User blog comment:JackFrost23/R* Are Dicks/@comment-3455248-20110623040952

As far as the bugs and glitches - if the developers were still around I agree it would have helped ... somewhat. But they would not be keeping 40 developers (= $millions of salary) working full time on RDR. They would have been on some other project with limited time for RDR in any case.

I think the effort they put into maintenance depends on the future they see in the game. If they're planning an RDR3, or at least a continuation of significant Redemption DLCs, then maintenance would be a higher priority, both as part of the framework for the next game as well as a way of keeping customer interest high. If the series won't be continuing, then all their maintenance money would be buying is good will (which is a significant thing, but hard to quantify in a budget).

Unfortunately, making a $100 million game that takes six(?) years to complete is such a huge gamble to begin with that it's hard to accurately budget for the "long tail" of the project, much less set concrete plans for for the future of the game.