Maybe hold back 50% of the revenue to only be released to the devs when the game full releases
Comment on Steam now warns about Early Access that have not been updated in months.
KillerTofu@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Maybe not allow the studio to charge for early access?
DaCrazyJamez@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
visor841@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That just incentives devs to just push out whatever mess they currently have and say the game is released, and they’ll do it unless Valve wants to start moderating game again. At least right now the abandoned games are still labelled early access.
TyrianMollusk@lemm.ee 1 month ago
So, when a game releases, buyers get the option to partially refund or commit, and valve uses the commit money to pay the refunds, so devs only make money if they keep more than half of their buyers, and customers have to consciously deal with sinking money into a potentially failed project.
At least right now the abandoned games are still labelled early access.
Most early access failures eventually just call themselves released at some point, so we’re no better off as far as that.
simple@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Why? There are plenty of proper games that benefit from early access, and plenty of people that enjoy early access.
FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Whenever I buy early access I ask my self “if the devs evaporated and development stopped permanently tomorrow, would I still buy this game?” It has snagged me some games I love like valheim, window kill, palworld and blade & sorcery. It’s also gotten me some games I enjoyed but still felt like a paid a good price for it, and also dodged a few bullets because the games look fun but weren’t complete and I didn’t buy
RixMixed@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
This is great advice.
KillerTofu@lemmy.world 1 month ago
And plenty of early access games that die on the vine. Pay to be an alpha tester? You do you.
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
And your don’t want to? You do you. You’re the one trying to suggest an outright ban, then you suggest a personal solution. Take your own advice.
knatschus@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Game developers also like to get paid, if early access wouldn’t be an option we would have far less indie games and far more half baked 1.0 releases. No one is forcing you to buy ea titles.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Okay, you develop and release a game for free then, only being allowed to charge for it after a few years.
What, you don’t want to do that?
TyrianMollusk@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Not charging until the game properly releases is normal. Most devs need to manage and deal with that, and beta testing used to be an expense on the devs. Now, the buyers are paying the devs to beta test, taking the project risk for the devs. Even if the system were free to both sides, it’s still beneficial to the devs, but without the corruption of thinking they should be making money during beta testing–money that they’ll happily keep as they walk away if their project fails to deliver what they sold.
There’s a more fair solution out there than letting devs just sell their games before they finish.
Atropos@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yeah, I don’t buy early access for this reason except in extremely rare circumstances.
But that doesn’t mean we should prevent others from buying into early access. Let people make their own decisions!