4. There is a hidden industry of secret support teams
Believe it or not, many of your favorite video games are not only developed by the announced studio, but also in collaboration with smaller support teams, often preferring to remain unknown.
As mentioned in a great article on Polygon, for decades there has been a hidden industry of video game development “under a different name,” where unknown smaller studios provide unofficial support to well-known AAA studios.
This often happens because the main studio does not want the public to know that external sources were involved in certain aspects of the development, fearing that it might negatively affect their reputation.
Although this may limit the support studio’s ability to promote their work on a big AAA game, they can benefit in other ways, such as working on competing projects simultaneously without harming any relationships.
In both cases, many consumers are unaware that many major games are secretly enhanced by teams they have never heard of, and some of these teams prefer to remain anonymous.
3. Anti-piracy software often impacts game performance
Since the existence of video games, publishers have naturally sought ways to reduce piracy, and in recent years, this has generally involved implementing anti-tampering and digital rights management (DRM) software in PC games to prevent tampering.
While most games are eventually cracked by piracy groups, there have been significant criticisms recently directed at the popular anti-piracy software Denuvo, due to the noticeable negative impact it has on game performance.
Many games, including Sonic Mania Plus, Tekken 7, Rime, and most recently Doom Eternal, have been noted to experience slowdowns and longer loading times due to the presence of this software compared to pirated versions.
While Denuvo helps reduce revenue loss in the early days or weeks of game release, it has an unwanted side effect of penalizing players who actually purchased the game, as the software occupies the CPU to manage both the game and Denuvo, affecting game performance.
2. Performance capture work may continue until shortly before release
Developing AAA games can easily take more than three years depending on the project nature, so most players might assume that elements like story, voice recording, and performance capture are recorded and locked in the early stages of development.
This should allow the team to focus on improving gameplay, graphics, and possibly adding new systems that do not significantly affect characters or story. But in reality, this is not always the case.
Naughty Dog studio provides an interesting example, where performance capture work for The Last of Us Part II was completed over a year before the game’s release. However, with Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, they were still filming new scenes just three months before its release.
Given the immense complexity involved in even the basic performance capture, this can be extremely surprising and shows that the final stage of “polishing” may involve significant changes even in the last months before release.
1. Cybercriminals use online games for money laundering
While the controversy over including greedy financial transactions in video games, especially those targeting young players, is still ongoing, there has been an additional concern recently, as popular games like Fortnite, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and World of Warcraft are used by cybercriminals and scammers for money laundering.
This is typically achieved by purchasing in-game currencies or items using stolen credit cards, and then selling these currencies to unsuspecting players at discounted prices, allowing them to launder illegally obtained money.
Amid criticisms that major game publishers are not doing enough to protect players, Valve ultimately decided to halt in-game currency trading in CS after their investigations revealed that “most” of the trading on the site came from fraudulent sources.
While Valve represents an exception in the game industry, rampant fraud still prevails significantly in other video game economies, under everyone’s watch.