Why Teams Leave Perforce
Perforce works. It's been the game industry standard for decades. So why are teams leaving?
Cost that doesn't scale
Perforce licensing is expensive. But that's just the visible cost. Add up:
- Server hardware and storage
- IT staff to maintain it
- Backup infrastructure
- Time spent troubleshooting
For a 20-person studio, total cost of ownership can run tens of thousands per year. As you grow, it gets worse as licensing doesn't scale linearly with team size.
Complexity as a feature
Perforce is powerful. It's also complicated. Setting up a server takes expertise. Training new team members takes time. Someone on your team becomes the Perforce admin whether they signed up for it or not.
That complexity might be worth it for a 200-person AAA studio with dedicated DevOps. For a 15-person indie team, it's overhead that doesn't need to exist.
Artists avoid it
P4V assumes you're comfortable with version control concepts. Many artists and designers aren't. They learn the minimum to not break things, or they avoid it entirely and work in separate folders.
When half your team dreads interacting with version control, something's wrong with the tool.
Self-hosting in a remote world
Perforce was designed for teams in the same office, on the same network. Distributed teams deal with VPNs, proxy servers, and sync issues. When the server goes down at 2am, someone's getting woken up.
Cloud infrastructure exists now. Self-hosting is a choice, not a requirement.
The switch
Teams leave Perforce when the pain exceeds the switching cost. That threshold is different for everyone. But if you're here reading this, you're probably close.
Do you want to explore a modern, fast, and effortless version control your team actually enjoys using? Try Diversion for free.