Longest Early Access Game in History.

[...]

Possibly the longest Early Access game in the History of Gaming. Over 17 years since this game first was released in Stores.

http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/World_War_II_Online:_Battleground_Europe

http://store.steampowered.com/app/251950/WWII_Online/

The Game in question went live on June 6, 2001.

The completed third retail release " Battleground Europe" in 2005-2006.

In late August 2009, Cornered Rat Software unveiled what they had been working on for patch version 1.31. The patch was introduced into the game in June 2010

Asked as to why in EA for such a long time from the owner , Lead Dev.

" Because it was just reworked to function with steam and there are a bunch of changes still to go in. So Steam deems it early access......"

[wuddih]

Valve does not define games as being in early access, the dev does that himself. they could have easily released that without the early access branding. nobody forced them to do this.

also defining this as "being in early access for 17 years" is wrong. the game received multiple retail releases, the devs are simply exploiting a small fanatical and niche userbase, that is why they tagged the game as early access, that is why they use a subscription-based pricing model.

i dont even wanna know how many people forgot to turn of their subscriptions for this game that does advertise 200+ player combat but does not even have 10 people playing it right now.

[shiel]

As Wuddih said, the game has seen multiple full releases. It was a mess on initial release(as almost every mmo in those days was) but it was still a full release.

[Microsoft227sam]

Technically, DayZ is the longest early access game ever.

[Gekkibi]

Originally posted by microsoft227sam:

Technically, DayZ is the longest early access game ever.

Not really. 2013 - ∞

[76561198057658593]

StarCitizen. It will never release... ever. Will be in early access for all eternity.

[Amon]

Originally posted by Gordon Freeman internet gangster:

StarCitizen. It will never release... ever. Will be in early access for all eternity.

I was thinking the same thing.

[Dogga]

Originally posted by Microsoft227sam:

Technically, DayZ is the longest early access game ever.

The longest early access game to date would be Escape From Tarkov, as they have been in Beta since 2017 (6 years and counting). But if we are talking about games available on Steam, we would then say DayZ is (5 years).

[Steve]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.