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If you cant/want to pay for acces to a game that is not finished yet nobody will force you to do that and it does you no harm if others play in early access. So i cant really see why you weould feel the need to make this thread and rage
Wrong game to start this fitty impo.
Given that many games are a finite experience, a free alpha/beta test just isn't an option for the studios of those games as it would directly impact their final sales numbers, particularly among Steam's refund crazed users. Early Access allows studios to fund development as it happens, giving them the capital to hire the workforce needed to complete the project without being beholden to a publisher or investor for those funds. The studio can also complete their vision of the game in the time frame needed rather than the one expected by investors and publishers.
I've never had a single crash from this game and have encountered far less bugs than Fallout 4 or Cyberpunk2077 with the former being released 7 years ago.
And with over 1000 hours played, I can say that I definitely have gotten my monies worth from this.
That is absolutely not how Early Access successfully happens, lmao! I know it's a common pitch -- "fund your game while you develop it!", but I've been a a supporter of in-development games since well before Early Access was formally codified as A Thing on Steam, and I can tell you that in every single case I've been involved in where the devs were relying on sales during Early Access to help fund finishing the game, those games have flopped or worse.
Early Access absolutely can work, but it's not a viable source of funding for a game. Look at, say, Klei Interactive, who have launched multiple highly successful Early Access titles (both full standalone games, and major expansion DLCs for existing games) -- their use of Early Access is to get feedback and focus-grouping on features, and to give Early Access players a unique experience of getting to watch the game unfold and evolve as they play it.
lots of people in this thread like to talk about "typical" Early Access games like crash-and-burn is the typical outcome; and then argue that Satisfactory isn't typical because it's still going strong. I'd disagree with both arguments (although I DO agree that Satisfactory is still going strong; and I think it will continue to get stronger.) I think that Early Access is probably a horrible fit for a game like Satisfactory, and yet, it's paradoxically probably the only way that a game like Satisfactory could ever be made.
Let's remember, for a moment, that Coffee Stain Studios have experience with Early Access already both as dev-studio and publishers; they helped Deep Rock Galactic and other successful Early Access titles through the gauntlet already and Goat Simulator, while not technically an Early Access game, went through the "live updates, games-as-a-service" cycle that Early Access games all have to exist in. Goat Simulator is a bit of an outlier because it was never intended to be a big game with lots of resources poured into it; when it became a hit sensation even as a janky prototype "training game" for the studio they lucked into a situation where they could release content for the game over time and the community got a major benefit from that model because it allowed the game (and its memes) to evolve over time. And good for them! I wish every studio had a Goat Simulator moment to help fund their ambitious, experimental future games so we could have more of the likes of Satisfactory -- by which I mean, games that AAA studios wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.
But that only works if we're real about how Early Access works, and what it's good for. It's proven itself to be a way to let players get hands-on with the bare bones of the game, and to test out core gameplay loops and generate a lot of feedback/focus testing that the devs can use to inform iterative development and refine the game over time. It is not a viable source of funding for a game (no Early Access game sells enough copies during development to pay salaries for the team developing it -- in the case of Satisfactory, that money comes from the Epic exclusive deal, which was only possible to access because Coffee Stain had enough revenue from Goat Simulator and their publishing ventures to do the vertical slice of Satisfactory that got Epic interested.) It is also not a short-cut to experiencing the full game -- in fact, if anything it's a good way to spoil oneself on the full game experience without actually getting to experience it, since Early Access games are by definition piecemeal and rough-around-the-edges. In a game like Satisfactory that's not so bad, since most players are expecting to build and re-build their factories; the grind is pretty much the point. However, there are plenty of players (and I feel myself falling into this category) who were hoping for Satisfactory to be more of a game about solving puzzles and engineering solutions, and less of a grind-fest... those players are best served by waiting for the full release, since the iterative process of Early Access will just turn those novel engineering puzzles into another layer of repetitive grind.
The OP, while probably a bit of a nonce based on their tone and their seeming contempt for the (useful!) process of iterative development with an engaged community, does raise a salient point. Gamers have accepted a BS premise that Early Access is some kind of magic bullet that just Makes Games Better; when in fact it's just another tool in devs' toolkit. And currently, that tool is being mis-applied in the hopes that using it as a bigger hammer will help small devs crack into the big marketplaces they haven't been able to compete in. That's not the fault of the Early Access model, and it certainly doesn't mean that the tool is useless (there are definitely studios out there showing how to do it right, and Coffee Stain might end up becoming an alum of that school in the end too), but right now we have too many people pinning their hopes on Early Access as a magic money fountain and not enough people engaging with how it works as a tool or as a design philosophy.
You're right in many points (though I fear, lot of people will just skip your wall of text :D) but I'm not sure if a lot of those Early Access Game Corpses that lay around on my (and others) Account could have been avoided with some more control and guidelines from Steam, making in not that easy for cash grabbing.
So I agree with the fact that, EA is a great opportunity for new and small game developer teams, but I also feel with the OP, since I myself own more then 80 unfinished and abandoned EA Titles meanwhile, where I ask myself: What have I done!
I think a way would be to reintroduce the good old "Demo" Version of games, like some devs are doing by now. So you still can get a feeling for the game before buying it.
That's some extra work for the devs, but also a good proof if the devs are serious interested in making a good game (and not just to take the money).
One comment which stood out (by Regicide), a practice which I've completely forgotten about, was the fact that releasing free game demos used to be an industry standard. Would be nice nice to see that practice become popular again.
They still exist, though rare. Steam Store has a section for a few.