What I do not understand about this take is that they can already collect all of this data, today. They don’t need to federate with the rest of the Fediverse to scrape basically all of the data they want. The only problematic thing they’d need an instance for is linking votes to users - which is something they could do just by spinning up a Lemmy instance. And they probably shouldn’t be able to, Lemmy should try to figure out a way to anonymize votes.

Threads joining the Fediverse does not significantly increase their ability to collect data about existing Fediverse denizens.

They already can access all if your data in the fediverse. They don’t need their own platform to do that.

Valheim took 4 years to make.

I work in gamedev. Even with simple graphics, making a successful game generally takes a lot of time to make. It’s not just graphics. Design, writing, QA, art, console compliance, and a huge amount of engineering effort especially in multiplayer games. It takes time to get right. And we’ve all seen what happens when “AAA” games are released before they’re ready just because a bean counter said they had to.

The blockbuster hits with simple graphics that a solo dev made in a few months are the exception, not the rule.