Has early access soured Steam for you?

[DoPo]

Imagine if on a menu at a restaurant they were selling fully cooked dinner alongside a plate of half prepared ingredients, and you had to read very small print to see which was which?

Unless the small print is written in letters literally bigger than these ones and are on a background clearly contrasting the rest of the menu, then you would have a point. Actually, you wouldn't, as that wouldn't be a very small print, now would it.

 

[CommanderL]

Two of my favourite games are still considered to be in alpha

one is kenshi which I have spent 80 hours in and its still getting features added all the time and its been made for three years
and another is overgrowth which has been in alpha for like 3 years


its a great way for smaller indie people to fund the game as they make it

 

[C.S.Strowbridge]

I like Early Access. Even if I don't buy the game, I can follow the progress. I've been doing this for War for the Overworld. If that drops below $15 during the sale, I will probably buy it. Hell, I've supported Kickstarters, so supporting Early Access games is perfectly acceptable.

Granted, many early access games are not worth the money in the state they are now and the end product will be crap. However, that's true of many "finished" games. How many games can you think of that needed a day one patch to fix problems? How many of these games never worked out all of the bugs?

 

[Foolery]

Soured? Nah. I find the ports of mobile games to be worse. That stuff is the real offender when it comes to shovelware on Steam.
I make an effort to read through user reviews, system requirements, and check forums for issues before deciding if I make a purchase.

 

[sageoftruth]

It doesn't affect me much. I hardly get any Steam games with out checking them out first on a WTF from TotalBiscuit, or some other source if he's not covering that one.

 

[WhiteRat07]

I think it really helps some indie developers. They also let you know the game is in early access. I'm happy as long as they keep the early access banner before the add to cart button.

 

[Vigormortis]

Do you not think it a bit dodgy and unfriendly to consumers that unfinished goods are being advertised next to finished goods?

Imagine if on a menu at a restaurant they were selling fully cooked dinner alongside a plate of half prepared ingredients, and you had to read very small print to see which was which?

Yes, because this is obviously hard-to-read, small print:

Man, I had to get out my magnifying glass to see where it says "Early Access Game"! It's so tiny and hard to read!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Or maybe you're just demonstrably wrong about that particular assertion. And seeing as the essence of your argument is predicated on the validity on that assertion, I think it safe to say your argument is flawed.

There are plenty of things to criticize Steam for; plenty of things to complain about. Why people on this forum keep resorting to bringing up the most asinine, pointless, and ultimately inconsequential non-issues baffles me.

 

[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.

To be fair, it's a bit disappointing when a game looks interesting to me and then i find out it's not very good. I don't buy not very good games.

I see no debate about whether games that aren't very good should be sold on Steam. I'd like to think that's because most people have the presence of mind to understand that a games playability is completely subjective, and as such deciding whether games should be sold to the general public based on their own personal subjective opinions of them is silly.

Unfortunately, a number of gamers appear to lack the mental capacity to wrap their heads around this concept, and have assumed that because they, personally, aren't interested in Early Access, that no one else is (or should be), and therefore their public sale on Steam is an affront some sort of imagined gaming standards agreement.

Whether a game is good or not is mostly subjective. Whether or not an Early Access game is finished isn't - otherwise it wouldn't be on Early Access.

I was giving my opinion, which is what the OP asked for. I didn't say that nobody else should buy them either. I know that a lot of people would play an unfinished game (Minecraft was extremely popular when it was still in Alpha phase).

Also, I suggest not insulting people who disagree with you. People get banned here for that.

 

[veloper]

Ignoring all the early access crap is the easy part.

 

[Vrach]

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.

So your problem is "ohnoes, I've wasted 2 seconds of precious clicking time". Meh. I agree they should be separated, but more for the aesthetic sense than anything else. I have no problem with them being promoted much. Worst case scenario, I find out about a game which I might be interested in at a later date. Best case scenario, I find a game I'm willing to support, play and test before it's out. Though the latter is not very likely.

That said, Early Access as a whole is a pile of crap. Paying someone to test the game for them in its earliest stages is a situation gone upside down. At the very least, I believe anyone doing Early Access should offer a serious discount to anyone who buys the game. Or do a "test for free and buy it when it's out", that'd be the most normal way to go about it.

 

[Blaze the Dragon]

I don't get how this can ruin all of steam for somebody. Yes sometimes it's bullshit, and I agree with that completely, but it's so easy to either ignore it completely, or find out it's bullshit before buying. It takes about five seconds to either read some of the reviews on the store page, or google it to find out if the early access is worth it. If either of those don't turn up anything, or anything good, it's probably best to ignore it for now. And you can always just follow the game for awhile, and if they make good progress with it after some time, maybe buying it is worth it. Like with Prison Architect, following it for a fairly short period of time, and I learned they make significant and consistent monthly updates to the game that always add new features and fix problems, and there's a fairly active community behind it.

If you just blindly buy any kind of game, early access or not, without doing at least a little research on it before hand, then you deserve what you get. That's the only scenario I can think of where this can screw you over. Otherwise you can either ignore it, or wait for a week or so to learn how the game your interested in is doing. And since it's not even out yet, that's not really asking much. It's not like you can accidentally buy an Early Access game or anything like that. I mean, I guess if the game you bought doesn't ever get finished, that can suck, but at the same time if you did your research and see that the game has an active community, is popular, is getting good reviews, etc. then you're reducing your odds of that by a large amount.

 

[Ragnar47183]

To many people getting hung up on the tittle and not actually responding to the post.

I have already stated my stance on Early Access and why its a bad idea for it to be on sale.

To sum it up, no they shouldn't be on sale. Early Access is supposed to be for people to support devs or an idea they like. In other words, to buy Early Access you should be specifically looking for an Early Access game. It should not be a feature on the main page as it attracts people that shouldnt be buying it.

There is already a tab on steam specifically for Early Access and there is no reason they can't stay there.

I dont have issues with Early Access as an idea but the execution of this idea on steam leaves a lot to be desired. To often do we see really bad examples of Early Access and shitty devs compared to good ones. For every KSP there are 50 Earth 2066 or Nethers.

If Steam where to actually monitor their content and make sure shit like that wouldn't work then I could see great things coming from this program.

 

[DoPo]

There is no guarantee that the creators will finish the game, or if they do finish, WHEN they actually will. Hell I know games on Steam that have been on early access for about 2 years now. 2 YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT TIME AND STILL IN EARLY ACCESS.

Interesting, especially since Early Access is just over a year old right now. This article [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/steam-introduces-early-access/1100-6405670/] mentions

Valve today announced a new Early Access system

And is dated March 20, 2013. Sure, there were games that were in Steam in technically alpha status (StarForge comes to mind) but they were only a few. As evidenced by the limited amount of games that were on the Early Access scheme at launch

Can somebody actually name me an Early Access game that ended up completed? I mean ones on Steam specifically, not other games such as Minecraft

I can. That article specifically mentions a couple that have since been released: Arma III and Drunken Robot Pornography. I can think of some more: Daylight, Don't Starve, State of Decay and Divinity: Original Sin, although technically the last one is not released yet but it should be in just 4 days.

 

[Rayce Archer]

Has early acces soured me to Steam? No. But it's doing a damn fine job of souring me to early access. Nowadays, thanks to never-get-done disappointments like Grim Dawn (maybe it will be good someday, but right now it's just ugly Victorian Titan Quest), cynical cash-grabs like Planetary Annhilation (Sixty dollar alpha? REALLY?), and the fact that every other game is some unfinished copy of a mobile title, there's nothing that makes me avoid a game harder than the words "early access."

And don't get me started on Greenlight. I've just started downvoting any game on Greenlight that admits it isn't finished. This isn't kickstarter two, go do your work, idiots. In fact between voting down unfinished games, voting down anything ported from Android or IOS, and voting down softcore erotic visual novels and zombie survival games, you'd be within your rights just downvoting EVERYTHING on Greenlight.

 

[Callate]

I don't tend to buy early access games. I still have this bizarre belief that beta testing is something you should be paid for, or at the least, something you shouldn't have to pay for the privilege of doing.

I do appreciate that Steam has gotten a little more up-front about the Early Access thing, though. As it was, it was kind of like your favorite uncle... who has a side business in shady watches.

I guess it's still like that a bit, but at least he's admitting the watches were made in Taiwan.

 

[happyninja42]

Nope, doesn't bother me at all. Most of the stuff out there doesn't catch my interest, Early Access or complete game. And I don't buy games at full price on release anymore anyway. I always wait at least a few months, if not a year or so before buying something. Partly to let the price come down a bit, and also to let the general reviews of the game percolate to give me a decent idea on if I like the game or not. I have long since shed myself of the "omg must buy and play this nooooow!" response to gaming. I can wait, which means I can get a good idea on if a game is good or not, or even just finished or not.

The only game that is Early Access that I'm contemplating buying is Kerbal Space Program. I got the free demo, fiddled with it, liked the mechanics of it for the most part, and then went on youtube to watch some Let's Plays of the full access version. Given the level of detail, and humor, and overall quality for their Early Access, I think it would be worth buying. But I still haven't bought it yet, because as much as I might enjoy playing the game, I've got a ton of other games to play to tide me over until it's released. xD

 

[DaWaffledude]

All I use Steam for is buying games I already want.

Is that strange?

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Very small print? Where are you looking? When you mouse over a game it'll say if it's Early Access under Genre. When you go on a games store page theres a big blue box telling you that it's early access. When you scroll down to read the blurb, you will be informed that the game is in Early Access.

You are informed at literally every single point of information about Early Access.

If some restaurant opened up that found they could stay in business by offering both full, ready-made meals, and partially made meals, and made a point to inform consumers which meals were which, then i would have no issuewhatsoever. In fact i'd be happy that people with a fondness for half-made meals finally have somewhere they can enjoy their hobby.

yepp this, unless you are blind it is impossible to buy a early access game without being informed about it every single step of the way, even when your mouse glances over the game. steam is a digital store, it has no finite amount of space for games to be on there, let alone ones where the dev/publisher is giving EXTRA incentive that day/time for the game (an extra ~15-25% off during that time), so steam puts the best deals it has/thinks the consumers will eat up that day/time.

no one is forcing you to buy these deals, there are plenty of other ones there and most games are already marked down as it is.

Whether a game is good or not is mostly subjective. Whether or not an Early Access game is finished isn't - otherwise it wouldn't be on Early Access.

I was giving my opinion, which is what the OP asked for. I didn't say that nobody else should buy them either. I know that a lot of people would play an unfinished game (Minecraft was extremely popular when it was still in Alpha phase).

Also, I suggest not insulting people who disagree with you. People get banned here for that.

I could also argue that many AAA (mainstream) games that get released are hardly finished, how many games do we end up finding out had cut content or massive shortcuts were used to get the game out on a schedule? how many times have people complained about games being done completely half ass (usually due to pub's putting them on one tight ass schedule) and shouldn't have been released yet, but were?

Early access helps with this, it lets devs keep pumping out more and more updates and aren't given some hard ass deadline to meet and to cut out things they do want to put into their game, while getting feedback from users in the process to see what could be done or what needs to be done. Kerbal space program is leagues ahead of some AAA games I play in terms of completeness and how few bugs I come across, but that is still in early access. a game being "finished" is subjective in many cases, at least when it comes to alot of AAA publishers.

(Don't take this as a personal attack nor do I think you should change your position on early access, I was more or less just giving the extreme opposite of your opinion in terms of debate.)

 

[Ragnar47183]

Very small print? Where are you looking? When you mouse over a game it'll say if it's Early Access under Genre. When you go on a games store page theres a big blue box telling you that it's early access. When you scroll down to read the blurb, you will be informed that the game is in Early Access.

You are informed at literally every single point of information about Early Access.

If some restaurant opened up that found they could stay in business by offering both full, ready-made meals, and partially made meals, and made a point to inform consumers which meals were which, then i would have no issuewhatsoever. In fact i'd be happy that people with a fondness for half-made meals finally have somewhere they can enjoy their hobby.

yepp this, unless you are blind it is impossible to buy a early access game without being informed about it every single step of the way, even when your mouse glances over the game. steam is a digital store, it has no finite amount of space for games to be on there, let alone ones where the dev/publisher is giving EXTRA incentive that day/time for the game (an extra ~15-25% off during that time), so steam puts the best deals it has/thinks the consumers will eat up that day/time.

no one is forcing you to buy these deals, there are plenty of other ones there and most games are already marked down as it is.

Steam doesn't have finite space, but the sale does.

Whether a game is good or not is mostly subjective. Whether or not an Early Access game is finished isn't - otherwise it wouldn't be on Early Access.

I was giving my opinion, which is what the OP asked for. I didn't say that nobody else should buy them either. I know that a lot of people would play an unfinished game (Minecraft was extremely popular when it was still in Alpha phase).

Also, I suggest not insulting people who disagree with you. People get banned here for that.

I could also argue that many AAA (mainstream) games that get released are hardly finished, how many games do we end up finding out had cut content or massive shortcuts were used to get the game out on a schedule? how many times have people complained about games being done completely half ass (usually due to pub's putting them on one tight ass schedule) and shouldn't have been released yet, but were?

Are their AAA games that ship unfinished or buggy? You betcha. However the AAA devs actually have a company at risk here. Chances are they will patch the game if its buggy. The amount it is unfinished is also different from what we are seeing with EArly Access. Early Access would have entire plots or mechanics missing as opposed to a AAA title which maybe cuts a level out to sell as DLC. You also have to keep in mind that some of these Early Access games wont even get finished. As in ever.

Both of these practices are shitty and I want to see them stop but I will take the lesser evil of the AAA over Early Access.

Early access helps with this, it lets devs keep pumping out more and more updates and aren't given some hard ass deadline to meet and to cut out things they do want to put into their game, while getting feedback from users in the process to see what could be done or what needs to be done. Kerbal space program is leagues ahead of some AAA games I play in terms of completeness and how few bugs I come across, but that is still in early access. a game being "finished" is subjective in many cases, at least when it comes to alot of AAA publishers.

(Don't take this as a personal attack nor do I think you should change your position on early access, I was more or less just giving the extreme opposite of your opinion in terms of debate.)

I wouldnt really count that as a good thing. How many kickstarter/Early Access games have we seen fall apart because money ran out? Devs still have a deadline the need to meet. The one were money runs out and they cant support themselves anymore.

Like I have said many times, for every KSP there are so many other shitty shitty shitty Early Access titles.

 

[Doom972]

Very small print? Where are you looking? When you mouse over a game it'll say if it's Early Access under Genre. When you go on a games store page theres a big blue box telling you that it's early access. When you scroll down to read the blurb, you will be informed that the game is in Early Access.

You are informed at literally every single point of information about Early Access.

If some restaurant opened up that found they could stay in business by offering both full, ready-made meals, and partially made meals, and made a point to inform consumers which meals were which, then i would have no issuewhatsoever. In fact i'd be happy that people with a fondness for half-made meals finally have somewhere they can enjoy their hobby.

yepp this, unless you are blind it is impossible to buy a early access game without being informed about it every single step of the way, even when your mouse glances over the game. steam is a digital store, it has no finite amount of space for games to be on there, let alone ones where the dev/publisher is giving EXTRA incentive that day/time for the game (an extra ~15-25% off during that time), so steam puts the best deals it has/thinks the consumers will eat up that day/time.

no one is forcing you to buy these deals, there are plenty of other ones there and most games are already marked down as it is.

Whether a game is good or not is mostly subjective. Whether or not an Early Access game is finished isn't - otherwise it wouldn't be on Early Access.

I was giving my opinion, which is what the OP asked for. I didn't say that nobody else should buy them either. I know that a lot of people would play an unfinished game (Minecraft was extremely popular when it was still in Alpha phase).

Also, I suggest not insulting people who disagree with you. People get banned here for that.

I could also argue that many AAA (mainstream) games that get released are hardly finished, how many games do we end up finding out had cut content or massive shortcuts were used to get the game out on a schedule? how many times have people complained about games being done completely half ass (usually due to pub's putting them on one tight ass schedule) and shouldn't have been released yet, but were?

Early access helps with this, it lets devs keep pumping out more and more updates and aren't given some hard ass deadline to meet and to cut out things they do want to put into their game, while getting feedback from users in the process to see what could be done or what needs to be done. Kerbal space program is leagues ahead of some AAA games I play in terms of completeness and how few bugs I come across, but that is still in early access. a game being "finished" is subjective in many cases, at least when it comes to alot of AAA publishers.

(Don't take this as a personal attack nor do I think you should change your position on early access, I was more or less just giving the extreme opposite of your opinion in terms of debate.)

I think you got me wrong here. I've no intention of making this into a debate or prove that I'm right. I know that many games (including many AAA ones) are released in buggy and unfinished state - I try to avoid those as much as I can by reading reviews before buying a game. Once I see the words "Early Access" I know that I don't have to check up on that game because I already know that it's unfinished and probably buggy, because otherwise it wouldn't be an Early Access game. I don't want to buy unfinished games. Anyone who is willing to buy an Early Access game is free to ignore my subjectve opinion on it.