Early access for 5 years?!

[Compa]

Why is this game not finished yet? Does it still receive updates? Is there anything noticeably missing from the experience that hasn't been addressed? My friend wants me to buy this game and I'm kind of torn because the reviews all seem very good, but games with endless early access are usually a bad sign.

Edit: Just letting ya know I did get the game and played it a bit with my friend, I am pretty impressed with its depth and complexity. Still seems odd to me that it's considered incomplete but it is what it is.

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

0.17 is currently being worked on and can be played as a beta on steam, 0.18 is expected to be a release candidate aka final alpha build.

It still receives frequent updates and aside from the campaign/tutorial and some HD graphics the game is actually complete.

5 years is nothing new for development, Rimworld was 5 years, Prison Architect was 5 years and they both are complete with Factorio unlikely to take more than another year I think.

[Fel]

If you look at the "news" tab you will see that there are frequent buug fix updates.

There is a roadmap of what is left to do before they go out of early access:
https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=678

As you can see what is left is finishing the higher resolution, finishing the "final" GUI, balancing, tutorials and a new campaign.
They are taking their time fixing bugs as they are found, even small ones because they don't rely on the usual "yeah it's full of bugs but it's early access so we get a free pass".

There is no ETA for version 1.0 (every time a developper gives you a date it is either going to be pushed back or forced to release by a publisher even in a state full of bugs), even 0.17 for the default version was already pushed back several weeks as new small bugs are found and they are fixed before giving a week more to find bugs (the loop has been going on for a few weeks now but hopefully the players that are actively bug-hunting will run out of bugs soon).
Finishing touches look fairly easy from the outside, but they are always underestimated by everyone (a small, very edge-case bug might require multiple days of rewrite for example, so it quickly accumulates).


I would argue that the game is well worth playing in the current state, but you will find people saying that even in games that are so broken that they are borderline unplayable, and early access has a lot of games that are far from ready for normal players, so it's not exactly wrong to just put a game in your wishlist so steam tells you when it releases out of early access.
Don't worry about being spammed by "hey, there is a discount", Factorio has this policy of not having discounts, so the only mail you should eventually get is "factorio is now out of early access".

Still, try the latest demo (not the one on steam but the one they updated along with the experimental version), it won't give you access to everything but it should give you a good idea on the state of the game.
https://www.factorio.com/download-demo/experimental

[knighttemplar1960]

The stable version is entirely playable as is and extremely fun. There are fewer bugs in this game than most finished released games. I don't think I've ever seen another game that has as many positive reviews and so few negative ones.

[pat]

Originally posted by Compa:

I'm kind of torn because the reviews all seem very good, but games with endless early access are usually a bad sign.

Why??? Will your gaming experience be enhanced by it being officially released? The game is amazing as it is. If it *never* gets released, that doesn't make it any less fun. Trust the reviews or don't but making your judgement based on the release level is foolish.

[SpidersInABirthdayCake]

Private Pikachu why did you join my beloved core

[AlexMBrennan]

games with endless early access are usually a bad sign.

Why??

Because there are a ton of abandonware games on early access that update once a year while collecting all the free money which should be avoided.

[pat]

I don't care if they abandon it tomorrow and there is never another update. The game, as it sits now, is better than most totally-released games that I've purchased for twice the price. It's not like Diablo or WoW that are totally dependent on a server.

[Fel]

You might not care, but for the many people that were burnt by early access games the question of "will it ever exit early access, and in a real release state not just because the devs abandonned it?" is a very valid question.
There have been plenty of games with an active community and people saying all over the place that outside of a few bugs here and there (but that since it's early access it is normal) the game is well worth buying, and that there are plenty of things coming out soon because the devs said so.

Early access is full of small development teams that are on their first real game, usually taking on more than they can feasibly achieve (especially since they tend to listen to requests from the community, which tends to end up with what is called "feature creep"), and after a year or two of active development things slow down with various reasons given to the players, before getting either a "release" in name only or very infrequent updates (with barely any news around the current development either).

The "survival" genre spawned plenty of examples of these practices over the years as it was a very popular genre at the time but each game needed to be even better than the rest to keep its player base growing.
I stopped following those games but when I was still paying attention the games would have needed full time AAA studios working on them to even have a chance to finish them and not let everyone down on the quality.

[KatherineOfSky]

Personally, I don't understand why the question is asked: OP, just look at the News section, check the updates dates, look at the roadmap. The game is clearly VERY active in development, and is almost at release.

Discussing abandonware is completely irrelevant since Factorio doesn't qualify. A very simple search is all it takes to confirm that.

[John Hadley]

5 years is way too long for early access. Over 80% of the games released on Steam have been released in the last 5 years. That's like 25,000 games. Who wants to wait 5 years for one game when you have 25,000 other choices?

[ShutEye_DK]

Originally posted by pat:

I don't care if they abandon it tomorrow and there is never another update. The game, as it sits now, is better than most totally-released games that I've purchased for twice the price. It's not like Diablo or WoW that are totally dependent on a server.

Yep. Factorio is the best finished unfinished game out there :)

[Kinder Lijk]

Originally posted by John Hadley:

5 years is way too long for early access. Over 80% of the games released on Steam have been released in the last 5 years. That's like 25,000 games. Who wants to wait 5 years for one game when you have 25,000 other choices?

Still lurking on the Factorio forum John? I can see your reasoning hasn't improved

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by John Hadley:

Who wants to wait 5 years for one game when you have 25,000 other choices?

"Why wait when you can whine? And whine. And whine. And whine..." -- John Hadley

[GunRunner89X]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

Personally, I don't understand why the question is asked: OP, just look at the News section, check the updates dates, look at the roadmap. The game is clearly VERY active in development, and is almost at release.

Discussing abandonware is completely irrelevant since Factorio doesn't qualify. A very simple search is all it takes to confirm that.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Unfortunately we're living in an age where so many people run their mouths off with babble and not even think of doing some basic research.

[catheterizedeye]

they are so close to finishing, i predict next year, but the updates this game has had in the years i have played have been amazing.
these devs are devoted to making this game very optimised, its a far cry from the performance last year.
they worked on features for the first couple of years then they optimised and now they are just finishing the graphics to look as good as they can look.
if you pick this game up go on the beta branch and check out the earlier versions to see how good the game looks now, the trailer also shows what the game looked like 2 years ago.