RAM and SSD shortages have thrown the gaming world into chaos. And, it’s not just affecting the gamers. The developers are also affected by hardware shortages and claim that it has caused a lot of issues in development.
Every year, developers try to push the limits of modern hardware and innovate in games. It’s why you see system requirements of games increasing every year. However, this is done subtly to ensure that players actually have the necessary hardware to run these games smoothly. Additionally, this hardware limit was primarily associated with graphics cards and CPUs, as they are usually expensive to upgrade.
Hence, developers tried to ensure that their games can run on even some old GPUs and CPUs. But nobody ever thought that RAM would also become a part of this.
How These Shortages Are Affecting Development
RAM and SSD were not that expensive to upgrade, hence developers never focused too much on optimizing the game for memory. But with the sudden spike in RAM and SSD prices, they now have to think about this.
Not to mention, the average PC gamer has 16 GB of RAM, which is quickly reaching its limit. But upgrading it is not an easy decision anymore. So, developers have to optimize their games for 16 GB, which is not easy given how detailed and resource-demanding games are becoming.
Of course, this affects all games, and sports games are no exception. If developers are to be stuck on optimizing games for less memory, it limits them from innovating. How can they try out new features and gameplay mechanics if they don’t have the memory requirements to play with?
In a recent interview with The Gamer, Swen Vincke (CEO of Larian Studios, the developers behind Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity) talked about how RAM shortages have caused problems with development.
”Interestingly, another [issue Larian is facing] is really the price of RAM and the price of SSDs, and fuck, man – it’s like, literally, we’ve never had it like this.”
He continued:
It kind of ruins all of your projections that you had about it because normally, you know the curves, and you can protect the hardware. It’s gonna be an interesting one. It means that most likely, we already need to do a lot of optimization work in early access that we didn’t necessarily want to do at that point in time. So it’s challenging, but it’s video games.”
This goes to show that hardware shortages don’t only impact gamers but also developers, console makers, and manufacturers.
