Why do video games with cut content still have the files in the games? Wouldn’t it make more sense to either delete them, or just leave them in final game?
Why do video games with cut content still have the files in the games? Wouldn’t it make more sense to either delete them, or just leave them in final game?
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Hate I found this question so early as now I am curious myself
Because then they would have to pay someone to do it.
But ya games are big. Theres lots of people working on them. It’s like ADHD but a product you sell to people. No one knows wtf is going on or if they even scrapped the idea they started on because now they are working on something else for the game.
Because there might be one really random obscure bit of code that runs based off one of those “unused” files, and deleting it would destroy the game
Or, yk, lazyness
often its because these files are packaged together and the atleast for digitial releases it would be rather straining on your user’s bandwidth(which may be limited) to force them to redownload a whole new package for hat’s effectively supposed ot be a size reduction on afile that is otherwise not harmful
we are at a point where storage is plentiful but bandwidth is not assured to be.
Same reason you have junk DNA. If it doesn’t harm anyone, it’s fine to keep it around. It’s more work to make sure everything that’s unused is actually deleted. But the moment you delete something useful, the game can break.
That said, content that can easily and safely be cut, usually is cut. You just don’t see it because.. it was cut.
Could be asset reuse, could be code related – take these extras out & it breaks something else and with 0 spare Dev time leaving them in is better than spending code time on fixing the removal, could be that it was intended to be a free update or DLC (or expansion pack in the time before dlc) that was never activated.
Games are mostly made up of millions of lines of code, in a very fast-paced environment, and by lots of people. Sometimes, a change that seems as simple as removing a file might have a huge knock-on effect to other parts of the game. There may be code that expects a particular number of files, or files in a certain location, or accesses data at a particular memory offset; all of which would be “broken” if a file was removed.
Basically, developers usually don’t change/remove things unless they absolutely have to for fear of breaking something.
The files are small enough that it doesn’t impact storage much
They want to keep it for a future DLC or expansion
They’re test or placeholders they couldn’t be bothered to delete
Same reason you have a bunch of junk in your house.
If the game works, then deleting stuff might make it stop working.
Sure, it’s unused stuff. Probably. And it would be fine to delete it. Probably.
Or you can just ship it.
Tonne of reasons:
And more!
Because you add something to the game, like a new level. But then it may be not as fun as you hoped, or you run out of time and decide to cut it.
But you already made a chair for that level, and that chair was reused (with different color) in another level that will be shipped. But the table was not reused and used in only one level.
Now, are you SURE that removing that unfinished level and assets will DEFINITELY not break the working level? Are you SURE that nothing in the whole game uses anything from that level? Do you have time to test that? When you already have 1000 bugs in backlog? And the release date is in marketing posters? Maybe additional gigabyte of assets in a 100 GB game is not something that is so important against risking breaking the game right before release?
If you have good build pipelines, mature engine, good code structure and discipline, then it’s easy to cut content. But most games aren’t that.
All the other answers are valid. And possibly correct. But I like to think there is another reason.
It be a damn shame if they weren’t. Someone worked hard to make those unused files. If they are deployed at least some modder might make use of them.
It might even be a good marketing stunt. Consider Hot Coffee. That little bit of leftover code probably helped cement GTA into the halls of legendary games.
There are two reasons here:
1.) there is a practice in programming referred to as “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it./ If it works, don’t touch it.” This means if something exists in a package (of programs) and it is not causing any issues it is left there because doing something to “clean up” the mess will eat more time and effort than what the team’s budget would allow, and making the changes may affect the existing code negatively — which results in re-test and re-coding to fix it.
2.) the development team thinks these files can be used in the future when they patch the software for future updates, so they keep them in so their next patches would be smaller in size (since some files are already deployed).