Has early access soured Steam for you?

[Elvis Starburst]

I wouldn't mind it if I didn't see so many damn games that are early access. I find it hard to locate FINISHED games that aren't released by more well known indie developers or AAA developers. I have a hard time finding anything smaller or indie that isn't early access, and it drives me nuts. It doesn't help that the prices don't match the early access part, or the amount of content they have.

I get the feeling all these people are doing is finding a way to put unfinished products onto Steam and just make money off that. Sure, more content might be released, but you'd never get away with this in earlier gaming generations. I understand the purpose. It helps devs make more money to do more... dev related things. I find it to be more of a tactic of not finishing your damn game and still manage to make money off of that somehow. It's ludicrous.

EDIT: I'm not denying the importance of this. I just wish I could see more games that are actually done. The amount of early access titles on Steam is so numerous, it's baffling. I'm getting really tired of seeing those two words attached to nearly every game that catches my eye.

 

[Amaror]

StarDrive

Yeah, i am technically on your side of the debate, but stardrive is definetly not an example for an early access game done right, on the contrary.
The Developer started selling it, made money and continued development for a while. Then he encountered some problems in development and eventually just gave up and announced the game "finished" when it was clearly not. It wasn't small stuff either. Tons of bugs, some of the factions were still missing units and he actually had completely unbalanced the game just with the patch before.
He fixed a few of these issues, after a severe shitstorm, but not all.
So, no, StarDrive is not an example for a good early access game.

 

[Crayven]

Look, early access is getting annoying, but for every game staying in "Beta" there are some like Necro, planetary annihilation, The Last Federation (i think that was early access, cant remember) and others are progressing, and getting onto complete and at least the ones listed, amazing games. without early access and kick starter, some of them wouldn't exist. and i think i'd rather take the rough with the smooth and have gems like them then the few really bad stinkers that people should know not to jump into headfirst.

*edit* just had a sobering thought, they ask us pay for the game before its finished, but whats next, selling the game in preorder then and offer us the chance to pay extra to play beta....

 

[Doom972]

It's a bit disappointing when a game looks interesting to me and then I find out that it's an Early Access game. I don't pay for unfinished games.

Ever paid for a Bethesda game?

I have. When I bought Morrowind, it already had a patch that fixed all the major issues. When I got Oblivion on the first week after its release date, I played an extremely buggy game. I preordered Fallout 3 because I was very hyped for it, only to find out that it was also buggy (not as bad as Oblivion though). After that I learned to wait a few months before getting a Bethesda game.

I also had a very similar experience with games made by Obsidian Entertainment.

 

[laggyteabag]

I do own a couple of Early Access games myself, namely DayZ and Prison Architect, and I also bought into Minecraft before it's "release" (whatever that meant). As a result of this, I understand Early Access and why people buy into it, but what irritates me is how often a game like Rust or DayZ is topping the sales charts, over games that are finished. The sudden explosion of Early Access however has not really "soured" Steam for me, nor has the controversy surrounding Steam's lack of quality control recently. It is no different than say, the app store, there is a lot of shovelware around the platform, but it's not like you are forced to buy into it. I'd rather that it wasn't there, but it doesn't make the platform any worse with it's presence.

 

[DoPo]

StarDrive

Yeah, i am technically on your side of the debate, but stardrive is definetly not an example for an early access game done right, on the contrary.
The Developer started selling it, made money and continued development for a while. Then he encountered some problems in development and eventually just gave up and announced the game "finished" when it was clearly not. It wasn't small stuff either. Tons of bugs, some of the factions were still missing units and he actually had completely unbalanced the game just with the patch before.
He fixed a few of these issues, after a severe shitstorm, but not all.
So, no, StarDrive is not an example for a good early access game.

I wouldn't know - I just listed some games I know were on Early Access but not any more. I'll take it off that list, then.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

I don't really dislike the idea, but I hate that devs can charge as much as a full-priced game for their possibly buggy or broken product. Given that most of them seem to (at least for the most popular early access games), I'm pretty sure I haven't even purchased a single game in the 'early access' category.

Valve really should set some restrictions on how much a customer has to pay when a product isn't actually completed. $10 or under USD is reasonable; $60 is definitely not.

 

[Therumancer]

I can't be the only one in these Steam sales to see a promising looking game come on a daily or flash offer only to click on it and find it an Early Access game.

I really don't agree with the idea of an early access games being sold alongside finished products in the Daily Deals and promoted so heavily - they should have their own separate section of Steam. I just don't like the idea of buying a game and advertising it alongside AAA products.

What do you think of this? It's obviously only become a recent issue with Steam but it's still weird.

I tend to agree with you, and I think it's disturbing that people are gradually just going with the flow over things like this. I do not think people should be expected to pay for uncompleted games, that may never be finished (especially seeing as a lot of these earth access games are done by fly by night indie developers). For all intents and purposes what they are doing is getting you to pay to test their game.... it's an evolution of what the industry has already been doing at a AAA level where "beta access" has become a perk for a $5 pre-order or whatever, but with a bigger investment of cash, no real assurance the game will ever appear (for all their flaws big studios will generally release something that gets to this point, it's virtually guaranteed, and if it never shows up, you can get your $5 back).

Of course at the same time when Beta has become a paid service, it's lead to the reduction in quality as the testers are pretty much ignored. I don't think I've been in an MMO beta for years where the general testing pool was taken seriously for anything but stress testing, and the bugs they found were generally ignored for months up until release. Something which is kind of galling when you consider people complain about the state games release in, the companies know about problems, or should (testers try and tell them), and then they ignore this because they have something "more important to work on" which I guess is super-important but not anything that most of us plebes will ever notice. With Early access it's a more expensive and riskier version of the same thing, where you basically pay the full price for an indie game (or what should be full price), get early access, and maybe access to a forum where you will likely be ignored by the devs who are just going to do whatever they want to anyway, and fix what they think is important, in whatever order happens to appeal to them. It's sort of like the old Financial Dominatrix joke "Pay me and I'll be mean to you or ignore you totally as suits my whim", except it's real, as opposed to someone goofing off in MMO chat.

To be honest if they are going to be selling early access games, they should at least keep them out of the flash sales.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

No, so far it has only made me buy games in the spotligths, that otherwise would have rested in the dark.
I has made me rethink a purchase more before actually paying the money though, more than before and for any type of develop or publisher.

 

[Depulcator]

Has it soured my view? No. But, I'm never going to pay to have the privilege to test an un-finished game, In the past I may have considered it, but there's just too much shit to wade through, Also I don't see a lot of these games as actual finished products. But It's your money.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I would have no issue with early access if it were in a totally separate section of Steam. They shouldn't be mingling with other finished games. It is annoying when half the front page is full of games that are in Alpha.

 

[Ipsen]

Yet, nobody has ever claimed Early Access is bad because it requires people to pay twice. Indeed, people often claim it's bad because you pay for it and you get the game...but you may never get the full game or the features you actually want. In fact, just a post above yours says it outright.

As for sources on Steam [http://store.steampowered.com/earlyaccessfaq/]:

Is this the same as pre-purchasing a game?

No. Early Access is a full purchase of a playable game. By purchasing, you gain immediate access to download and play the game in its current form and as it evolves. You keep access to the game, even if the game later moves from Early Access into fully released.

Emphasis mine.

Thanks for the source, by the way.

I dunno, I'd be more miffed about paying twice for the completion of one game than paying once for one game that has game concept, but is CLEARLY STIPULATED to be unfinished. In wording and function. Besides, a 'finished game' is a largely subjective matter. Am I finished with Bastion because I'm done/sick of playing it, or because I watched the credits roll? Since I have that much room with the definition of 'finished game', couldn't I extend that to some product that I spent say, 80 hours playing, yet even the developer calls 'unfinished'? Are we even talking about an 'Early Access' game in this example???

All those scattershot circumstances aside, I can understand that people can be both unsatisfied (near obviously) with an unfinished game AND worried it will never be completed. That being said, I see as dishonest or misguided to blame Steam; we need to find ways to make these developers accountable[footnote]But perhaps this is what naysayers are asking for, but it sure doesn't look like it with topic titles like "Has early access soured Steam for you?"[/footnote] for what is essentially a shakier proposal than even Kickstarter[footnote]For the record, I haven't purchased a single Early Access game, specifically for this reason. Though Kerbal Space Program looks enticing.[/footnote].

 

[MrHide-Patten]

Well who honestly would look at a different tab? The early access games would never sell because nobody would ever see them, putting them in sales puts them right at the forefront for people to see and potentially get interested in. If anything they should make it painfully obvious that a game is early access just from a obvious visual tag on it.

Whilst there are some dodgy cash garbs out there, the good stuff will pass people by if you outright slam everything.

 

[pspman45]

My opinion on early access is that if its for sale, its out. If I have to pay to play your "beta" then don't expect me to forgive a broken or unfinished game.

 

[otakon17]

A little bit. It seems to be popping up far too frequently and they've got no inclination to finish their project. It requires a LOT of investigation to see if an EA game is worth buying or just waiting for it to go gold.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I'm pretty much in the same mindset as the OP on this one. I have no real issue with Early Access as a concept but I don't like how Steam promotes Early Access games. As it stands, there is no incentive at all for a developer to ever properly finish and release an Early Access game. They get front page placement on Steam, they get top line promotion on Steam, they get placed on the standard Top Seller lists on Steam, they can be sold in Steam sales with discounts, etc. The only issue they face is that there's a warning on their actual item page that describes what Early Access means. To me, that's not the way it should be.

Early Access games, just like the current Greenlight section, should have their own separate section of Steam and should not appear on the main page or on top seller lists. They should also not be eligible for reductions in price during Steam sales. If a developer wants to make use of Steam for Early Access they should be doing so in order to make use of Steam's multiplayer and store architecture as well as it's large user base.

 

[Windcaler]

I like the idea of early access however for a very long time Ive felt like the idea needs refinement and enforced rules. Valve's response of "these games might never be finished" is frankly irresponsible. Valve doesnt want any responsibility though so as they become a stronger and stronger virtual monopoly more problems like this are going to arise.

Now with early access being commonly put on sales I feel like early access has just become an excuse to pass off criticism. The original idea was the minecraft model. You bought an unfinished product for cheap because you felt that it was worthwhile and later on it would be sold for much more. However now we have the opposite problem where early access games seem to start at full price and then go down through sales. It also gets in the way of finished products that are on sale and I feel like thats the real tradgedy here. Finished products getting less spotlight then early access games.

A good compromise would be adding an early access sales section and leaving the other slots for super sales on completed games

All that said early access sales themselves havnt soured me on steam. Steam did that all by itself

 

[Caiphus]

I don't mind the idea of early access itself. It could theoretically do good things for game development (and indeed it looks like it has for things like Divinity:OS, although we'll find out for sure when it comes out in 3 days).

However, I'm not a fan of how the incentives line up, especially with the very real possibility that information asymmetry will allow developers to take customers for a ride. Steam's recent refusal to take responsibility, or to put responsibility on the developers who take advantage of early access, hasn't helped that. So I'm cautious. It could become a market for lemons, we'll see.

 

[Vigormortis]

snip

And it was worse in the prior decade to that as, should you come across some game-breaking bug[footnote]Of which were just as common as today.[/footnote], you'd likely have to suss out a fix on your own. There was rarely an "official patch" you could just go and download.

I'm honestly sick of this revisionist point of view of gaming's history. I see, far too often, people complaining about buggy releases and the constant need for patches, etc; all the while lamenting about the loss of the "good old days" when games just "worked".

I've been console and PC gaming since the 80's. Broken/buggy/glitchy releases have been par for the course for decades.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Hell yes.

Early Access has become an excuse to sell incomplete trash/broken scamware at full price without ever finishing it. All because Minecraft did it first and successfully so.