Advanced Access is toxic

[Reuben]

Get rid of it.

[Nx Machina]

A) Developer, publisher choice.

B) Purchasing is voluntary, not mandatory.

[Reuben]

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

A) Developer, publisher choice.

B) Purchasing is voluntary, not mandatory.

A) Hike up the price by a few percent and time-gate the game to justify the Ultimate Mega Gold Edition.

B) Give a competitive advantage for everyone who is willing to buy an edition of a game that's 1/3rd more expensive by denying access to everyone else who bought lesser editions.

C) Deceptive marketing that makes it look like you're getting the game early but you're just paying extra to get the game on what would've been release day if Advanced Access wasn't a thing.

[Shreddy]

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

A) Developer, publisher choice.

B) Purchasing is voluntary, not mandatory.

Saying it’s not mandatory to purchase is a given, not an argument. OP is criticising the predatory business practice and not trying to say it’s mandatory.

[William Shakesman]

Valve at least had the sense to admit there's zero reason people cannot review a game if they played it in an "advanced access" phase. I cannot BELIEVE there were people who made pretense explanations justifying not being able to review a game in that state.

I think OP is 100% right but the problem is Valve isn't in a place to ban this so his post is also 100% wrong ... or rather in the wrong place but asking in the best first guess. Valve isn't seeking to be a consumer protection organization and generally doesn't give two ♥♥♥♥♥ about the consumer. This needs to be stopped, but Valve is not the right entity to stop it. "Then who is?" is the next question, and our current system, culture, and moral teaching has done a great job of making answering that question impossible where you have a substantial portion of the populace who think that literally ANY act is moral so long as you can coerce or cajole someone into signing a piece of paper about it and it involves taking people's money.

[Reuben]

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

Valve at least had the sense to admit there's zero reason people cannot review a game if they played it in an "advanced access" phase. I cannot BELIEVE there were people who made pretense explanations justifying not being able to review a game in that state.

I think OP is 100% right but the problem is Valve isn't in a place to ban this so his post is also 100% wrong ... or rather in the wrong place but asking in the best first guess. Valve isn't seeking to be a consumer protection organization and generally doesn't give two ♥♥♥♥♥ about the consumer. This needs to be stopped, but Valve is not the right entity to stop it. "Then who is?" is the next question, and our current system, culture, and moral teaching has done a great job of making answering that question impossible where you have a substantial portion of the populace who think that literally ANY act is moral so long as you can coerce or cajole someone into signing a piece of paper about it and it involves taking people's money.

Steam is Valve's storefront, they absolutely can and do control the amount of features that they offer to merchants (developers/publishers), if merchants truly had a bigger say then Valve would've significantly reduced their sales commission in response to Origin and uPlay exclusive games.

[Nx Machina]

Originally posted by Reuben:

A) Hike up the price by a few percent and time-gate the game to justify the Ultimate Mega Gold Edition.

B) Give a competitive advantage for everyone who is willing to buy an edition of a game that's 1/3rd more expensive by denying access to everyone else who bought lesser editions.

C) Deceptive marketing that makes it look like you're getting the game early but you're just paying extra to get the game on what would've been release day if Advanced Access wasn't a thing.

Purchasing is VOLUNTARY, not mandatory.

Are you forced to purchase? No.

Is someone is spending your money on those games? No, they are spending their own money because we all get to decide what we purchase.

And finally FOMO, hence your personal need to see it removed.

[William Shakesman]

Originally posted by Reuben:

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

Valve at least had the sense to admit there's zero reason people cannot review a game if they played it in an "advanced access" phase. I cannot BELIEVE there were people who made pretense explanations justifying not being able to review a game in that state.

I think OP is 100% right but the problem is Valve isn't in a place to ban this so his post is also 100% wrong ... or rather in the wrong place but asking in the best first guess. Valve isn't seeking to be a consumer protection organization and generally doesn't give two ♥♥♥♥♥ about the consumer. This needs to be stopped, but Valve is not the right entity to stop it. "Then who is?" is the next question, and our current system, culture, and moral teaching has done a great job of making answering that question impossible where you have a substantial portion of the populace who think that literally ANY act is moral so long as you can coerce or cajole someone into signing a piece of paper about it and it involves taking people's money.

Steam is Valve's storefront, they absolutely can and do control the amount of features that they offer to merchants (developers/publishers), if merchants truly had a bigger say then Valve would've significantly reduced their sales commission in response to Origin and uPlay exclusive games.

Well, Valve is the big boy in the room. They absolutely CAN and there's not much most devs can do but comply or whine (EGS can't poach customers by LITERALLY giving games for free and Ubi and EA came right back), but it's not a closed system. They don't have the "mandate of heaven" needed to dictate these standards and make them stick.

But the important thing is Valve won't, because it makes THEM money too.

[Nx Machina]

Originally posted by Shreddy:

Saying it’s not mandatory to purchase is a given, not an argument. OP is criticising the predatory business practice and not trying to say it’s mandatory.

They are stating get rid of it, which is a personal preference yet the following remains true.

Purchasing is voluntary, not mandatory. therefore it comes down to FOMO.

Seeing it as predatory is irrelevant as others are not spending the op's money, they are making a choice over which the op has no say.

[Reuben]

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

Originally posted by Reuben:

Steam is Valve's storefront, they absolutely can and do control the amount of features that they offer to merchants (developers/publishers), if merchants truly had a bigger say then Valve would've significantly reduced their sales commission in response to Origin and uPlay exclusive games.

Well, Valve is the big boy in the room. They absolutely CAN and there's not much most devs can do but comply or whine (EGS can't poach customers by LITERALLY giving games for free and Ubi and EA came right back), but it's not a closed system. They don't have the "mandate of heaven" needed to dictate these standards and make them stick.

But the important thing is Valve won't, because it makes THEM money too.

I don't care about other platforms, most of the titles I install are on Steam.

As for Valve being complicit because it makes them more money, well, I wouldn't put it past the community to review bomb merchants who try to nickle and dime us like this.

[Zefar]

Originally posted by Reuben:

I don't care about other platforms, most of the titles I install are on Steam.

As for Valve being complicit because it makes them more money, well, I wouldn't put it past the community to review bomb merchants who try to nickle and dime us like this.

I'd say it's 2 decades too late to pick up arms about this. Whatever the amount of people you can gather to complain about the business practice will pale by the amount of people who buy them.

People will not review bomb as that means, buying the game, play it, put a review and then refund it or you've just wasted money on making a review.
We could see this with Diablo 4 on Steam. People thought it'd get review bombed to hell and back but because you have to buy it, it'll stop 99% of them right away.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by Reuben:

I don't care about other platforms, most of the titles I install are on Steam.

Until they no longer are because the dev is selling them elsewhere. Like it happened with EA games for a decade.

Mind one of the key points in EA taking their games off here was Steam requiring EA to integrate Battlefield 3 microtransactions with the Steam wallet system.

[Crazy Tiger]

Meh, it's there for people who absolutely cannot wait. Let them waste their money, it's fine.

Originally posted by Reuben:

I wouldn't put it past the community to review bomb merchants who try to nickle and dime us like this.

You overestimate the community, seriously.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Reuben:

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

A) Developer, publisher choice.

B) Purchasing is voluntary, not mandatory.

A) Hike up the price by a few percent and time-gate the game to justify the Ultimate Mega Gold Edition.

B) Give a competitive advantage for everyone who is willing to buy an edition of a game that's 1/3rd more expensive by denying access to everyone else who bought lesser editions.

C) Deceptive marketing that makes it look like you're getting the game early but you're just paying extra to get the game on what would've been release day if Advanced Access wasn't a thing.

Then don't buy the games that do it.
You spend your moneyu how you want, and everyone elsedoes the same.
EVeryone is happy.

[aiusepsi]

Reading the docs on Advanced Access: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/advancedaccess

The overview is that Valve recommends against it, and won't allow most developers to do it:

Our experience with advanced access is that it tends to be ineffective unless it’s a heavily anticipated, heavily marketed title with a pre-purchase, and even then we encourage developers to really understand what goals they have for their title by offering an advanced access period on Steam.

For most games, it's more ideal to release the game to all players at the same time. This gives your title the biggest opportunity to create buzz and visibility at a point where all players can actually share their excitement with all of their friends. In addition, some types of games are just not a good fit for advanced access. (Short games, single player narrative heavy games, and games where there is a competitive advantage to playing early might all negatively impact player sentiment by having an advanced access period)

For these reasons, we will not support running advanced access except in a few rare cases with partners with which we have a well-established relationship and that have a proven track record on Steam.

One could speculate that there's a subtext that they'll only allow certain partners to do Advanced Access because those partners are the type who are big enough to consider just walking from Steam if they can't do Advanced Access for their game.

[Reuben]

Valve never capitulated when EA took their products elsewhere, I don't think Advanced Access is specifically geared to keep them now that they're back (with badly performing products too).

As for the the "community", yeah, self-control and diginity is pretty weak but things do happen from time to time like forcing Sony to reverse the whole PSN login thing.

Reading Steam's FAQ on Advanced Access makes it clear that Space Marines 2 isn't a good fit for it... yet Advanced Access is enabled for that app.