Battlefield 4 shipped "with dirt all over it" - Lanning

Publishers push incomplete games out of the door to please shareholders - stitching up customers and developers, says Oddworld creator.

"Why did Battlefield 4 ship? You know that team was crying. You know that team knew that game wasn’t ready to go."

Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning believes that publisher’s continue to publish incomplete triple-A games just to please shareholders, undermining the hard work of developers and the experience of paying customers.

“F**k that business. I don’t want to play with that business, because it was a losing business,” he said, in an interview with VG247 published today.

“I’d rather not make games than go f**king be a slave for public companies who care more about their shareholders than they do about their customers.”

He pointed to the online problems of recently released Battlefield 4 as an example that profits are more important than finishing a game for publicly traded companies.

Today, DICE has announced that DLC for Battlefield 4 has been delayed, with no new release date given by the publisher.

“Why did Battlefield 4 ship? You know that team was crying. You know that team knew that game wasn’t ready to go.

“You know that team f**king spent a lot of sleepless nights building that s**t out to look as good and play as good, when it was able to be experienced, being played as they were intending it to be played. Someone made a decision that the shareholders are more important than the customer. And we see a lot of that. How do you blow that? How do you take that f**king jewel and ship it with dirt all over it?”

The full interview with Lanning, in which he discusses building Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty from scratch and developing for the fans, can be read here.