Benoit Beausejour · Chief Technology Officer

I don't do prioritization, but what I can tell you is that most of those issues are filed, they're called out, and they're raised up. But the complexity of some of them requires a specific handling. I've read some stuff over the break where we've hotfixed certain issues. There was, if I remember, a certain exploit that came out for some duping and some people thought it was a beneficial change even though it was a bug. And we fixed it. And people are like, well, why did you fix it when you could fix something else? It's all about capacity to fix. So do we have the right person available for this problem? Some problems require the experts. Our manpower is extremely specialized. And for some of the older systems, it's even worse. I call those the sandworm kind of features where basically, I've called them out before, but ATC, ASOP terminals, hangars, and transit are four of the systems that are always, oh, I'm just going to do a quick change. Never happens. Never a quick change in those systems, right?

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Yeah, I want to jump in here. Uno Mas in Twitch chat is yelling in all capital letters, you are the experts! True. One of the things, if you watch any of our programs over the years, I've been doing this for a decade here now, is that not everybody works on everything. Kian is great at this, doesn't know crap about that. Paul is wonderful at this, would be as lost as I would be tackling this other thing. There are a finite number of experts that are available on any one thing. And like we talked about the last time you were here, the folks who made ATC aren't here anymore. So ATC has been one of those features that had rotted, and there's this terrible Sophie's Choice, and we have a section about how these choices are made here, where it's like, okay, we could take someone like Kian or someone like Paul or whatever and put them on this, but they're going to be on this for five months because they've got to start from scratch. Whereas they could fix 15 or 20 other issues in that same time. And there's this constant calculus of, is that one worth the weight of those 20? And it's not a situation I envy you or anybody else. You said that you don't make the prioritization. You're in these conversations along with everybody else. You mean you don't make them alone. You're not the sole person who gets to decide. Many things are done in a committee because everybody's got their perspective. Everybody's got their priorities. Everybody's got their idea of what they think is the most important. I've been in chats where Chris will say, this is the most important. And Aaron will say, this is the most important. And Jens will say, this is the most important. And you're like, well, no, this is the most important. And we have the same conversation that the backers have, just three weeks earlier, is usually what I say. It's prioritization and also having the right resources and having that right resource available, because sometimes the right person for that is also the right person for this, and they've been in this for three months. And to pull them off of this right now would be devastating to that, because then you get tech debt and that begins to rot. And there are so many times where I've been in meetings or sat in chats and just ground my teeth, because we all know what needs to happen. We all know that that thing needs fixing, but there isn't the resource at the moment to go and do it. And that's at least as frustrating for us as it is for the players, probably more so for the players, if I'm being completely honest.

Benoit Beausejour · Chief Technology Officer

No, but you're right. It's all about having the right people for the right issues at the right time. And historically, if we're being frank, we've been focusing more on the features.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

You've been focusing more on the new stuff.

Benoit Beausejour · Chief Technology Officer

Correct. And I think that what Chris outlined in his letter from the chairman is really the direction we want to go, which is to bring back those experts into helping us fix the things that affect the players day in and day out.