"The [Killzone] assets had been backed up to tape at one point... The tapes were stored, uh, offsite, by which I mean, in a shoebox in the cellar of one of our IT support staff members, without a list of contents of any kind."- Guerrilla Games senior programmer Frank Compagner recalls how the studio almost lost the original assets to Killzone on PlayStation 2. While tracking down the source code and assets for the PlayStation 3 remake Killzone HD, Guerrilla Games realized that it had been a bit careless about preserving its older releases. During the last console generation, the studio was just getting on its feet, and Compagner explained that in its naivete, the team wasn't concerned about holding on to old assets once its games shipped. "Like I said, we were young and we used to do things differently back in those days," he added. Luckily, Guerrilla Games was able to recover its assets in the end, but this close call is a good cautionary tale for all game developers out there. You never know when you'll need to refer back to your older work, so you should always make sure you know how to retrieve it.
A shoebox in someone's house is not the best place to keep source code
Guerrilla Games' Frank Compagner recalls how the studio almost lost the original assets for Killzone on PlayStation 2, and provides a good reminder for why developers should hold onto their work.