We've been tracking this story: Dwarf Fortress, in development for 20 years and possibly the most complex codebase in indie gaming, only accepted version control (i.e., code management tools like Git) in 2023. His reason was deeply personal: "I don't like my code being thrown into a black box."
What this is
Dwarf Fortress is a deep simulation game that Tarn Adams has led solo since 2006, notorious for its extreme complexity — each world consists of hundreds of layers of historical simulation, thousands of inhabitants, and tens of thousands of items, with nested AI behavior trees. Tarn long refused version control because, in his words, he "didn't like code being thrown into a black box without an immediate sense of return."
Only in 2023, just months before the Steam release, did he admit in an interview: "Now I have to scroll through Discord channels, I have to use version control — the workflow has genuinely gotten more complex." A 17-year-old indie title with staggering code volume finally bowed to modern engineering practice.
Industry view
The mainstream reaction skews more admiring than critical. Simon Willison wrote on his blog: "I'm a bit sad they didn't hold out until they were millionaires before caving, but the persistence itself is admirable."
But there is pushback. Some engineering-minded readers point out that 20 years without version control means bug-fix backtracking is nearly impossible — the project ran more on the miracle of single-developer memory than on engineering capability. In other words, this is individual heroism, not a replicable methodology. Apply the same workflow to any collaborative team of more than five people, and it collapses outright.
Impact on regular people
For enterprise IT: A reminder that tool selection is about more than efficiency — it's about friction between personal preference and organizational culture. Forcing new tools doesn't always land; giving key people transition runway is more realistic.
For individual careers: Sticking to a contrarian workflow for 20 years is itself a rare signal — but even rarer is knowing when to abandon it.
For consumer markets: Players paying over a million dollars for the Steam version proves "geek aesthetics" have real commercial space — you don't need to abandon hardcore depth to chase the mainstream.