Why the Datastore concerns?

I frequently hear other developers taking about how dangerous it is too edit Datastores in a live game (in script). I see features like “Mock” in profile service, and even @Onett made a test realm for bee swarm simulator, where he says there’ll be frequent resets. What are the dangers in editing Datastores in a live game, and how can I avoid them in my upcoming game?

So imagine a scenario like this:

  • Game gets popular with thousands of players having lots of progress in their saves
  • Developers make a change to the datastore script
  • Format gets messed up
  • Players join the game and script tries to load their data with the new format
  • Loading fails because data was still saved in old format
  • Everyone is playing without their progress
  • Players leave game which causes script to save their data in the new format
  • All of players’ progress is lost
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