If that was strictly true, I would agree, and I wouldn’t bother talking about it.
But it’s NOT strictly true. There are Early Access developers who actually use the model to get funds for developing games, within reasonable timescales, and without doing exploitative shit.
It’s important for Early Access to exist, because it’s a way for independent developers to exist, completely outside of any big business control. A truly independent developer never has to deal with corporate jackals, breathing down their necks, demanding that they add more microtransactions and gambling into the game. They can make games that are truly outside the mainstream genres, without having to justify themselves to traditional investors.
These are GOOD THINGS. If I truly believed every single Early Access developer was just a scammer, I wouldn’t bother saying any of this. I think Valve needs to get a handle on the system, rather than just letting it twist in the wind, the way they have been. There needs to be a time limit, before a game has to either be released, or else be cut off from further Early Access sales. They need to disallow DLC and other forms of microtransactions, within Early Access games. They need to establish rules about Early Access developers having connections with outside investors, and what exactly would be considered acceptable, within the system.
The developers who use the Early Access program the way it’s supposed to be used are not making massive profits from it. They are paying for the up-front development costs of a game, and hoping that it will turn out to be a big enough success that it will continue to be profitable, after development is complete.
When people do annoying, scam-adjacent shit like selling DLC content for an Early Access game, it fuels opinions like yours. It makes people throw their hands up and say “Early Access is all a scam.” And that fucking sucks. Because if it goes away, there’s no alternative but for indie developers to sign up with traditional corporate psychos, who always try to make games worse.
Same. We’re almost 5 years into an indie project and while the dream is to release as 1.0, the reality is, building games is really fucking hard and going early access brings about a more forgiving mindset from the consumer and enables our team to further invest in the polishing needed to feel good about calling it 1.0. If only we had the bank roll these AAA studios have, but we’re working with pennies and loads of passion to see our dream to fruition.
Just to piggyback off of this/give an example of good usage of early access: to me BG3 was great usage of early access. It stayed there for a long time and actually used the early access to get player feedback to improve the game. When the game finally released the only dlc they had was given for free to everyone who played early access, and it doesn’t really change the gameplay experience at all, it was only stuff like an art book and some references to their older game.
I agree that Steam should regulate early access more. The best buyer’s policy in my opinion is to only buy games you know you’ll enjoy in their current state. Any future features are a bonus.
I had great success that way with Dave the Diver, Subnautica, and Satisfactory.
I’ve avoided buying Kerbal Space Program 2 despite 400 hrs on the original because it still feels like a cash grab with not enough content yet.
Weirdly, if you look at it from a purely price-per-hour-of-enjoyment perspective, the two all-time champions in my library are probably Vampire Survivors and Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades.
You couldn’t pick two more different games, in virtually every aspect. One is a minimalist, top-down autoshooter game that established its own genre. It cost me 3 dollars in Early Access. It has come out of Early Access, with flying colors. I have spent 170 hours in it. It is a poster child for the “came out of Early Access as a huge hit” phenomenon.
The other is a VR-only firearms simulation sandbox game, with a whole bunch of different game modes, thousands of meticulously simulated weapons, and a wiener fixation. It entered Early Access in 2016, cost 20 dollars, and is still in Early Access. I have spend 502 hours in it, and it’s by far my most played VR game. It exemplifies a weird third-way philosophy, where a game is literally constantly updated, throughout the Early Access period, to the point that it really doesn’t matter how long it remains in Early Access, because anyone who even vaguely enjoys it has spent so much time in it, and gotten so much value from it that…well, it really doesn’t matter if it ever releases, in ANY state.
BeamNG.drive is another example of that sort of game. Because I’m a weirdo who plays weird sandbox games, it should be no surprise that I also fuck with that game. Although I didn’t pick it up until a couple months ago.
Nah there are actually good early access game (Palworld, and predecessor come to mind although predecessor is f2p) but one should use caution when buying Early access games
Palworld is pretty good but it is so fucking buggy it actually makes me want to stop playing sometimes and I feel a lot of resentment for having paid for such trash. It will definitely make me more careful to check bug reports and gameplay videos before investing more time and energy into a game in the future.
Bugs I have found so far include:
Invaders getting stuck really far away from my base and never reaching the base
Enemies tunneling through the floor and getting stuck there permanently
Pals being hungry even though the feeder has plenty of food (had to move my feeder to fix it, but still annoying)
Pals randomly floating in midair and getting stuck there
Pals getting stuck at the edge of my base and having to pick them up to get them unstuck
Escape button (in menus) being super flaky (have to press it twice sometimes)
Click to attack (with melee weapon) sometimes doesn’t work, have to try pressing random buttons to fix it
Graphics glitches with the pal sphere that I’m holding - randomly flashes between blue and green, so I can’t tell which one I’m about to throw
Controls also suck bigtime. I still keep accidentally throwing pal spheres with Q and I really suck at using 1/3 to switch between pals. They should make it so you have to left click to throw the pal sphere. Should also maybe allow alternative ways of selecting left/right for pals and in menus, other than 1/3. Maybe Ctrl+scroll or something, idk
It also is taking fucking forever to get a gun. I am level 17 and so far do not feel like it’s “Pokemon with guns” at all. I have a shitty spear which is the most powerful melee weapon at my level, yet does almost no damage to level 18+, and a semi-shitty crossbow which is super annoying to get the arrows for (arrows don’t drop from enemies and the grind to manufacture them is super boring)
Get a base and put a fixy in a pen. They drop arrows spheres and coins. No need to farm the arrows. Also lvl 17 is like 3hours of game time Max. So quite early in the game
Stop fucking buying fucking early access fucking games. Companies do shit like this because it’s profitable
If that was strictly true, I would agree, and I wouldn’t bother talking about it.
But it’s NOT strictly true. There are Early Access developers who actually use the model to get funds for developing games, within reasonable timescales, and without doing exploitative shit.
It’s important for Early Access to exist, because it’s a way for independent developers to exist, completely outside of any big business control. A truly independent developer never has to deal with corporate jackals, breathing down their necks, demanding that they add more microtransactions and gambling into the game. They can make games that are truly outside the mainstream genres, without having to justify themselves to traditional investors.
These are GOOD THINGS. If I truly believed every single Early Access developer was just a scammer, I wouldn’t bother saying any of this. I think Valve needs to get a handle on the system, rather than just letting it twist in the wind, the way they have been. There needs to be a time limit, before a game has to either be released, or else be cut off from further Early Access sales. They need to disallow DLC and other forms of microtransactions, within Early Access games. They need to establish rules about Early Access developers having connections with outside investors, and what exactly would be considered acceptable, within the system.
The developers who use the Early Access program the way it’s supposed to be used are not making massive profits from it. They are paying for the up-front development costs of a game, and hoping that it will turn out to be a big enough success that it will continue to be profitable, after development is complete.
When people do annoying, scam-adjacent shit like selling DLC content for an Early Access game, it fuels opinions like yours. It makes people throw their hands up and say “Early Access is all a scam.” And that fucking sucks. Because if it goes away, there’s no alternative but for indie developers to sign up with traditional corporate psychos, who always try to make games worse.
As an indie dev myself, I really appreciate this take. Spot on.
Same. We’re almost 5 years into an indie project and while the dream is to release as 1.0, the reality is, building games is really fucking hard and going early access brings about a more forgiving mindset from the consumer and enables our team to further invest in the polishing needed to feel good about calling it 1.0. If only we had the bank roll these AAA studios have, but we’re working with pennies and loads of passion to see our dream to fruition.
Good shit, dude. As a fellow indie struggler, I wish you luck!
Thank you! You too homie. One script at a time, one asset at a time… Keep that flame burning until the job is done ✊
Just to piggyback off of this/give an example of good usage of early access: to me BG3 was great usage of early access. It stayed there for a long time and actually used the early access to get player feedback to improve the game. When the game finally released the only dlc they had was given for free to everyone who played early access, and it doesn’t really change the gameplay experience at all, it was only stuff like an art book and some references to their older game.
I agree that Steam should regulate early access more. The best buyer’s policy in my opinion is to only buy games you know you’ll enjoy in their current state. Any future features are a bonus.
I had great success that way with Dave the Diver, Subnautica, and Satisfactory.
I’ve avoided buying Kerbal Space Program 2 despite 400 hrs on the original because it still feels like a cash grab with not enough content yet.
Weirdly, if you look at it from a purely price-per-hour-of-enjoyment perspective, the two all-time champions in my library are probably Vampire Survivors and Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades.
You couldn’t pick two more different games, in virtually every aspect. One is a minimalist, top-down autoshooter game that established its own genre. It cost me 3 dollars in Early Access. It has come out of Early Access, with flying colors. I have spent 170 hours in it. It is a poster child for the “came out of Early Access as a huge hit” phenomenon.
The other is a VR-only firearms simulation sandbox game, with a whole bunch of different game modes, thousands of meticulously simulated weapons, and a wiener fixation. It entered Early Access in 2016, cost 20 dollars, and is still in Early Access. I have spend 502 hours in it, and it’s by far my most played VR game. It exemplifies a weird third-way philosophy, where a game is literally constantly updated, throughout the Early Access period, to the point that it really doesn’t matter how long it remains in Early Access, because anyone who even vaguely enjoys it has spent so much time in it, and gotten so much value from it that…well, it really doesn’t matter if it ever releases, in ANY state.
BeamNG.drive is another example of that sort of game. Because I’m a weirdo who plays weird sandbox games, it should be no surprise that I also fuck with that game. Although I didn’t pick it up until a couple months ago.
There have been many truly amazing early access games though that might not have been made without it (rimworld, factorio, etc)
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Nah there are actually good early access game (Palworld, and predecessor come to mind although predecessor is f2p) but one should use caution when buying Early access games
Holy shit, someone mentioned predecessor on lemmy? Goddamn.
Palworld is pretty good but it is so fucking buggy it actually makes me want to stop playing sometimes and I feel a lot of resentment for having paid for such trash. It will definitely make me more careful to check bug reports and gameplay videos before investing more time and energy into a game in the future.
Bugs I have found so far include:
Controls also suck bigtime. I still keep accidentally throwing pal spheres with Q and I really suck at using 1/3 to switch between pals. They should make it so you have to left click to throw the pal sphere. Should also maybe allow alternative ways of selecting left/right for pals and in menus, other than 1/3. Maybe Ctrl+scroll or something, idk
It also is taking fucking forever to get a gun. I am level 17 and so far do not feel like it’s “Pokemon with guns” at all. I have a shitty spear which is the most powerful melee weapon at my level, yet does almost no damage to level 18+, and a semi-shitty crossbow which is super annoying to get the arrows for (arrows don’t drop from enemies and the grind to manufacture them is super boring)
Get a base and put a fixy in a pen. They drop arrows spheres and coins. No need to farm the arrows. Also lvl 17 is like 3hours of game time Max. So quite early in the game