This is an extract from the June 5 Q&A. The question was asking about the 2024 SDK but the response touched on backwards compatibility.
[Jorg] For sure. So first off, Backwards compatibility is something we said we’re doing. So we are, you know, we have some people like Gaya that work with us basically as a first party developer and we’re using them to test the tools, make sure that everything works. It’s hunky dory and they give us feedback and not, I would say not everything was perfect. So we’re still, the team is still working on making sure that there’s no impact because the whole point of backwards compatibility is that you don’t actually have to do anything. It’ll just move over. So I think it’s massive progress was made.
So the key comments by Jorg that made people think that 2020 content would just work in 2024 is
So first off, Backwards compatibility is something we said we’re doing.
And
the team is still working on making sure that there’s no impact because the whole point of backwards compatibility is that you don’t actually have to do anything. It’ll just move over.
Its comments like these that raised the expectation that 2020 content would just work in 2024. Jorg’s words were “It’ll just move over”. Any reasonable person would assume that Jorg’s comments mean that 2020 content will work in 2024. And I’m sure many purchases of 2024 were made based on the premise that 2020 content will “just move over”.
From my own perspective I have found that majority of liveries I have created and published for 2020, do not work in 2024 without modification. Updating them is a massive task.
You can read the full Q&A here.