In steam, is there any guarantees for these early access games? I mean is there a specific policy that an indie developer must complete all the promises made or could they just take the money and never update it again or put out a half done title on the propose release date and call it done? I'm just leary about paying for a beta still in production, the whole concept of paying for beta's just seems odd to me but I did purchase one a few weeks back. Paranormal, it has a long ways to go to meet promises and no changes so far with only a month to go for release day. So that's why i'm leary about buying more like this but there is a couple atm i'm interested in checking out.
I've been wondering this as well, I never bought one though but I think that valve has signed some kind of contract with them so the scenaria you said will not affect customers.
I hope so cause atm, Paranoia has a ton of things to do to meet promises in a month. I suppose I'll just wait before purchasing more since I didn't find any further info or guarantees of final releases.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/233250/ Planetary Annihilation..this game was 90 usd something in Alpha. now in BETA it is 60 usd... and early access.. iam amazed
It was to make it fair to the kickstarter people, but it's still mad. Not going to buy it until full release, at which point it will be a normal price (something like £20)
Myself I'd avoid pay for early access games. It's like paying to be a beta tester, no thanks! Most times you have to get down and dirty and start editing game files yourself just to resolve some gripe that affects your game play in a unique situation or wait for an unpaid devoted community to fix the bugs that apply to you. (in some respects I suppose that's not much different then any fully released game these days ..lol) The other dislike about early access is most those (not all) that release a game as early access seem to think it's ok to release glitchy code in the wild and charge for it with the mentality of hiding behind "But hey that's ok, we stated Early Access!"
I've noticed that there seems to be more and more games coming out on Steam with Early Access. Initially, I thought that this was just a way to play games a few weeks earlier but apparently some games have release dates that are months away, e.g. War of the Vikings is scheduled for quarter 1 2014 (January to March 2014). I'm now wondering if it's just a way for developers to finance their games while they're still making them? I mean it's a clever idea but there's a risk as others have pointed out that the developer may decide, for whatever reason, to not finish the game, in which case you've then wasted some of your money. At the moment, I cannot decide whether Early Access is really a good thing or not. No doubt, time will tell as I currently have early access to State of Decay, which seems to be surprisingly complete as a full game even if it is a bit lacking in polish.
State of Decay is somewhat of a exception though, it's the already completed X360 build with the latest title update but it's lacking PC controls and a few other things but as a game it's otherwise feature complete. (Whereas other titles might be in pre-alpha stage if even that.)
AFAIK, Kickstarter backer have to pledge for at least 90 dollars in order to get the early access. Giving early access to steam user with less money is like backstabbing those who fund the project at kickstarter.
What do you mean lacking pc controls. Natively the game does support KB and Mouse, just there's no in game configure or notify what KB / Mouse keys do. I wrote a key binder gui and all my keyboard and mouse keys work pretty sweet in SoD game. More info here if curious: http://forums.undeadlabs.com/showthread.php?34504-SODBK-key-bindings-in-a-simple-gui There's another Early Access game along the lines of SoD/Dayz that I'm almost tempted for and sounds promising, but I'm resisting as I really don't want another unfinished project game at this point in time. The Dead Linger: http://store.steampowered.com/app/245130/ Funny the words Early Access make it sound like you can play a full game before anyone else. But reality most these games are riddled with bugs and incomplete. Most Early Access games you couldn't even class as Alpha state. Your only chance of ever finishing the game is to wait out a long period of time and hope the devs get it sorted quickly.
Not matter if it is good or bad, right now it is way too unclear for customers IMO. For the unknown user Early Access probably sounds like some pre-order offer or something, and I doubt a lot of people read the FAQ - which should be linked to more clearly also. Before you purchase a game there should be a big red banner that states something like: "Warning, the game you are about to purchase is not intended for release yet, may contain critical bugs and errors and could miss features and content planed for the actual launch of the game." Also think there should be two way payment plan since you don't know how the game will develop or if planned features get scraped again or patched in after release. Like, you pay $5 for the Early Access and upon release you pay an additional $5 to get the full game, which then normaly goes for a higher price like 15 to 20 bucks.
