Basically:
- One side is arguing that SR7 has a difficult job in doing any updates at all given the mess that the 'code' of the game is in.
- The other side is pointing out that he's got ~$15K per month coming in (net of Patreon fees) and should employ an actual coder to finish the rebuild in parallel so they don't soend two months debugging a monthly update.
- First side then retorts that he tried that and the guy f'ed about and didn't deliver.
- Other side then retorts that there's no shortage of people who can code something this basic and he should get someone else in. Anyone who has such a mess of legacy code and doesn't have a parallel project to replace it is crazy.
Am I missing anything?
Taxes, for one. They also have to be payed from the Patreon money iirc.
And, more seriously: one bad experience can easily lead to people avoiding to retry something. Another issue could be to find a coder that fits in. Sure, there might be many coders around, but who knows how many of htem would really fit in. Next point: The coder would have to be interested in working on the project and actually stay the whole duration... switching coders over and over would mean different styles of coding and the next coder needing to familiarize with unknown, to him, code. And that isn't easy.
Another question however: If it's so easy and basic to code... why don't people take SR's art, iirc he basically said "it's free to use unless you sell it" or something.... and used it to make their own version? Iirc there is/was a SU mod or spinoff that was "well coded". I don't think that is still around, is it? It's apparently not as easy...
Would it be better if they had another reliable coder (or two, so that SR could just concentrate on drawing instead of coding...) who'd do a rebuild of the game, maybe also swapping the engines completely? Yes, undoubtably so. But GSG ain't the first time were people decided to hold off on something after the first time blew up in their face.
Also, again: considering how many people here constantly go on about how easy that is, I have to assume that they are awesome coders... so why not offer to help, considering the main issue seems to be the time between releases... could it be because they aren't coders? Or because they'd then be part of the problem, rather than be able to sit on the sidenlines...