steam early access and game updates

[ulgrath]

I like the "idea" of early access and to be honest out of the games I have picked up I am pretty happy with it. Now I understand that it is beta/alpha depending on the early access but what I would like to know is: How often should I expect an update. Some SEAG are better then others at getting updates but how long is too long between updates?

Just would like some opinions.

[Black Blade]

Well i think it changes from game to game... if a game is some what stable when you play it then a update can take its sweet time... but if its crashing for almost every few minutes then the update needs to come as fast as it can

Also changing from Dev to Dev as some will need to run more test and i do not think you can really put a time on it

[MuirDragonne]

Black is correct - updates differ from dev to dev and game to game. There are some devs who go months without updating their game, but the updates are huge when they do so, while other devs update their game several times a month, but the updates are a lot smaller.

Personally, I prefer somewhere in the middle. That is, a large update once every 1-2 months. That way I get a chance to properly test each update before the next one comes out.

[Tryniti]

test

[ulgrath]

Thanks,
I was thinking like once a month at least but if every 2 months or longer is normal for development then thats cool I just need to update my expectations :-)

[Satoru]

Each developer will push updates on different schedules.

Prison Architect does pretty much on the clock end of the month major updates for their product (with a hotfix or two in between when a new feature breaks something)

Starbound started off with a hectic pace of patches, but now has slowed down to provide mroe stable updates. They've also spent the time separating out content updates with engine updates so that they have mor flexibilty as to how and when they can update.

Functionally there is no 'blueprint' for updates. The game gets updated when the devs decide that a patch is relevant/important enough to release. You may wish to look at the "Announcements" section for each Community Hub to get a feel. Though this information may be incomplete, if the devs tend to stay more on their own home-hosted forums so you may need to look there as well to get a feel for what their update schedule is like.