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Early Access is a fucking blight on the marketplace
it's a double edged sword really,
it allows some games to get enough funding to be finished. indi devs can basically start with a strong demo & then work on their project with an actual budget
and it allows other games to never be finished and still sold, indi devs can start strong, and then give up, and still make passive income out of people who don't scroll down to reviews to check if people aren't complaining about the game being abandoned, or in forever-early-acess-hell
The funding is great for indy devs. My main issue with it to be honest isn't even unfinished games. It's that you're essentially paying to be a beta tester. A position normally that has to be paid for is now somehow turning a profit it's really weird
eh not quite, a paid beta tester is hired to create standardised, and well written bug reports. when someone buys an early access game it's the same as a game foundriser with a donation tier that gives them access to beta versions, you're not required (and barely even expected) to provide well written bug reports. quite frankly i think it'd be an infuriating experience if a dev decided to relay on their early access players' "bug reports" for their beta testing, since most of those are just a screenshot of their game with words "found bug fix please", what did they do to get that bug? they don't remember. what's their specs? they say windows10. what version of game were they running? they say they took the screenshot 10 minutes ago (have they updated the game? maybe, maybe not)
Caveat emptor
I've not been upset with any of the Early Access games I've purchased, because I make sure to research the game before I buy. Just off the top of my head, factorio, satisfactory, and rimworld are all games that I purchased in early access and made it to full release and were worth a purchase well before release. Hell, even games like Dyson Sphere Program hasn't been fully released and I've gotten more time out of that then multiple full games.
It should be marketed as beta test. I get not wanting to give out game for free or needing some funding to finish it, but its still an unfishished product.
IMO it should be something like so;
- Free to play for 5 hours or up to a certain level/about 20% play complete depending on the game style.
- pay to access rest of game. Full refund available any time or up to 15hrs/80% of game. With warning that stops game play until player is fully notified "if you keep playing past this point, you can not refund"
- players can be rewarded for participating as a beta tester if they actually provide constructive feedback.
- those rewards could be simply unlocking more time to play/levels, and a certain point they "earn" the whole game. Rewards can not be in-game advatages. Cosmetics is okay.
- Once game is released, standard refund rules take affect.
- if you paid for early access then it transfers to released game. If Dev try something sketchy like list the game under a new store page, any one who downloaded it regardless of payment will get a free key and Dev will be banned from listing anything early access.
- reviews from early access will be separated from release to keep outdated user feedback out of the mix.
Just throwing out a few ideas, trying to keep it fair to both dev and player, but obviously I'm not a game business expert.
pay to access rest of game. Full refund available any time or up to 15hrs/80% of game. With warning that stops game play until player is fully notified "if you keep playing past this point, you can not refund"
That would fuck over devs so hard I think
That's kind of the point. If you don't want to make the commitment to finishing the game, don't charge people for early access.
You could make hurt less by offering partial refunds -100% refund at 50% complete -20% refund at 80% complete And whatever's in between.
The entire point is to encourage the developer to keep making the game. If the developer stops developing or starts makes garbage their funding will be at risk.
The main concern is collections. If the developer runs away with the money, or just runs out of funds and can't finish and can't refund everybody, then yeah its kinda fucked.
Yes. In my opinion it's fine that they want to make some money with their unfinished game. Game development is expensive and esspecially for smaller studios early acces is one way to get funds before the game is finished. What I have a problem with is that some early access games are still full price for an unfiniahed game. And a lot worse than that are those games that release as finished games, but that are not in a state you would expect. So basically early access in disguise.
Without really access we wouldn't have Baldur's Gate 3. It's a system that can be abused, sure, but it's one of the few tools available for indie devs to be able to make larger scale games on scales that can compete with the big guys.