Why Companies Don't Fix Bugs

Summary

A few years ago, a lone programmer named t0st did something extraordinary: he fixed an 8-year-old bug in GTA Online that had been driving players crazy. The bug? Painfully long load times, sometimes up to 20 minutes. While the single-player mode loaded in seconds. His solution was elegant: a 13-line code tweak that cut load times by 70%. Rockstar Games, the studio behind GTA, rewarded him with a $10,000 bounty and patched the game. Problem solved, right? Not quite. The internet erupted with criticism. How could a billion-dollar company miss something so obvious? Were their developers incompetent? As someone who’s worked in tech, I can tell you the answer isn’t that simple. The real story here isn’t about lazy developers or technical incompetence. It’s about how even the simplest fixes get lost in the labyrinth of corporate priorities. Let me paint you a picture of what likely happened behind the scenes. The Lifecycle of a Bug Imagine this conversation happening at Rockstar (or any big tech company, really): Year 1 Dev 1: “Hey, I think we can improve load times by fixing how we parse JSON. It’s a quick win.” Dev 2: “Sounds good. Create a ticket so we don’t forget.” Product Manager: “Was this in the requirements? No? Okay, I’ll mark it as tech debt and add it to the backlog.” Year 3 Dev 3: “This JSON bottleneck is still here. Should we prioritize the old ticket?” Product Manager: “We’re focused on the next DLC and microtransactions this quarter. Maybe next year.” Year 6 Product Manager: “This ticket’s from 2013. Is it still relevant?” Dev 35: “No clue. The codebase has been rewritten twice. Probably not. Let’s archive it.” Year 8 Dev N: “Hey, I think we can cut load times by fixing how we parse JSON...” And so the cycle continues. Why Good Bugs Go Unfixed This isn’t just a Rockstar problem. It’s a big company problem. Here’s why even obvious bugs like this one slip through the cracks: The Tyranny of “Requirements” In large organizations, everything revolves around the...