So many people buying into early access titles do not realize how many games never get released regardless how much work was already put into them, and because of a lot more reasons than “we ran out of money”. Personal health of the main dev, disagreements within a dev team, financial issues, Real Live™ happening, hardware failure and data loss and so on can all stop a project before it can get a 1.0 release. Before early access, these titles simply never appeared on the market, preventing people getting burnt.

I think early access has helped to bring more projects to a final 1.0, but financing is just one part of the equation, and many gamers do not realize that. I only buy EA titles that are very obviously passion projects that have had regular and meaningful updates for a while and have a realistic roadmap that doesn’t suffer from feature creep. Everything else i am interested in, i simply wait - better to pay 10 bucks more for a finished project than 10 bucks less for something that never will get finished.

It lost its meaning long ago when early access did not have buyer protection after a length of time that gave the option for refunds, so more people treated them as games to be viewed as regular releases you buy if you are happy with its current state.

The model was broken by publishers, not consumers. Releasing early access without an actual roadmap or intention to ever release fully has become was too normal. So of course early access has lost its meaning

People just buy an early access game like they buy a normal game and treat it like that’s the game.

Yeah, because devs release an early access game then treat it like that’s the game.

Palworld dev doesn’t understand Early Access, blames the consumer. I haven’t bought palworld, nor plan to, unless pocket pair fixes their other game which has been stuck in Early Access for years and still is a buggy unfinished mess, Craftopia. Consumers have come to understand that they can’t rely on developers to fulfill the vision they are selling with their EA game, all they can do is trust the game that is out now.

I, for one, love early access games. There is exactly a single game I bought in EA that had its vision canned, Wizard with a Gun, and that had to do with publisher problems. I see EA as a way to get involved with the game development, and to fund games that I actually like and enjoy. So far, even games that have been stuck in EA forever are highlights in my gaming library (looking at you Exanima and Zomboid). But I’m usually okay with replaying games every few years to see what’s up and different. I know that is not for everyone, but I’d still say to give it a shot if you have the time, you might surprise yourself. But don’t focus on the end, focus on the present of the game, engage with it, yes, but don’t bother being a completionist. Just have fun.

Some Personal Anecdotes about Early Access:

My first foray into Early Access was with Exanima, bought it in early 2020 during the Covid era. It has been in development since 2013, it’s a crazy complex project, but the game that was out in 2020 was already something you could easily play for 100+ hours. That’s a full game with bonus game coming for it. I’ve recently replayed the game, and it’s in a much more polished state, probably coming out with 1.0 in the next 1~2 years. I super recommend it to anyone who likes dungeon crawls/souls lite games, it might seem crazy to have a game be 10+ years in development, but the devs are indeed cooking, and it’s fairly cheap on steam. The best part of Early Access for me is getting involved with the community (not in excess though…), talking to people about the game in its current state, discussing strategies, opinions, ideas, ways to improve the game, and leaving feedback that I know might be listened to, instead of just glanced at.

Then I started playing Valheim in 2021 with a friend, and it was a blast. My first playthrough took around 180h before we finally defeated the 5th and final boss, Yagluth, at the time. I still vividly remember my first encounter with a deathsquito, it killed me instantly as I was trying to read its name, and my buddy had to run for his life. In 2024 I hopped back in with another friend after the Ashlands update, and we literally spent the entire year of 2024 playing the game, rocking a total of 260h over many many weekends before defeating the Ashlands boss. I sit now at 440h played with that game, all in Early Access. And I’ll selfhost a new server in my homelab starting this friday, we’ll invite as many friends as we can, and try to conquer the entire game again. I’m super excited for it.

As a final anecdote, let’s talk about V-Rising. I had been invited to playtest the game in 2022 I think, or late 2021. I loved it, it was simply amazing. Early Access came out, I bought the game and convinced many a friend of mine to buy and play with me. We played that game as a group every year, for three years in a row until 1.0 came out. It’s, in my opinion, the best ARPG with a top-down camera in the market. Combat is crispy, bosses are great, pvp is ridiculously fun (I prefer it to PoE2). And it was incredible to see the game get more and more polished over the years. Bosses would get shuffled around in level and rewards, new bosses would be added, new areas, new weapons/items… Every year that we replayed, the game was still fresh, challenging and growing. I still plan to spin a new server maybe next year so that we can go for a final run of that game at our own pace before a V-Rising 2 comes out (which has sort of been announced already, not sure if that’ll be the name though).

In conclusion: early access can be extremely fun, if you’re interested in getting involved with the game’s development, leave feedback, come back in a year or two, and enjoy the journey more than the destination.

Ironic considering Palworld spent quite a while in EA and still came out of it as a buggy poorly optimized mess.

Don’t get me wrong, the gameplay is fun, but it is not smooth. One week in they killed all custom resolutions because a little bit of Japanese text would crash the game FFS.

I am fine with early access as long as the price is reflective of ‘the game it is’ instead of ‘the game it could be’.

At least those games are marked as Early Access. I personally do not treat Early Access games as normal and in most cases wait until they get a version 1.0 release. This is much better than a fake v1.0 release of AAA games.

People just buy an early access game like they buy a normal game and treat it like that’s the game."

Too many times, that ends up being the truth anyway because the game doesn’t see much additional development…

TBH I’m a bit burned out from early access anyway, even if the game is actually good at 1.0 I just don’t want to play unfinished games all the time, it’s annoying to replay the first part multiple times, when it’s the type of game I’d play through exactly once (which is most games that I play).

One of my favourite games is also experiencing this right now. It was released in early access and people were complaining on day one about there being not enough content and some are still complaining after only the second update. Like, come the fuck on.

Honestly I’ve never understood the early access program except as a cash grab.

Its partly why for our indie title hermertia wars we are making playtests free and ubiquitous on our steam page instead of launching as early access ;)

Windrose seems to be one of the latest scams. They haven’t updated their game in months, and it’s just the very first release.

╮(︶▽︶)╭ stop hosting in Steam