemaps were made. That audio files were present and we did an audit to make sure nothing extra was packaged on disk. Today, because of digital stores and just releasing zip files, no one cares what they ship and often you can see it if you investigate the files of any Unity or Unreal engine game. Just throw it all over the fence.