Early Access getting out of control - needs to be stopped

Seriously, how can games continue to ask for $10, $20 up to $60 for early access?

Especially considering,
1. There is no guarantee the game will ever get remotely close to it's promised state
2. There are no refunds. Steam/Valve themselves have said it's your own risk to take and they will not refund and cash, even if the game gets cancelled, let alone not even fulfilling the promises.

What makes it worse is that even Free to Play games are actually charging money for early access. (Snow comes to mind)

Now I've just seen an early access game on Steam charging $24 to play but ridiculously asking for another $15 for DLC. Early access DLC.

Valve need to stop this. They should only be approving games that are much further along in development than the heap they've allowed on.

To me, this is a bigger problem in the industry than the whole freemium transaction games.

 

Early access is a scam, plain and simple. I refuse to touch any games in early access. Valve needs to allow a way to filter them out of the store, but of course they won't do that. Money>customer satisfaction.

 

The garbage that gets through Greenlight thanks to bribing gamers with freebies and the junk in Early Access is proof enough that Valve does not care because it seems that most gamers throw their money at almost anything. Only if we do not spend our money on any of this **** will Valve come to its senses.

 

I've only purchased one Early Access title. And that was Betrayer.
And, I only bought it because of the people making it.

 

The answer is simple. Don't buy them. Seriously just because they are on the Store does not mean you must purchase them. What Valve is doing is no different than what Kickstarter is doing.

 

I find that if you sign up early after the game is announcecd, they normally send you a free key for early access. Happend with Hawken, currently the only mp game i find interesting.

Also, are you getting these early access offers before the rest of us? if not, then wait for some youtube videos and early access reviews to pop up.

 

Yes but it's not just about that.

It is bringing the industry standards down.

It is making games worse. It could potentially make developers less motivated (after all, they could make millions without even producing 10% of their finished idea and just take the money and run).

I mean, let's use DayZ as the best example. They could, today, shut up shop. Close production. Take their 30 million dollars+ and even take the servers down.

Those million + gamers not only have a product that isn't close to finished, but can no longer even play it online again.

Even Sony with Everquest Next Landmark... charging $20, $60 and $100 for packs for their free to play game.

What this does, is actually slow development in my opinion. You not only have to keep these 'founders' (what a joke the head of Everquest is in the video telling people they'll get their name in the credits) happy by fixing stuff along the way in the alpha but you will likely be chopping and changing your original vision based on feedback. Which will not always be a good thing.

Yes, people should be voting with their wallets. And I hope something changes soon.

 

industry standards dropped the moment the xbox360 came out and people started paying with mspoints to buy game trailers.

or did we all magically forget about that.


You also need to remember that gamers with an even just avg iq are not the industries target audiance anymore.

 

kick starter keeps me in a job, the company i work for produces sci fi scenary for mantic games kick starters deadzone and upcoming mars attacks...i do the majority of resin casting my self that we provide to mantic games.

Every one has a free choice, if people cant control what they spend then thats there problem, on the other hand if people dont buy in to kickstarters and early access then games just wont happen.

 

No one is forcing you to buy these early access beta's...so I kind of fail to understand your complaints?

Don't want to pay for them, then don't. What's the problem?

 

This is what I posted in the dayz thread a while back, works in here as well.

The main issue I have is that everyone who buys this is just further supporting the destruction of the gaming industry.

Games are already being released as a buggy unfinished mess with a **** them we have the money we'll fix it later attitude (hence the discontinuation of demo's as you'd see the mess and not buy it).

If people show they are willing to pay ridiculous prices for basically none functional pre-alphas. It just shows we support and will pay for a broken disaster.

 

Next time, read before commenting. You just look like dip**** otherwise.

 

They did what??!

+1

 

The problem with kickstarter and early access is that they have no QA AND QC. It will kills the industry eventually when we have abundant amount of ****ty games that is simply unfinished or simply outright lies about feature. Kickstarter and Early Access are still new concepts, Steam as a service provider should provides a mean to consumer / supporter to ask for refunds if said developers were found guilty of false advertisement, lack of development, etc.

We, as a supporter and investor of the games, have no means to punish bad developers / scumbags that take our money. Investors in the real world have limited options to pursue the scammers through legal action, but kickstarter and early access is an wild west right now.

However, i think the real and bigger problem is that valve / steam does not have any QC on their store.

 

The problem is that you can't filter them out of the store. They're advertised and sold exactly the same as any finished game, which is absurd. All they have is that blue tag, which isn't indicative of how far along it is in development or what features it has finished.

 

4/10 top sellers on my steam store page are Early Access and Dayz at #1 since before winter sale 2013! Either people do not understand what they are buying or simply don't care. I'd say it is more of the former seeing the frequent complaints and "it's early access .. DUH!" replies in their forums.

 

/thread right here.

 

Chocolate. They need to stop putting this all over the supermarkets so ppl dont get so fat.

Seriously. We can't control ourselves. Plz don't put chocolate in the shelves. Same with cigarettes btw. Ppl's lives could be so healthy without greedy supermarket managers putting bad stuff in their shelves.

 

Ive bought two early access games, assetto corsa and war for the overworld.

AC because even in its alpha state it was an amazing piece of software.

and WftO because EA are evil greedy and stupid and wont ever make a real dk game.

read what your getting into tho dur, and do not accept anything that is overly vague as a business plan or a road map for a game.

 

You ppl do realize that DayZ is a bad example right? It started as a 1man mod for ArmA2 and it STILL is.

Get ArmA2 (a product that works) and download the mod instead of buying the standalone version ffs.