Comment by bitwize
5 hours ago
A company of any size wasn't archiving stuff on freaking floppies. In the 70s and 80s most video games were developed on big iron—PDPs or VAXen, usually, and data from those was archived on paper or mag tape. If you were renting (or stealing) time on one of these, as "Micro-Soft" was in its very early days, then printing stuff out may have been more economical. But major game studios of the day had resources and means of bulk archival that didn't involving buying a bunch of floppies at Lechmere.
You vastly overestimate the budget and abilities of most software houses of the day.
For every Atari or Epyx, there were many dozens of very significant publishers who did their work on consumer-grade hardware.
Except for Atari and less than a handful of others with previous income, none started with PDPs on hand. They had to work up to that.
It's not like today with everything consolidated and full of VC money. Bootstrapping your way to success was de regur, and the playing field was wide open to anyone with a home computer and a little talent.