Isn't that just it though? The problem very well could be that some part of the game is running too slow so they just start solving it. No time to read and write academic papers.
Years ago, however, I came across a paper for optimal convex polygon decomposition that had zero implementations and the paper was so complicated.. couldn't figure out how to implement it myself. I came up with something new and published it which was apparently enticing enough to be picked up by at least one game library. So that was neat.