I think whole issue comes from the fact you understand "Early Access" in different way then dev.
For you, Early Access means "game nearly finished".
For devs (not only this one, but for many devs), Early Access means "barely a skeleton is done, but we have idea and we can show you first glances at what we can do, but we don't have money so we need you to buy Early Access".
While devs aren't totally right with blocking, I understand where they come from: what you do is saying that FO4 will be bad because in trailer dog doesn't use those hair-stuff Nvidia done.
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For me, early access means:
"We made a game, and it's looking good, but we need some help choosing the direction. We have a stable and content filled base already, so your user experience should be fun"
And not:
"Here's a game we made 1 week ago, pay me £5 to see the lack of content there is".
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Then you really expect way too much from EAccess.
Early Access - in most cases - is about getting money and alphatesters (not even beta, but alpha) for development of product. And when I say alpha, I really mean alpha - which means products that doesn't even have features implemented.
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True, they did say "don't consider EAcc as source of your budget". But - like usual - after they get their 30% they don't care what you put.
But "It is there to playtest for people willing to adopt the game early and iron out the bugs and such" - EAcc was born mostly due to Minecraft development idea, where game costing €5 grew and grew from nothing into €20 monster. First Minecraft copies sold weren't even alpha versions, Notch barely had idea what he wants to do.
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Oh the days when you let ppl do testing for you and you gave it to them for free.
Now you let ppl pay you to test for you....
The world is upside down.
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Early Access, by industry use, generally refers to second cycle alpha first cycle beta.
Admittedly, my experience with the phrase preceeds how it's handled on Steam, but nevertheless, I think you'll find most people involved in the industry expect the game to not be functioning fully.
"Early access, alphafunding, or paid-alpha is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can pay for a game in the early stages of development and obtain access to playable but unfinished versions of the game, while the developer is able to use those funds to continue work on the game."
Also? Choosing direction of a game FALLS UNDER THAT TIMEFRAME.
You don't choose direction at open beta, by that point it's often too late in production.
If you're still able to change direction of your game, then you aren't even close to releasing.
Also, read the Steam description of their Early Access, as well as the description of every dev (I've seen) that uses it.
I think you'll find your expectation mismatches to that of others.
Now, in fairness, a lot of devs refuse to use early access exactly for that reason, because they feel allowing players in that early into the cycle [versus, say, an open beta], Steam has gotten some criticism over their promotion of such games, as well.
But, just like Kickstarter, Steam expects consumers to be able to make judgements on what they want to support and what they feel is reliable; and the devs expect- and almost always explicitly state- early access users to provide feedback to them on what is 'wrong', and hold off on negative reviews [which should be restricted to games that don't seem to ever be finishing, devs that ignore feedback, or in rare cases, concepts that are just horribly broken in implementation and can't ever be fixed].
So no, there's no basis to your expectation, and it's offensive to developers trying their best, for you to react as you are.
(also see my comment below)
That all said, and while I have no idea as to the content of your post and the suitability of it, I loathe censorship, and for the most part agree with you that your post likely should not have been censored.
Keep up the fight.
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I've never seen anyone that think games in alpha or beta = a nearly finished game. They're games in development that usually have quite a ways to go. Always have been, and always will be. Paying to play a game before release makes you a tester, not a player. So you essentially are viewing the game completely wrong. You are not the player of a finished game, you are the tester of an early access title. Treat it as such. I'd be not quite happy with your negative comments as well. Developers expect feedback from their testers, not hate about things they haven't finished yet.
This was just a polite reminder of your role, not "censorship".
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[Quote]And not:
"Here's a game we made 1 week ago, pay me £5 to see the lack of content there is".[/quote]
Sadly thats what early access seems to be - pay to alpha a game we may or may not one day finish
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Me personally, I wait a couple weeks or months to see how the early access games are going. If there is positive feedback, then get it, If theres negative feedback, dont get it. For example, prison architect. Its a great game. Even if the devs took away the label early access during alpha 20, it would still feel like a full game. Compare these games to prison architect. If the game is a bit worse, you can still get it if you think that you will enjoy, If its better, then get it.
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Although he has no right to ban screenshots. (I mean, c'mon!) You do have a very skewed vision of Early Access.
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I could create a similar version of that game in under a week. He says it took him 2 years. Either he means he started it 2 years ago and has barely done any work on it, or he's lying.
When I see early access, I don't want to pay money for a game that was started 1 week ago. Especially if 1 weeks worth of work takes 2 years.
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I'm inclined to agree with you. Early Access was meant for devs to get player input before release not to develop a game from alpha to release. They're basically selling an idea not a game. The censorship could be based on whatever TOS you agreed to in-game but Steam wouldn't agree with the block.
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Lulz I know their artist from another forum. Their game showcase has worse pics so they're probably being vindictive. Unless they changed the threshold It used to require multiple reports before a picture would be blocked.
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Please note the definition of early access, as it was used pre-steam, quoted in my post above, thank you.
Now, a lot of devs may be going about it as wrongly in perception as players such as yourself- releasing games in phase 1 alpha, meaning the game is essentially not playable yet, even in a minimal form.
In that case, an argument could be made for holding antagonism toward the devs for not having a properly prepared game for early release access.
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Well I'm not just a gamer, I'm a programmer/developer as well. Steam basically agrees with you for the most part but it has to be passed through Greenlight (or pre-approved) which essentially means you have a working base game already. They even state that the gamer should research the game's screenshots and reviews before purchasing an EA title, which censoring screenshots and reviews directly attacks the ability to do so. I believe their intention was to help games like ORION: Prelude that were released and despised but after implementing player's recommendations over the 2 years after they had an amazing game. Steam is the one that approves what gets added so I guess whatever is in EA fits their requirements.
http://store.steampowered.com/earlyaccessfaq/?snr=1_200_200_Early+Access
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Orion: Prelude turned out pretty decent in the end :)
I was in game design for a decade, but I've been out of it for nearly as long, and I'm honestly not that in-touch with steam to begin with.
So my expectations certainly could be off, other than where they clearly match to Steam's notes on the subject.
But no, I'd never condone censorship, you should only filter something out if it's non-productive and abusive, not for any actual content. That's a terrible path to go down.
Also, sorry if I misunderstood where you were coming from, thanks for replying so sincerely :)
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No worries..I liked your nostalgic viewpoint. :) Any particular reason you got out of games? I had to switch to backend programming when the parents said I had to be an adult and kicked me out. :'( Unity is making the switch back to the dream life a breeze since they use C#.
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Primarily, health problems :X
Suffice it to say, I can't do it anymore, now.
Was fun while it lasted, though.
Just wish some of the games I'd made or worked on were still around, I'd worked on a few fun little programs :)
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What you want from it and what it is are clearly two different things. At least now you know that the only rule for early access is that the game isn't finished.
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I see nothing wrong with you pointing out the unfinished features, if anything it should be a guide to what the devs must focus on! They are quite touchy, just forget about the screenshot and move on to the next game in the hopes that maybe in 2016 the game will be better!
Take in mind that most E.A. games are quite unfinished and sadly most of them never get finished because of scumbag devs, I'm not saying that this devs are scumbag, just that there are a lot of devs out there with questionable practices to say the least.
PS: 1 more thing, report to Steam that your screenshot has been banned for the wrong reason and THEN just move on, lol
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Yes, I can forget about a screenshot. I don't care it got removed, especially since it has no impact on my account.
What I care about, is the gesture. The fact that he so easily was able to hide my opinion. Censorship.
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Yes, hence my PS, you should definitely report it to Steam, this is the first time I know of a Steam screenshot that's censored! Quite disconcerting
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You really expect that Project Explorer a cheap indie game will got the same quality than a expensive AAA tittle? i didnt see nothing wrong with the game.
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What I'm saying is I paid £5 for grass texture simulator, that runs at a worse frame rate than state of the art graphics.
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Despite not liking the fact that they removed your screenshot I do have to agree with the point that early access games shouldn't be judged on their performance.
I've been browsing some early access games that I found interesting a year back or so lately and it's been bugging me how many of them have a completely ruined rating on steam, not because the game isn't what the devs promised it'd be or a lack of updates/progress but mostly from people who've tried the game for a few minutes/up to an hour, experienced some troubles with optimization/settings and then proceeded to give the game a negative rating based on that experience.
A game in early access shouldn't be solely judged on it's performance imo, because it just isn't the final product yet and optimization is one of the final steps of the development process, by rating a game negative simply because it isn't optimized for your specific setup you not only ruin the game's rating permanently (most people forget about a game and despite saying in their review that they'll get back to this if it ever gets fixed they still forget about it) but you might also lead people to believe these flaws are still present even if they ever get fixed if they where interested enough to even read a few reviews, which I think is what those devs had in mind when they removed your screenshot (presumably from an older build)
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I agree with you completely. I understand that early access implies "Not finished", and therefore performance is not something to worry about. When I wrote my review about performance, I was talking about the actual freezes every 2 seconds, which literally render the game unplayable. I was just joking about the game running at 50fps, as obviously that doesn't affect my gameplay.
But what bothers me is that he says it's been 2 years in development. And they still haven't bothered to fix a game breaking issue such as FPS freezes? There is basically nil content, and it's already struggling, how's it going to hold up when he's made a game to play alongside? Notice how in his explanation, he blames my CPU, saying that simply because the engine he uses is single threaded, and that my cores are not powerful enough.
I did not judge the game solely on it's performance, as you can see in my review. I made around 10 points for all the reasons I thought the game wasn't ready for Steam just yet. For instance the embarrassing lack of content.
And no, the screenshot was taken around a week ago, maybe 2.
The game version is also clearly displayed in the top corner, "Hot fix" being quite eye catching.
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Doesn't it say 'early access review' when u do review on EA game? So when the game is finished,you won't be reading those if they aren't updated. As for doing reviews for EA,if we follow your logic,you shouldn't do a negative review or point out any flaws in game because it might or will be fixed. What about complete game? If it has lots of bugs and is horribly optimized,coughUnitycough,should you point it out and give negative review,even if they may fix it later? In my opinion,dev should reply to detailed and clear reviews that state problems and flaws like Lindion45's when they have fixed problems that had been pointed out,and I think every legit reviewer and most regular users will change their review. If someone bought your product and says it's broken, you address the problem and try to fix it/promise you will work on that,not try to hide it or come up with excuses.
On the other hand,this...
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I think every legit reviewer and most regular users will change their review
I can't blame you for thinking that since I thought the same up until a few days ago when I decided to check back in with Dead State to see how it is now that's it's fully released and patched.
At first I assumed the game bombed badly after seeing the "mixed" rating, but as it turns out the bulk of negative reviews were posted a long time ago before the final version was released, and after wasting an hour reading both positive and negative reviews it seems like almost all negative reviews that bothered to explain what was wrong with the game only mentioned things fixed in the final build (which is exactly why I agree with you that smaller dev teams can really benefit from engaging with these review writers or at least read them)
A lot of these reviews even specifically said stuff like "will update this review if this ever gets fixed" yet they're still there and I highly doubt that they'll ever get removed.
Also, what's wrong with the price?
I I haven't looked into the game and I know nothing about it, but a 10+ year old game having the same pricetag as a game that isn't even officially out yet either means that the old game is heavily overpriced or the new game is just dirt cheap, I don't see anything wrong with it tbh.
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The issue you point out is real,but there are solutions for it,and it isn't not giving negative reviews.
My argument was that if dev replies on your comment after they fix issue you pointed out and say something along the lines : hey,we fixed the issue u addressed in your review and would like to ask you to update it.
You will get notification and unless ur total scumbag,you will take another look at the game and update your review.
Or,this can be fixed by steam,pop a red notification near review that says outdated after game is updated,and give u notification that your review is no longer relevant.
For the price thing,I was just showing what 6.99 can get you,and if you played that '10 year old game',you would get it :)
Still,I wouldn't call game of that quality cheap,when compared to some other games (prices may be different for different regions,in mine,they all cost the same,last is even cheaper)
This
This
This
This
Price thing bothers me generally,since indie games and games from medium dev studios went from 5-10 to 15-25$ standard and AAA games from 15-30 to 30-50 and 60-80$ for some special packs. But on the other hand,I might be just too salty cuz I'm pore xD
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Puppy Games did an in-depth blog post regarding indie game pricing that you might want to read. The game community has become accustomed to indie games being bundled or sold dirt cheap so we expect their normal non-sale price to be dirt cheap as well. The price shouldn't matter too much if the game appeals to you.
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I agree with you,like I said,It's just me,I make a shitty 7$ a day and am pore as fu*k,that's why I have different ideas about whats cheap and whats not xD
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I've bought a few early access games that delivered on their promises. I've bought more early access games that didn't improve significantly before full release. I don't think any one is obliged to not mention flaws in an early access game just because they might or might not get fixed.
If I'm thinking about buying an early access game at this time then I think I'd like frank info on what state it is in at this time rather than just relying on developer promises. I like to think I'm then smart enough to take into account the fact that it is still incomplete and make my own decision.
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I'm not bothered about whether he delivers his promises or not. I saw the trailer and knew what I was buying. What I care about, is the fact my opinion potentially got censored by a higher power.
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I was just trying to say why I think it is important that kind of thing doesn't get censored. You can't just ignore or suppress the state the game is in on the basis it is intended to get better. In my opinion if devs are that thin-skinned or paranoid then they shouldn't be putting games out in early access.
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I agree. But unfortunately they are, and he is. So something has to be said!
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Their game is trash anyways, so they gonna get what they get and will be worse if they censor.
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It's not "Trash", I just haven't seen a game on Steam that screams "placeholder" any louder ;D
But yes, if they're censoring, I'd love to address it further!
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I'm sorry to hear that. Basically that's the case with 90% of Greenlight games. I know, cause I voted for it and got a free key.So don't sweat about it. Developers will try to bury that their game is trash. I hope this won't be the case for Operation:Covert. I see that you are trying to add all your heart into it, and that attitude must be followable. I read today that the Original Traders/Curators/idk group was threating devs, that if they don't give a test key for them, they will write a bad review about the game. The world is full of corruption, so this doesn't surprises me at all. The main thing is, that you should concentrate on your games, and show all the greenlight devs, how they should release a game :)
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It absolutely won't be the case for Operation: Covert, because
A. It won't be trash, and
B. Even if it was, I'd never even dream of censorship ;D
And yeah, maybe I shouldn't get involved in other people's messes, but the trail of damage they leave behind affects me, for instance people don't trust me up front, because they've been screwed over by previous developers.
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Ater reading the devs responses to other reviewers not just you, and some other things I found online from the devs, they are snobby as hell.
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This review they just use the "troll" card act very condescending and more ignorance.
The other post I found I can't seem to find again yet I'm still looking for it, basically someone gave a review on a gamers forum and basically said to stay away from the game and when the game is complete to maybe pick it up at a deep discount. Then the dev showed up and basically said he's a troll yadayadayada he's not a gamer link me your steam profile and other nonsense.
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Well he does have a point there xD
If he hasn't played the game for more than 0.1 minutes, that can be considered an unfair judge period, but he seems to have summarised the game fairly well in his review, so maybe it bugged?
What's worrying is that the developer doesn't know that 0.1 =/= 10 minutes lol
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Not that I necessarily agree with said reviewer, like you said time could be bugged achievements could be bugged. What I didn't like is all the assumptions the dev likes to make towards negative reviews. If time was such a big thing the dev only has 11 hours on his/her own game yet there it is on steam for purchase.
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early access is a fancy word for "alpha/beta" basically, you might be lucky and play a game that's mostly complete when you buy it but there'll be games with obvious need of polishing as things are being worked on.
Dunno about this particular case though in terms of if the censoring was right or not.
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Yes, but as I've said above, I feel this game contains around a week of programming, and therefore is nowhere near ready for sale. Imagine if Battlefield of CoD released their game for testing as soon as they'd built the first map, and basic collision engine, but hadn't textured any of it?
It would be ridiculous, which is why I'm complaining!
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in normal cycles, that'd be called the alpha state, something the early access label obscures with some games. And EA being "near ready?" You have any idea how long some games are in EA even before leaving?
I thought they updated the whole EA thing warning people not to expect a fully complete game or even a finished one.
Not exactly defending their censoring/etc (it makes them look pretty bad in general), that and EA reviews are marked as such, making it clear that it was made during a rough time. What you should ahve done is mention the issues in the discussion thread and try to make it clear to the devs.
just saying that EA basically means "varying stages of completeness and varying amounts of time before hitting the real sale date", not 75%+ complete
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I wouldn't even mind 40% complete, but I can safely say project explore is in the 5-10% region
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Honestly, you seem like exactly the kind of person that shouldn't be buying Early Access games and I wish a lot more devs took proactive action to keep this sort of whining off of Steam. The forums there are an absolute nuclear wasteland of nonsense.
Sorry if that seems harsh but this sort of self-righteous nonsense is basically a daily occurrence if you wade through the Steam forums now and anything that cuts it down is incredibly welcome.
If you don't like censorship, stick to government rallies. The rules of free speech as you (and a great number of people on the internet) seem to understand them exist nowhere but inside your head, and certainly do not apply to any privately owned internet forum. They can do anything they want on their forum, and a lot more devs probably should.
If you don't like that, well, sorry. But that's not going to change anything.
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There's a difference between "Hey look, we've made a stable game with lots of content already, come help us with progression!"
and "I started this game a week ago, pay me £5 and, you too can wander around in a game with 0% content"
But, forget the review. Focus on the censorship! If people truly know that it's in early access and won't have any features at all, why does he need to cover it up? Surely he can just watch my review get flagged down and hated on!
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"If you don't like censorship, stick to government rallies. The rules of free speech as you (and a great number of people on the internet) seem to understand them exist nowhere but inside your head, and certainly do not apply to any privately owned internet forum. They can do anything they want on their forum, and a lot more devs probably should."
Are you literally saying "There's nothing I can do about it so it's ok, and I encourage it"?
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Early Access or not, the OP was clear in his review on what he liked and what disappointed him. With a number of games in Early Access demonstrating completely different stages of polish, the OP's review is helpful in letting other potential buyers know the exact state of development.
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Yes, it is a very dick move to hit you with a TOS violation for a screenshot(can you even post other screenshots anymore? i remember someone on another game got hit with a community ban over it and could no longer post screenshots). As others have said you have a very weird definition of Early Access. Early Access is basicly anything a dev wants it to be. It's sorta like a smaller scale kickstarter for some people, if people wanna support their project they continue with the work, if no one buys or people stop buying they sometimes stop working on it and move on. That's the reality of Early Access and we only have Valve and it's utter bullshit "let the community police itself" attitude to blame.
I don't even get why you bought the game to begin with, Just to post a negative review and get into an argument with the devs? It's fairly obvious from the screenshots that it's in, i don't even know what to call it, prototype stage? So why waste money on it?
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There were no reviews at the time which actually stated reasons why they liked/disliked it. I wanted to change that. Also it kept popping up on the homepage so I wanted to give it a try.
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No offence mate but there was no basis for your high expectations, all you had to do was look at the screenshots to see there was nothing to the game at this point. And if it bothers you, you can always hit the "not interested" button and it will stop showing up for you.
Also i don't know where you got the stuff about Broforce from, it's been in Early Access for over a year now and i remember, from watching youtubers trying to play it back when it came out that it was crashing and bugging out all over the place and at the start it only had like 4 or 5 missions that you finished in 10-15 minutes if you were decent at it. And that for a 13 euro game.
Anyway my point was that you seem to have went in with some weird expectations and while i'm not saying what the dev did was right, it should not come as such a huge surprise that he did something like this. You have to remember that, especially when dealing with greenlight Early Access stuff, you're very likely dealing with people on their first project, people who, most of the time, have no idea how to handle either customers or negative feedback.
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"you're very likely dealing with people on their first project, people who, most of the time, have no idea how to handle either customers or negative feedback."
So that makes it ok?
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No but that makes your reaction and expectations silly. It's not like EA just became a thing and we just found out what kind of people and projects we're dealing with. To me it still feels, from your discussion with that "dev" and all your replies here, like you went into the whole thing looking for a "fight". With Steam's new refund policy you can just get your money back and move on with your life, i still don't see the point of this thread.
It's simple really, in the end just don't buy EA games, i know i don't. Most of the EA games i own are from bundles, i think the only ones i actually bought were Darkest Dungeon, Gnomoria and Forsaken Isle, but these projects are far into development and i know they will be finished, polished products.
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Early Access games are the worst thing that could have ever happened to videogame industry.
Check out Steam EA games category and see the amount of ... well, the amount of videogames that are unfinished and that wont be (probably) finished. The only one that I recall as a finished EA is KSP.
In my opinion, EA games should be only allowed in Steam if they are going to be finished within 6-12 months. Paying for a prototype is stupid imo, besides once the devs start getting profits they also start to forget that the game is not finished and cfuture updates tend to be small changes without real improvements in the game. (not all devs do this but most of them do)
As a side note some of the EA games prices are ridiculous high.
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There's a ton of solid EA games, the problem is that for every 1 good EA game there's at least 20 shit ones.
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Indeed, sad but true. These things should be somehow controlled by Steam. Right now any shit can make it and get money
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Well, depending what you mean by finished (I assume "released") and what you mean by Early Access Game (let's assume everything that appears in Early Access, no matter if it was on Kickstarter or somewhere else) there's plenty of Early Access Games that were released: from the ones I have Pillars of Eternity (and really, first released pre-alpha version was SO POOR, it was really a demo of an pre-alpha version :P ), Wasteland 2, i think Faster Than Light also was in EAcc,
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By finished I mean finished. No longer a EA videogame. All EA games on Steam are released to the public but it doesnt mean that all EA games on Steam are finished.
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Well, there are games like that Double Fine's Spacebase DF-9 or (hopefully I remember right) Dark Matter that both have status "released" and no further work will be done on them, but in no way they are finished...
Note: by "released" I don't mean "public can play it", but "developer will now only make patches and DLCs".
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my opinion
If a developer sells his early access games, he has to deal with negative reviews....and every customer has the right to be unsatisfied, nevertheless how big "the early access" sign is.
And even in early access reviews are important, cause there are many early access titles on steam and some represents fully playable games and others unplayable slideshows with no content....if we have to pay for something, we should be able to get uncensored reviews .
Ok, if a developer says....hey this is a new engine we make changes....we don´t want bad reviews, or people talking about this, cause this will ruin our reputation, and everything will be anyway different on release....
....simple solution, don´t sell it....pay people for testing it in closed alpha and let them sign an nda.
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While you're right in general, how would you feel if you were making a cake and I would ate some of a flour and tell everyone your cake sucks?
That's how reviewing this game (and many other EAcc games) feels like.
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If I would make a rubbish cake, sell it to you for 7 Euro.....and you vomit afterwards...i would feel guilty...
in other words...if i still have learn to cook, still not sure about my receipt....i would never sell a cake, but if.....accidently or whatever this experiment of cake is sold.....i would not care about my "feelings"....i would listen and learn
I´m in a business the customer is still the one, that tells me about the quality of a service/product....if i have to explain why i have a quality product and the customer is wrong....I would be out of business within weeks
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But you didn't make a cake yet. You barely showed ingredients you'll use.
And that's what you have in this (and many other) EAccess - barely an idea, without all features implemented, one that looks for input from people who buy it.
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YES now you got it, if one looks for input from people that buy , he should be very grateful ....he got money and feedback and he should not just censor anything that hurt his feelings.
This is business, we are not in the kindergarten and cooking with sand.
So if the cook shows in his ingredients he is using sand instead of flour, and people say...no you can not eat sand, he should be so smart and take this opinion serious instead of playing the ostrich-game in his sand.
Of course if there are inappropriate reviews that violate the rules, then he has the same rights to let them remove, as any other company....but just cause he has an "early access"-tag he does not have the right to remove anything he just do not like.
As i said before, if someone decides to sell.....he has to deal with reviews, like all the others have to deal with it in the store, you can still develop a game without selling it....
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Again, this reviews weren't about using sand instead of flour. They were "I ate flour, didn't taste like cake, 0/10". They wrote list of features that weren't implemented and said "this game is bad", not noticing it's alpha version, which actually means "most features aren't implemented yet".
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You was referring to what I wrote with some cooking and I was referring to your examples, nothing more....if you are now referring to lindions review, deal with him, not with me. And if you think someone deserves more protection from bad reviews, (and reviews always reflect the actual state of a game) cause he tags the product he is selling with "early access", we just have a different opinion. case closed.
ok one more word on this. i respect the work of developers, an EA and steam is a way to do it, but if someone wants to sell an EA-Game, it should be at least some kind of game...and not just a very very early tech-demo....maybe the problem is, the way steam handles early access. They should not be listed in the store and should be tryable for a couple of hours...and reviews are locked...but they are not...thats the point
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"maybe the problem is, the way steam handles early access" - agree with that.
Valve really should make some more order with whole EAcc.
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Lol. I'd say why are you eating the flour you mug, wait till I've finished cooking the cake, or try this cookie dough which actually has structure, it just needs baking.
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And that's what happened here. You made screenshots, dev told you "it's still Early Access". And instead of saying "ok, I'll note it's still barely a skeleton and alpha and there's nothing to do", you went further and wrote whole review like this is a finished product.
(or was review first, screenshots later? never mind the order)
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No the developer said here's some of my cake mix I'm making, charged me £5, and then it turned out to literally just be flour.
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Your analogy is not completely accurate. It's more like this : I'm making a cake,and say you can BUY it early.but all I have right now is flour,you try it,you have the right to tell everyone you can't eat that crap right now. On the other hand,some other cakes have already been near completed and all they lack is frosting or cherry on top and are edible,so you say i can eat this crap right now. We all now there will be complete cake hopefully some day,that's why it's called Early Cakecces,but it you're paying for it,you have the right to know if u can eat that shit atm xD But seriously,I agree reviews for EA games like 'It suxs' , 'It's crap' , 'It's bad' based on current content are just bad,unprofessional and unhelpful. But I think that nicely done reviews that clearly state the problems that game has and point out general playability of the game are both helpful for the developers and the steam users.
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While I think Early Access doesn't need to be 'nearly finished', since there are many games that could be playable without being close to complete - especially RPGs and those of the 'open world' variety.
However, I don't see why this is a problem now that you can get refunds for games.
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post it all on reddit. more people on reddit than steamgifts forums.
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This kind of things is exactly why I want a "ignore all early access" button in Steam. Every single time Steam shows me an early access game I blacklist it now (with very very very few exceptions).
Don't care if it's going to be good once released, their loss, not mine, I have enough things to play. If I want to pay for unfinished products I'll go to kickstarter or something else, not Steam (or at least not until they clearly separate them from the rest of available games).
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It's sad so many horrible people are abusing the early access, as it's causing people to miss out on already good games in early access as well.
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Not really, it's just really hard to tell the difference between a very early access and a shitty game, especially for people without development or technical background. I'm quite sure most of the worst Early Access games on Steam are not from "horrible people", just from people with no experience of the real work needed to make a fully fledged game.
"Early Access" is just way too broad IMO, that can mean anything from "I started dev alone yesterday in my garage" to "almost finished AAA game in end of beta phase", we need a clear view on the current progress and final expectations before throwing money at something unfinished (kickstarter or similar website usually have that info, not Steam).
Also, Early Access is EA, so it's the Devil. <= flawless proof that Steam should stop it.
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Based on their behavior, alot of them are pretty awful people. Censoring opinions against their games, straight bad mouthing critics publicly, clearly realizing they've been stupid and seeing their behavior screws them over, and then trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug. It's happened alot of times.
Personally, I think early access needs some serious rules put in place, pricing needs to be required to be under a line, 10 bucks or less, it reduces the chance of people being ripped off, and it honestly will help the developers in the long run, as more people will actually buy and play their game, posting a game for full 40-60 dollar price is only screwing yourself.
As well, many games are too early in development, if it's not a beta, it has no place there. it's barely a real game at all generally. There are other ways to get your game out there in alpha, without cluttering and already cluttered program.
Also, they need to take forum control away from devs on steam, it's way out of hand, if they want something inappropriate removed, they need to use steam support just like we need to to get it fixed after they mess it up.
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Gnomoria is a pretty cool Early Access title.
edit:
I misunderstood everything. This image is life:
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People that buy early access and don't understand what alpha entails
sigh
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I can't say anything about planet explore because i do not own it but some devs do not accept critic. . . it's sad. They often want to destroy the free speech. I know this, too. They also hide negative curations from small curator groups (they are allowed to do) The option to hide it - is to protect the devs from spamer curator groups but they use it also to hide negative curations. . . This is not all i know alot more stuff. But early access is still a good thing. You should buy them if you want to support the devs. Without early access much indie devs would have not enough money to finish their game.
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Well he just admitted to taking down the screenshots so.........................................................
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Please be aware, there is a point even online where it becomes harassment. I sense it may have gotten that far & that's why you are being "censored". Valve mods also take an active roll throughout steam & in the hubs as well.
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It's not harassment, because it's not directed at him
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