Excellent feature. One of the first things I check anyways when buying early access games is when the last news post was.
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.
I definitely agree. Part of me wants to say the few gems that come out of it make it worth it
I wonder what the threshold for this warning is. I follow a lot of great early access games that only put out big updates 1-3 times a year.
why even have a threshold, just tell when the last update has been and update it automatically. That way you could also have more reliable data about patterns of the dev and see if they just have really long update cycle.
The examples I’ve seen are a year+ with no updates. Not definitive, but I highly doubt they’re doing this for the cases you’re talking about.
A great feature. I worry when Valve will stop being consumer friendly as they are the only company that still is.
being consumer friendly has brought them more money than any exploitative behaviour ever could have. Getting rid of that would be like butchering a goose that makes golden eggs just so you can get some extra money from the meat.
This might happen if GabeN dies, because it is mostly him and his mentality that leads to consumer friendly decisions inside VALVe
might happen if GabeN dies
He won’t die before releasing Half Life 3, which means he’s immortal.
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.
The cause of enshittification is essentially the shareholder pressure for endless and exponential growth that comes from public ownership.
Valve is a privately held company, and as long as it remains that way it doesn’t have those perverse incentives.
Gabe will never allow Valve to go public as long as he is in control, but after he is gone who knows.
Epic Games is also a private company… and they’re the posterchild for “fuck the consumer, we want a monopoly.”
It might have something to do with Epic being partly owned by Tencent and Disney, but it more likely comes down to the philosophies of their CEOs. Gabe came from a corporate shithole and runs with the diametrically-opposed view that good service = loyal customers = profit. Sweeney, not so much.
I doubt Epic would give out the number of free games they do if they were public. Investors hate anything that takes more than a quarter to give returns.
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What’s interesting to me about this and other features is that they all actually benefit Valve, as long as the EU/Australia require them to issue refunds upon request. Without refunds then these features are simply charity, but presently it’s good business.
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 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!
There’s a few indie shooters I’ve played that are officially EA, but have hours of gameplay in their first play though and are very replayable. Selaco is an absolute joy with 9 hours on the main campaign and 22 hours for 100%. Officially EA with only the first episode out.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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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.
Which is fair. Most people should not buy early access, and should wait for the devs to declare their project release ready. Early access buying is all risk and responsibility (to post feedback, to update Steam review if it’s out of date withe the project, to understand the individual project’s development pace, etc), with a lot of factors a buyer should take into account, that most people genuinely should not need to care about or wait for.
There are an insane number of Steam games already released to buy and play.
DayZ Standalone for you as well?
I can’t remember, but snow was one of them.
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Oh, that was very much needed, for sure.
A good change. I wish it was more prominent on the page, though.
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.
There is a steamer named Will Smith as well.
Oh, I see. Thank you for the information.
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Greenlight was far worse of a problem.
I’d rather let all the shovelware onto Steam than gatekeep even one legitimate developer.
That’s not how it worked
Yes it was. Plenty of developers who didn’t already have an established audience to rally votes from complained about how difficult it was to even get noticed. And it invited a lot of shady tactics as other developers gamed the system to bribe or even bot votes, because if you’re not doing that then your game will be left behind as your competition gets Greenlit first. Many perfectly good games got stuck in “Greenlight Hell” for a very long time.
Greenlight era had a lot of problems, and these problems are well documented. Valve dropped it for a reason. Don’t start with the revisionist history.
Greenlight saw one of the biggests floods of shovel ware in Steam’s history. The store hasn’t actually recovered since.
That doesn’t make sense since the community as a whole would have to support a game before it hit the steam store. So… idk what you’re talking about. Grenlight was like a “hey guys I made this game where you play a stick man and you do a gem puzzle to unlock a flash animation naked furry girl!” No one would allow that to be greenlot, therefore it would never be on steam
After greenlight every fucking pos on the planet has made some kind of $2 scam game making Nintendo’s eShop look normal.
No greenlight = anyone and everyone can put anything on steam and sell it.
What you don’t remember where the armies of bot accounts it brought into Steam. People would pay for votes and get scams and money grabs greenlit while indies couldn’t even get a foot on the door. YouTube channels made series about playing the shovelware and mocking the system. There’s a reason it was done away with.
Yeah this still happens except they sell puzzle games now.
cesspool of bullshit games
You sure you aren’t confusing Steam with the EA App?
(god that name is completely braindead)
EA has EA games… I don’t get the jab?
It’s because EA games have been regurgitated trash since like 2010
2010 is generous. They’ve been shoveling shitware for much longer than that!
I do hold nfs hp 2010 as well as nfs mw 2012 in a good light, so that’s why “like” 2010 :p
What games do you play?
I also want to k kw which games you’re talking about lol. Besides sports games. Because the last 10 years was like … battlefield 2042, dragon age and maybe Andromeda was in that timeline. Maybe anthem, a fun and unique game ruined by the community.
Or are you just mad that EA games have black people and women in them?
The NFS series (“look how they massacred my boy”), The Sims, Burnout mostly. Battlefield as well, I’ve watched that series implode from the sidelines instead of in my face.
O.o @ your last sentence there. I’m a flaming gay furry, diversity is great.
Many great games wouldn’t be released without the current system giving them a chance. Shovelware is a problem, but I think it’s a fairer alternative.
Doubtful
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.
Whenever I buy early access I ask my self “if the devs evaporated and development stopped permanently tomorrow, would I still buy this game?” It has snagged me some games I love like valheim, window kill, palworld and blade & sorcery. It’s also gotten me some games I enjoyed but still felt like a paid a good price for it, and also dodged a few bullets because the games look fun but weren’t complete and I didn’t buy
This is great advice.
And plenty of early access games that die on the vine. Pay to be an alpha tester? You do you.
And you don’t want to? You do you. You’re the one trying to suggest an outright ban, then you suggest a personal solution. Take your own advice.
Game developers also like to get paid, if early access wouldn’t be an option we would have far less indie games and far more half baked 1.0 releases. No one is forcing you to buy ea titles.
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.
Yeah, I don’t buy early access for this reason except in extremely rare circumstances.
But that doesn’t mean we should prevent others from buying into early access. Let people make their own decisions!
I’ve enjoyed early access games that are still in development. Most notably Ultrakill, which I regard as one of the best action games of all time. Yeah it would suck if Ultrakill would never reach its conclusion, but I’d rather have a great but unfinished game than no game at all.
Maybe hold back 50% of the revenue to only be released to the devs when the game full releases
That just incentives devs to just push out whatever mess they currently have and say the game is released, and they’d do it unless Valve wanted to start moderating game again. At least right now the abandoned games are still labelled early access.
So, when a game releases, buyers get the option to partially refund or commit, and valve uses the commit money to pay the refunds, so devs only make money if they keep more than half of their buyers, and customers have to consciously deal with sinking money into a potentially failed project.
At least right now the abandoned games are still labelled early access.
Most early access failures eventually just call themselves released at some point, so we’re no better off as far as that.
Early access games are usually sold for cheaper. I think it’s a good deal: pay smaller price for a fun but partial game. Maybe it will turn into a good full game? The developers get feedback directly from customers. It’s a win win.
