is early access just a way to not hire playtesters

[Wenda]

and to instead get them for free or to even have them pay for the privilege to

[Miki mac fiddlement]

I mean thats a really good question, but I assume its mostly testing the game how the server can handle but I am not sure what argument for the singleplayer early access games, and I am even assuming the best that its not the case...

Still very interesting question, oddly never thought of that

[qb]

its kinda hard to find testers, most people either play an no feedback or work, ie they just want to test or play somee game and delete if they dont like it which is not much of help if game has no built in data collection that helps the dev process.

[Out Of Bubblegum]

Yes
:)

[Vox]

Some developers don't have the funds for that

[aka]

Early access would never work in Japan. Wise people would not pay for anything until the product is not only perfected and polished, but is also reached a level of obscene mastery and splendor.

Prove me wrong.

You can't

[Irene ❤]

Early access is..

You see that rock over there? Pay me $500,000 so I can study engineering and make a nice house for you in 10 years.

It's beyond zero testers. It's simply not there.

[Adversary]

Originally posted by aka:

Early access would never work in Japan. Wise people would not pay for anything until the product is not only perfected and polished, but is also reached a level of obscene mastery and splendor.

Prove me wrong.

You can't :OhNoBlue:

…There's at least a score of early access games here on Steam made by Japanese developers. Hell, one that's supposed to enter early access this month is Palworld. Also known as Pokémon with sweatshops and guns.

[JobeGardener]

Absolutely not. The devs are just so excited about their creation that they want to share it with the public early. They are like " Man, this came is so cool that we need to let it out of the cage."

[LLC Blini Games]

In our case, Early Access is more a way to see if we are "right" in our vision of the project. When you work on the same thing for months/years, you tend to ignore things that a pair of fresh eyes will notice for sure.

Yes, players find bugs of course, but the most valuable part of EA for us are the ideas that players give us over the mechanics, the design, the balance, etc...

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Wolvet (real):

and to instead get them for free or to even have them pay for the privilege to

In some cases, absolutely.

It's both "shooting a shotgun into a crowd to get QA Testing done" and "we ran out of money, so."

That's despite some Steam/Valve directives to the contrary. But, nobody wants to discuss any of that except, you know, the paying customers who buy what the marketing and advertising feed them.

IMO: "E.A" should require publishers to offer their E.A. Game releases at substantially reduced prices. But, nobody would like that except the customers, so... /shrug

[Ȼħⱥꞥꞥēł8753452]

Originally posted by LLC Blini Games:

In our case, Early Access is more a way to see if we are "right" in our vision of the project. When you work on the same thing for months/years, you tend to ignore things that a pair of fresh eyes will notice for sure.

Yes, players find bugs of course, but the most valuable part of EA for us are the ideas that players give us over the mechanics, the design, the balance, etc...

Honestly I rarely ever see devs make right with early access. Always just use to finish the rest of the game while selling copies early.

Many don't even leave it for years, if at all.

IMO the good ones always end up making their game bigger by the end then what they initially envisioned.

[Hobbit XIII]

well yeah that is what its all about the privilege of being their first and helping the development . Steam is the only place I got confused with this concept because of the complaints people post up about early access.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Channel_04:

Honestly I rarely ever see devs make right with early access. Always just use to finish the rest of the game while selling copies early.

Many don't even leave it for years, if at all.

IMO the good ones always end up making their game bigger by the end then what they initially envisioned.

Ludeon (Tynan Sylverster at first) did it right with "Rimworld." But, that game already had a Kickstarter before it came to Steam EA.

During its EA, there was a heck of a lot of participation with the community of players. Lots of feedback was incorporated into the game in meaningful ways that expanded play. It was an excellent EA program.

In contrast, there's one where the game was already finished in terms of how its final gameplay elements were constructed. It was, and still is, a buggy sad mess, even after its record-setting formal release. The devs said they'd interact with the community and stopped meaningfully doing that on Steam a few weeks into EA. The complaints piled up, the developers held their ground and the gameplay didn't change and nothing meaningful, or actually good, was done in EA other than to help the devs by some few uploading logs to their website. IMO, the game is now run by the dev's "Intern Farm" and the millions of monies they made have gone into creating a new dev team for another project along with building new offices. (Not that there's anything wrong with it, just illustrating that the game's EA and release only served to produce assets the devs could apply to other projects.)

Consumers will have to act to dissuade bad behavior by EA publishers/devs as nobody else will.

Sadly, that will mean that the only way to do that is to not buy into EA products, which may actually hurt good devs/publishers. But, that's what happens when a market has no other recourse.

[[N]ebsun]

Originally posted by Wolvet (real):

and to instead get them for free or to even have them pay for the privilege to

and many people are very willing (and demanding) to pay to be able to access the game early.
"I would give anything just to be able to play it right now, I don't care if it's finished"...
If GTA 6 had a pre-alpha early access, there would be a million sales in the first day.