/vr/ - Retro Games

Most media production companies would consider losing any scrap of anything they had ever sunk money into producing beyond the pale nowadays, but it's a relatively recent phenomenon. But even in the 00s it would've absolutely been company policy to retain multiple backups of anything worked on. The philosophy in general is that even though backups can seem like an expensive and superfluous expense for a project that will likely never need to be restored - that expense is a tiny fraction of the amount spent on the actual project (and tape backups effectively last forever if stored properly) so even if it keeps a developer from having to re-code fog physics or an artist from having to make new mossy rock textures or whatever, it's completely worth it.

I think the excuse they used was that they deleted the source codes to make room for new projects but I think it's far more likely that whoever was in charge of data management basically had a premature archive of some earlier code and saw that in the backups before approving the deletion of the source code off the working server, and nobody noticed for 10+ years. 99% of lost assets nowadays come from operator error and people who take some kind of shortcut and work outside the system of safety nets. So for example a scenario like, a dev took a hard drive home with them, did a bunch of work on it, and then left it in their car and it got broken into and stolen - a situation like that is actually fairly common for a project based company with braindead employees who think they're too smart to follow the rules.

So for Konami obviously we'll never know what actually happened, but I'd put my money on it was as simple as
>"Can I delete this?"
>"Let me check."
>*sees a folder in the backup log called Silent Hill 2*
>"Yes, you can delete it."