The gaming industry is rapidly expanding. With over 2.7 billion players worldwide, game development has become increasingly challenging. To meet the ever-changing demands and expectations of players and due to unforeseen hindrances in the development process, game developers may require to delay the release of their game. We conducted an empirical study of 23,485 games on the Steam platform to analyze how often, and which games delayed their release date. We find that delaying a release is common: 48% of the studied games had a delayed initial release. Games delayed their release by a median of 14 days. Games for which a release date range (e.g., "Q1 2019") was specified, rather than a specific date were more likely to release within that range. Across different game genres, the percentage of games that delay release is similar (ranging from 48% to 52%). Finally, games with a delayed release are rated lower than games that release on time, but the difference is negligible.
翻译:游戏行业正在迅速扩大。 全世界有超过27亿玩家,游戏开发变得日益具有挑战性。 为了满足游戏参与者不断变化的需求和期望,并由于开发过程中的意外障碍,游戏开发者可能需要推迟游戏的发行。 我们对蒸汽平台上的23 485场游戏进行了经验研究,以分析游戏的频率,以及哪些游戏推迟发行日期。 我们发现推迟发行很常见: 48% 所研究的游戏的首期首发时间被推迟了。 游戏延缓了14天的中位数。 已经指定了发行日期范围(比如“ Q1 2019 ” ) 的游戏,而不是具体日期更可能在此范围内发行。 在不同的游戏类型中,推迟发行的游戏的百分比相似( 从48%到52% ) 。 最后,延迟发行的游戏被评分低于及时发行的游戏,但差异微乎其微。