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.
I think most of the games that would be in this position aren’t willing or able to do that. It’s not like there’s a ton of income on stale half-released games with no active development, but people should be aware that’s what they’re looking at anyway.
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.
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.
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.
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This might happen if GabeN dies, because it is mostly him and his mentality that leads to consumer friendly decisions inside VALVe
Everyone keeps labelling GabeN as the only one holding VALVe to standards, but by his own admission he’s more of the equivalent of a board member now, not deeply involved in the day to day anymore. I think the only ones that truly know his level of involvement would be people at VALVe.
What I’m getting at is that I have the same concerns about what will happen after he passes, but I don’t think he’s the only person standing in the way of VALVe going full corporate.
That‘s why I said his mentality leads to consumer friendly decisions. VALVe has been a holacratic since decades and GabeN has no special status. It is only because of his mentality and leadership which infects other employees with the same views. This might change if he passes. Hopefully it does not.
might happen if GabeN dies
He won’t die before releasing Half Life 3, which means he’s immortal.
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.
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.
They just know that line going up steadily is more valuable than line going up exponentially until people get sick of your shit.
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.
Yeah satisfactory spent 5 years in early access. Good dev takes time
So be it, but at some point they need to shit or get off the pot, and way too many games are just staying early access.
What’s the problem with staying in early access? It’s not like the games are squatting on welfare. Do they get anything from Steam beyond a placard that says “my game ain’t finished”?
The only thing is people deflecting criticism because of the “early access” tag. But if you want to introduce arbitrary term limits so you can win internet arguments about video game developer malfeasance, then you’ve lost me.
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
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.
Took ages for factorio to release as well haha
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.
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.
The greenlight system wasn’t any better, all it did was gatekeep indie developers while still being easy to manipulate.
It didn’t gatekeep, it let people vote. And calling someone who makes a fury hentai game isn’t an “indie developer”. It’s a scammer.
And “voting” favors developers/celebrities with userbases to flood the system. This was a well documented problem and many of the indie devs of the era complained. The influencers of the era could get anything greenlit. Amazing games like even frigging Mount&Blade were in an endless struggle. And let alone the truly new developers who just had a game and a dream.
Also: I am pretty sure you are just showing your ass, but people who make “furry hentai games” aren’t inherently “pieces of shit”. Valve 900% needs to improve the filters to let people who don’t want to see it ignore it (Will Smith is basically the only person who knows how to hide it, it seems) but those games deserve to exist just as much as the latest call of duty.
Can you explain the Will Smith reference? I am unaware of any affiliation he has with Steam / Valve.
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 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.
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.
Omg I love Noita! It’s so hard, but I’ve gotten to the point that 1 in 5 rounds can end up a god run. I finally got my 33 orb Kolmi!
I got really lucky. I had ambrosia on me and i teleported in a little pocket of dirt that contained a heart and a heart mage XD so i’m doing a god run now i guess. I haven’t done the sun quest yet so i’ll try to do that.
I did the sun, dark sun, and supernova all in one run. Dunk Or Slam has a good video/long run where he does it. I imagine it’s easier now with mimicium. All the ambrosia one could ever want.
I’m still in the same run and i’m doing really good compared to all my other god runs. I’m at 15 orbs and 17 new progress. I killed the forgotten, the master of masters, mecha kolmi and tiny for the first time. I just read that i won’t be able to go in NG+ since i can’t go over 11 orbs when it’s the first time so i’ll try to do as much in this world before i have to end the run. I have a seed so i’ll look up a guide or that dunk video to do the sun quest stuff too if i can.
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
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.
And plenty of early access games that die on the vine. Pay to be an alpha tester? You do you.
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.
