The video game market is one of the biggest for software products. Video game development has progressed in the last decades to complex and multifaceted endeavors. Games-as-a-Service significantly impacted distribution and gameplay, requiring providers and developers to consider factors beyond game functionality, including security and privacy. New security challenges emerged, including authentication, payment security, and user data or asset protection. However, the security community lacks in-depth insights into the security experiences, challenges, and practices of modern video game development. This paper aims to address this gap in research and highlights the criticality of considering security in the process.

For software to be secure in practice, users need to be willing and able to appropriately use security features. These features are usually implemented by software professionals during the software development process (SDP), who may be unable to consider the usability of these mechanisms. While research has made progress in supporting developers in creating secure software products, very little attention has been paid to whether and how these security features are made usable. In a semi-structured interview study with 25 software professionals (software developers, designers, architects), we explored how they and other decision-makers encounter and deal with security and usability during the software development process in their companies. Based on 37 hours of interview recordings, we qualitatively analyzed and investigated 23 distinct development contexts in detail. In addition to individual awareness and factors that directly influence the implementation phase, we identify a high impact of contextual factors, such as stakeholder pressure, presence of expertise, and collaboration culture, and the specific implementation of the SDP on usable security in software products. We conclude our work by highlighting important gaps, such as studying and improving contextual factors that contribute to usable security and discussing potential improvements of the status quo.