alt Hacker NewsI'm curious, what's the ratio of:
- deciding to inform the game developer & wait for reply vs not waiting for reply vs just fixing it yourself without informing the developer; and
- if informed: developer actually fixing it vs only saying they would fix it vs no reply whatsoever (not counting automated "thank you for your inquiry" replies, in cases where you don't already have more direct channels to the dev than email)
I've always kind of wondered this because in a way, it's kind of weird that it's fixed for them, at least for new releases / games actively being developed.
(Full disclosure: I'm a game developer myself, with a very high interest in engine plumbing & dev [including graphics], though finding a job for the latter is easier said than done.)
We always try to inform game devs about correctness issues, but generally we can push out a driver fix before the devs can fix things on their side, so that pretty much always happens. Many things can be fixed quickly by app profile (detecting executable name). And we have a pretty good relationship with most game devs and usually get some feedback. Of course, we don't have infinite resources, so bigger game devs get more attention to tiny ones.
I'm not sure what fraction of devs actually fix things on their side, though. Once there's a driver workaround, and we've informed the devs, it's off our plate.
Performance is more of a gray area. We contact devs if there's something we can't work around, of course. And if there's something truly breaking. But for things that aren't exactly bugs, just things that could be improved, and we can improve on our own... well, we'll probably keep that for the competitive advantage.