People just buy an early access game like they buy a normal game and treat it like that’s the game."
As they should tbh
They shouldn’t buy it based on future expectations that may never arrive
They should buy and okay it for what it is.
If it gets even better. Great. If not, they know what they paid for going in.
I see a lot of games that should be “early access” that instead opt for a less functional “full” release.
Iirc that’s good as it allows for a full refund at release
You can refund early access games too
Yes but not after x hours iirc. But when they go full release you get a no reason refund reset
The biggest issue I have is with devs releasing games for full price in early access then to never finish it (like ksp2) or just spam it with new content instead of fixing bugs (like Ark). In most cases it’s not the player base treating it like it’s a finished game, it’s the devs selling it as a nearly finished game (while it’s not even at a playtesting state) then to move on onto a new project as soon as sales drop leaving it unfinished, scamming the players.
Steam early access became an excuse to release unfinished junk. The sport for devs is to create content which is a bit over 2 hours, so it’s past the refund period. Think of long loading screens, unskippable intro videos and conversations, long waiting time for connecting to servers etc, extremily long unskippable instructions during the mandatory tutorial, so the actual crappy gameplay won’t be seen within the first 2 hours.
There are also devs that do try and mean well, they usually sell the game at a discount in early access to compensate the player base for bug testing for them (like ksp1).
Sadly the majority are just scammers.
How does Steam even allow paid DLC content for an early access game… Wtf.
Yeah, IMO they should either be priced cheaply because anyone who buys is essentially testing the game. Then it’s an ok gamble IMO, cheap game that might never get better and could be full of bugs.
Or they should be priced higher to attract people who specifically want to support the idea and avoid review boms from people who expect a full game even though it says “early access”. But this model then puts a requirement for communication and transparency with those who did support it, as well as a commitment to release what they did produce as open source if they end up abandoning the project.
Though I think there should be some buyer beware involved. Read reviews before you buy, especially negative ones, and look for trends (to avoid being overly influenced by one reviewer’s bias). It’s impossible to predict which will continue being developed and which will fail (and out of those that fail, which ones intended it from the start and which ones were trying to make a great game in good faith but it just didn’t work out), so buy early access games for what they currently are rather than what you hope they’ll be. Even if they do get finished, that final product might not be what you’re hoping for.
Other than banning the account after it happens, I can’t really see any way to punish the bad faith actors without catching people with low resources just trying to make a game despite the system being stacked against them.
“This continuing migration, I’ll call it, of hyper-casual mobile culture, and hyper-casual gaming culture, and live service gaming culture is washing through Steam right now. Now the culture has changed and early access, essentially, 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.”
Personally, I don’t buy early access games ever. I know I’ll likely only play a game once; and I don’t want to “ruin” my experience with the unfinished version. I’m happy to wait for full release.
However, I think Buckley is off-mark here. It’s got nothing to do with “hyper casual culture”, which sounds completely made up by the way. It’s simply the media pipeline for gaming has changed.
Many people learn about games, especially indie games, through streamers or independent content creators now. Those content creators are then incentivised to jump on a game as soon as it’s available to get ahead of the hype. It’s not economical to sit back and wait for every game to leave early access before playing / reviewing it; they would just get left behind.
That has the side effect of pulling the trigger on the hype train way earlier than 10 years ago. Users see their favourite streamer playing and want to play too. 10 years ago early access was, as in the article, feedback for the developers. In 2026, your game kind of has to be presentable and “mostly done” in early access, with some polish left to go. Very different landscape and reception.
For better or worse, publishers and developers need to adapt to this market reality.
Hades 2 handled early access really well. The game was mechanically pretty much done, but they were still working on the rest of the story, weapons, and upgrades. The game played very similarly when I originally got it and after three content patches and the eventual launch. To your point, though, I’m honestly not even sure if I ever went back and finished the story.
I think most games seem to handle it pretty well, actually. It’s a tough balance to strike, though. Having to carefully manage and schedule essentially two releases seems difficult. v0.5 and v1.0, where the first release is often to secure additional funding to make it the whole way; especially for indie games
Hades 1 early access got me through the pandemic lock down.
Tbh they had such a vibrant community discord, different branches for you to try if you wanted to help improve the game (“see if the technical demo runs well on your hardware”) lots of fun artwork bonuses, little surveys and votes, peeks behind the scenes, and the placeholder content was so charming too.
I loved playing the game as it was changing and getting better, even if i had to shun the Chaos Shield once they nerfed it so it wasn’t broken any more.
I also haven’t gotten to the end of Hades story content and I’m not sure i ever will.
I have no idea how many hours of playtime it would theoretically take to see every line of dialog and do everything possible in that game.
I can’t believe Valheim just left EA. It’s literally been over 5 years!
7 Days to Die made it a few months shy of 11 years in Early Access
And tons of people said exactly that would happen the day it was announced.
Personally I treat early access like kickstarters at this point, I just avoid them by and large because of the rampant issues with delivery.
Unless the policy changes for early access and allow me to request a full refund if the game is abandoned and allow for something like a week of evaluation after 1.0 to determine if crap was released, I doubt I would buy most early access games at this point.
Early Access makes them money so it’s now a way to make money even before your game is done. Originally it was to help infuse cash to finish the title without needing investors.
Honest advertising can fix the perception problem. Just outright tell people that it has crashes and/or other bugs and misses content right from the start. Provide a playable demo of the current state. Or relax the refund period to GOG’s 30 days-no-questions-asked.
Early Access is great for games which are already fun to play but unfinished. For that the game needs to be in alpha or beta.
Funding the alpha is what Kickstarter is for.What does “early access” provide?
What are its shortcomings?
How should it be fixed?
It usually means the game is cheaper than the release price. So it’s like getting it on sale. And you can play it while it’s still undergoing changes and testing. That’s all I know
I’ve treated many games in early access like normal games and had lots of fun - which I would call successful purchases. To me EA means that not all content is there, the game is unfinished but playable. It works better for some games than others:
Timberborn in EA was playable completely and since its a sandbox, hard to notice missing content. Similar with Factorio, Valheim and Rust (I actually miss EA Rust a bit).
Hades, Baldur’s Gate 3 were story heavy games so they did rely on being complete. Maybe a little less so for Hades. They were good experiences, but I kept playing them at a minimum and waited for full release.
Early access is like a Gachapon. You may get something you like, you might get trash. The trash might become great years later or on the contrast you might hate what you liked beforehand with final-ish changes. It’s a gamble, even triple A companies do this. Games like Fallout 4 or WoW changed the game to prepare for their new games or dlc that’s to be released.
