Steam now warns about Early Access that have not been updated in months.
Steam now warns about Early Access that have not been updated in months.
Steam now warns about Early Access that have not been updated in months. 🕵️ Tip: SteamDB browser extension shows last update for all games.
Excellent feature. One of the first things I check anyways when buying early access games is when the last news post was.
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Maybe not allow the studio to charge for early access?
Why? There are plenty of proper games that benefit from early access, and plenty of people that enjoy early access.
Whenever I buy early access I ask my self “if the devs evaporated and development stopped permanently tomorrow, would I still buy this game?” It has snagged me some games I love like valheim, window kill, palworld and blade & sorcery. It’s also gotten me some games I enjoyed but still felt like a paid a good price for it, and also dodged a few bullets because the games look fun but weren’t complete and I didn’t buy
This is great advice.
And plenty of early access games that die on the vine. Pay to be an alpha tester? You do you.
And you don't want to? You do you. You're the one trying to suggest an outright ban, then you suggest a personal solution. Take your own advice.
Game developers also like to get paid, if early access wouldn't be an option we would have far less indie games and far more half baked 1.0 releases. No one is forcing you to buy ea titles.
Okay, you develop and release a game for free then, only being allowed to charge for it after a few years.
What, you don't want to do that?
Not charging until the game properly releases is normal. Most devs need to manage and deal with that, and beta testing used to be an expense on the devs. Now, the buyers are paying the devs to beta test, taking the project risk for the devs. Even if the system were free to both sides, it's still beneficial to the devs, but without the corruption of thinking they should be making money during beta testing--money that they'll happily keep as they walk away if their project fails to deliver what they sold.
There's a more fair solution out there than letting devs just sell their games before they finish.
Normal is taking a publishers promises up the ass to fund the game. Granted if I see the next Need for Speed up on early access for $60 then yeah, I get what you are saying, but early access was made so small teams (or solo devs) can not starve while working on a passion project.
A couple of games that come to mind are BeamNG, which only released on early access after 3 years in development (and offering the full game at a very low price); it's still in development, almost 13 years so far, with regular updates. And Motor Town, which afaik is a team of two people, one making the world and the other doing everything else; they have been in development for 3 years now.
An example of a successful game that started in early access and was finished is Wreckfest. It took something like 5 years. If I remember correctly they had to take a publishing deal midway through, which is unfortunate, but the finished project is great.
Early access is an alternative way to stay afloat while making a game. At least, that's how it should be. Everything in life has risks. Losing $10-20 after a year of playing a game in development just to have the dev croak, lose interest, change career paths... Isn't that big of a deal. I'd much rather take that frustration and channel it to piece of shit publishers that axe games a few years after release, taking the full amount and running.
but early access was made so small teams (or solo devs) can not starve while working on a passion project.
It was not. As I said, Valve specifically warns devs in their info docs not to use early access for the money, because it won't profit. And that's incredibly obvious to pretty much anyone given how hard it is for any released game to get attention on Steam, and that most people do--and should--avoid buying early access games. Early access money is a small slice of nothing.
Yes, some devs still do it for money, despite all the evidence otherwise, but devs that go early access because they actually need the money to finish the game almost always fail their project, because that's just a disastrously bad management choice.
Early access was created for feedback and hype/community building. Being in early access for a year gives you 12 months paid testing/feedback and invested players already there on launch day for Steam metrics to count, 12mo of organic social media growth plus chances to catch some actual influencers and whatnot, etc. You'd never see that just dropping the game on release day, without a ton more money in advertisement. Early access is to give a game a chance for the most positive launch day it can manage, if devs make their customers happy and fix bugs.
A project that needs early access money has already failed.
Yeah, I don't buy early access for this reason except in extremely rare circumstances.
But that doesn't mean we should prevent others from buying into early access. Let people make their own decisions!
I’ve enjoyed early access games that are still in development. Most notably Ultrakill, which I regard as one of the best action games of all time. Yeah it would suck if Ultrakill would never reach its conclusion, but I’d rather have a great but unfinished game than no game at all.
Maybe hold back 50% of the revenue to only be released to the devs when the game full releases
That just incentives devs to just push out whatever mess they currently have and say the game is released, and they'd do it unless Valve wanted to start moderating game again. At least right now the abandoned games are still labelled early access.
So, when a game releases, buyers get the option to partially refund or commit, and valve uses the commit money to pay the refunds, so devs only make money if they keep more than half of their buyers, and customers have to consciously deal with sinking money into a potentially failed project.
At least right now the abandoned games are still labelled early access.
Most early access failures eventually just call themselves released at some point, so we're no better off as far as that.
Early access games are usually sold for cheaper. I think it’s a good deal: pay smaller price for a fun but partial game. Maybe it will turn into a good full game? The developers get feedback directly from customers. It’s a win win.