Variety of reasons I believe: anti-poaching, preferring to go by their gamer tag, not really industry standard at the time (Yoko Shimomura for example did a lot of iconic early Capcom stuff but it was credited as “Capcom Music Team”), gaming seen as a “lesser” industry so people didn’t want to be associated with it, corporate egos, anti-doxxing (yes, even back in the day. Gaming was a small industry). It really depends on the country/company etc.
It’s actually gotten to a point where certain older games getting ported are actually entirely credited to the porting team rather than the OG creators. I know the Metroid ports had their OG creator credits removed (not sure if they were patched back in or not), and it was a minor kerfuffle. It’s a topic discussed in game preservation spaces with some frequency.
Variety of reasons I believe: anti-poaching, preferring to go by their gamer tag, not really industry standard at the time (Yoko Shimomura for example did a lot of iconic early Capcom stuff but it was credited as “Capcom Music Team”), gaming seen as a “lesser” industry so people didn’t want to be associated with it, corporate egos, anti-doxxing (yes, even back in the day. Gaming was a small industry). It really depends on the country/company etc.
It’s actually gotten to a point where certain older games getting ported are actually entirely credited to the porting team rather than the OG creators. I know the Metroid ports had their OG creator credits removed (not sure if they were patched back in or not), and it was a minor kerfuffle. It’s a topic discussed in game preservation spaces with some frequency.
you’re right it was primarily due to anti-poaching. Many Japanese publishers forbade their devs to use their real names out of fear that another company would try to hire the devs for their own games: https://www.timeextension.com/features/flashback-heres-why-japanese-video-game-companies-often-didnt-credit-their-developers