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.
This is very good, but I hope devs can't just get around it by releasing a 5kb empty update to reset the counter.
Jokes on them, I got burned on a couple early access games in like 2012 or something so I quit buying early access. Wait for a release.
Which is fair. Most people should not buy early access, and should wait for the devs to declare their project release ready. Early access buying is all risk and responsibility (to post feedback, to update Steam review if it's out of date withe the project, to understand the individual project's development pace, etc), with a lot of factors a buyer should take into account, that most people genuinely should not need to care about or wait for.
There are an insane number of Steam games already released to buy and play.
I can always tell that a game has given up when their "updates" are all about what the community has built in the game, rather than what the developers have built.
This is just pressure on the business folks, not the devs.
I’m a game dev of 20 years and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a dev with that sort of scammy inclination. On the business side of things though…
I follow lots of early access devs, and it's not uncommon for some devs to blatantly post updates only strategically, fixing some minor thing as the next seasonal Steam sale approaches. Some continue even after leaving early access: serious issues in bug report threads, but some minor fix gets posted as the sale approaches, clearly to make the game look alive, even though none of the big stuff is getting fixed.
Plenty of devs are their own business side, anymore.
This is what a company looks like when it's not funded by venture capitalists that insist the line always go up exponentially.
Good on Steam for taking the time an energy to create a feature that is strictly pro-consumer.
Early access titles should have an “expire” time. Either get to market, or don’t early access if you can’t in time.
I feel like all that will happen is games will just release to 1.0 as “finished” when they clearly arent. It also may encourage rushing a game out thats a buggy mess.
Ive known some games to be very rough in early access that become absolutely gems a couple years later in development.
But at least that's honest. They're saying, "This is the real product" instead of "The real product is coming later if you give us money now."
Thank god, this was well overdue. In my opinion though they should have changed the color to be the red backdrop like what they do when the game is incompatible with your system, because people are going to miss that notice since it doesn't look all that different from the standard Early Access notice
Oh, that was very much needed, for sure.
I just have Steam set up to hide early access games. There's not much reason to play early access when there are so many great and fully complete games you can play in the meantime.
My favorite game ever is noita and i played it for almost 3 years of early access plus the 4 years since release. I'm really happy i got to see this great game be worked on. Tbf i think the bulk of the game was pretty much fleshed out already and the devs just made things better and added new stuff.
My only real counter to that is Project Zomboid. It's a complete game. It's in EA due to them wanting to add many more gameplay systems to the existing complete sandbox. They have a roadmap somewhere. They don't release major updates without multiple ones being added.
Last major update (41, a few years ago) was drivable cars (and all the spawning systems, loot, and map changes to make them fully fleshed out) and multiplayer. I'm sure there was more, but those were the standout things.
The new major update (42, available through a public opt-in beta branch right now) is a complete overhaul to gunplay, liquid management/mixing, crafting systems, lighting engine, and the addition of NPC animals with a full husbandry system. And that's only the highlights. It will stay in beta as they get better data for balancing the new features and the absurdly increased player count surfaces bugs they didn't find through internal testing. Once it's balanced and stable (maybe a year), they'll push this update to the main branch where it will continue to get minor bug fixes as things crop up (usually bugs surfaced by the modding community by the time it hits stable).
Then they'll keep crunching away on work on human NPCs and simulating story stuff with loot generation, which I believe will be the next major update in a few years.
Each intermediate release is a complete game, it just doesn't have the full set of features on the roadmap. It still is the best zombie survival sim on the market as is.
But it is absolutely a unicorn of early access.
There's a few indie shooters I've played that are officially EA, but have hours of gameplay in their first play though and are very replayable. Selaco is an absolute joy with 9 hours on the main campaign and 22 hours for 100%. Officially EA with only the first episode out.
Frankly, some games like Project Zomboid have for years been way beyond what one would think of as Early Access quality but the devs had such grand objectives for that game that they've kept it in Early Access for ages.
Its why I think all the "Early access bad" people are fucking idiots.
A lot of games abuse EA, no arguments there. A lot of games also just rush to 1.0 so they can do a console release and then abandon the game (the Time at Portia devs did that with like three kickstarters?). And then you have the labors of love like Dwarf Fortress or Caves of Qud or Project Zomboid that basically will always be EA (although Qud hit 1.0, finally).
Not to mention studios like Amplitude who use EA in the best possible way. They have a vertical slice of the game and they work with the community to figure out what features to add or rebalance. It isn't always perfect but it genuinely feels like they are listening and it is great.
People should only be buying EA titles if the current state of the game is worth the price they're paying for it.
Took ages for factorio to release as well haha
A good change. I wish it was more prominent on the page, though.
Have to remember the developer Agreement says Early Access is for games in a finished state that are just looking for number tweaks
Really, these games should be getting delisted, unless they changed that
I think storefronts should take an extra 10% cut of any early access title sold, added to a pool to be later returned to the developer as a payout once the game officially launches. That way they still get some cash inflow while development is still ongoing but there's financial incentive to actually finish the game eventually.
Early Access is not a way to crowdfund development of your product.
Early Access is not a pre-purchase
Do not make specific promises about future events.
However, they have added this which makes my original comment null
Don't launch in Early Access if you are finished with development. If you have all your gameplay defined already and are just looking for final bug testing, then Early Access isn’t right for you. You’ll probably want to send out some keys to fans or do more internal playtesting instead. Early Access is intended as a place where customers can impact the final game.
Good Update oh my god
Why not stop the sale of games that haven't had an update in more than 3 months or offer extended return windows?
Sometimes the dev wants to push a bigger update and takes more than 3 months? Why full stop the sales? Just warn the people and let them decides.
Okay maybe not 3 months but some sort of time frame and maybe not a full halt but perhaps a more significant warning like an are you sure popup on adding to cart.
Plus maybe require monthly dev posts as to progress for early access so people know it's still actually being worked on., otherwise the warning.
Plus the longer refund times if updates haven't happened in months
I wonder what the threshold for this warning is. I follow a lot of great early access games that only put out big updates 1-3 times a year.
why even have a threshold, just tell when the last update has been and update it automatically. That way you could also have more reliable data about patterns of the dev and see if they just have really long update cycle.
The examples I've seen are a year+ with no updates. Not definitive, but I highly doubt they're doing this for the cases you're talking about.
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
Maybe hold back 50% of the revenue to only be released to the devs when the game full releases
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.
Why can't steam just go back to the greenlight system. It was SUCH a better storefront then. Now it's just a cesspool of bullshit games and bullshit "reviews" I rarely use it anymore.
Greenlight saw one of the biggests floods of shovel ware in Steam's history. The store hasn't actually recovered since.
That doesn't make sense since the community as a whole would have to support a game before it hit the steam store. So.. idk what you're talking about. Grenlight was like a "hey guys I made this game where you play a stick man and you do a gem puzzle to unlock a flash animation naked furry girl!" No one would allow that to be greenlot, therefore it would never be on steam
After greenlight every fucking pos on the planet has made some kind of $2 scam game making Nintendo's eShop look normal.
No greenlight = anyone and everyone can put anything on steam and sell it.
Many great games wouldn't be released without the current system giving them a chance. Shovelware is a problem, but I think it's a fairer alternative.
Doubtful