Early access should always have been a limited state, where you have 1 or 2 years to release the game. Then if the game isn’t ready, it is unable to be purchased until it is released.
Then if the game isn’t ready, storefronts chargeback every purchase of the game**** FTFY
Which probably wouldn’t work well. All it would do is make the game “release” when the time is up no matter what making it harder to know if you are buying a complete product or not. It’s not like valve will go in and kick a game out if they don’t think it’s complete enough, or even be able to define that in a way that wouldn’t just be arbitrary…
Yes, pros and cons to both approaches. Most games release unfinished anyway these days or some just sit in early access for years and years,
And it refunds buyers.
Honestly, there’s only one early access game that I ever felt was worth it. BG3 did a lot with their time in EA. I’m sure there are others but my guess is that they’re not in genres I care about.
Beam.NG is a rare one that been in early access since 2013 and has continually put out updates the entire time. It’s a completely different game than where it started with hundreds of new features and dozens of new cars. One of the greats imo.
They only had the first act, then it released filled with bugs, which weren’t even exclusive to act 2 and 3. It still feels like that game is in early access, the release should have been an early access update honestly.
It still feels like that game is in early access,
Crazy take tbh
For real. I think the biggest “issues” I encountered were just due to me fucking around and getting stuck behind a boulder, or teleporting somewhere I shouldn’t have been yet and skipping a cutscene because I stormed right past an NPC. But even those aren’t really “issues” per se, because if you want to avoid a particular NPC or plot line in D&D, you should have that choice as a player.
I still have high standards for video games, so I am often disappointed. I started a BG3 playthrough with friends recently and came across the same issues I did a year ago and new ones.
Valheim. The early access release was a more complete game than most complete games.
Yes and then they have released like one meaningful update in 4 years.
They’ve had a few actually. Three new biomes (plains wasn’t really a thing when it first released), three new bosses for those biomes, all kinds of structures and craftables, some new mechanics (you can lay siege to Ashlands fortresses + magic)
It’s gotten quite a bit of love over time. Just not as often as some other games. Which is fine, because it is still actively being worked on.
I’d like to add Factorio to this list.
Counterpoint: There are early access games that have been under continuous active development for many years, but are also worth playing in their unfinished state. BeamNG.drive - a highly realistic physics-based driving simulation and sandbox - for example has been available for purchase for almost ten years and since then, it has seen quality updates in regular intervals. While this isn’t the developers’ only revenue stream (they are also making simulation software aimed at professionals), word of mouth and the resulting influx of new players is enough to finance the development.
While I’m in complete agreement, and I’m a huge fan of Beam (originally bought it before it was even on Steam), at some point you need to draw a line for full release, and anything beyond that is feature creep.
I think it’d be good practice for everyone to have a time limit in place, since the long term EA games that turned out well are more outliers than the norm.It’s true. There are good examples of it being used properly, but I still don’t think games should be in early access for more than, let’s say, 2-3 years. Games should be at a point where they can be released in that time frame before even coming into early access.
another great example is satisfactory. it was in satisfactory for a long time and the result is amazing.
It was on Epic Games before that too, but it is still incredibly rough around the edges, even after launch. From listening to the dev logs, it seems they made a lot systems quickly initially and then out grew them and spent a lot of time rewriting poor code, there was quite a bit of mismanagement with Satisfactory.
