I'm particularly thinking about the development history of Duke Nukem Forever...

True, but this developer has done this before. Theres currently no reason not to have faith in them.

I recently launched a business as a solo dev / founder. It was agonizing trying to get all the last details done and be happy enough to finally say, this is what I'm going to release.

I could have gone on forever if I'd let myself. Oh they need this, oh they need that! This other thing can be better!

Now that it's out, that pressure is gone, and I can just do smaller updates now which are focused more heavily on the feedback I'm getting from customers.

I probably could have released 3-4 months earlier had I been better about it.

Publishers are considering return on investment. In a model where they are providing the game budget to the studio, every delay means more money out of their pocket. Case by case it might be worth it, but just allowing developers to infinitely say it's "almost ready, just one more delay" isn't reasonable.

I know from the hard core gamer audience that discusses this stuff online there is often this vibe that nothing should be cut from games. People look at various interesting cut content and lament it for not getting enough time, but there is always going to be cut content.

If there isn't a lead on the development team putting their foot down to control the scope and focus the team, and a similar push for focus by a publisher you get a meandering unfocused project that goes over budget.

In the solo/small amateur team dev, self-publishing model that ROI pressure isn't coming externally from a separate publisher. It is means solo devs are making their first games usually on a budget of nothing, as a side project to their day jobs. In some cases like with Concerned Ape it turns out great. In many cases development comes out tediously slowly, like with Death Trash. In innumerable cases the games just die.

In cases like Wasteland 2 it was a full professional team working full time using crowdfunding. An alternate model, but still limited by budget pressure. There was no publisher to pay back, but when the crowd funding money was gone, it was gone. That game did come out and it was enjoyable, but clearly it wasn't "done when it's done" levels of polish by the team since they used the profits from the game to release a "Director's Cut" which was a whole polishing pass on the game they simply couldn't afford the first time.

Vaporware is an entirely different animal.

A few people seem to think I meant a game like Stardew or Chocolateir should take several years because that’s how long they take with one person. Obviously if you have a studio of people, even a small studio like early Mojang, you can get more work done much more quickly.

Obviously, I think, I mean the publisher should defer to the developers regarding how long work would take to complete, not the other way around. And no one should listen to the demands of shareholders or anyone else that is completely departed from the production process.

And he's working on 1.7

Presumably if he uses the same or similar engine then much of the groundwork is already done, so I would imagine it wouldn't take quite as long. But I could be wrong.

Yes?

Devs need to think about modding from the very beginning.

It's not targeted for 2030, it's a case of "it's ready when it's ready"