Never trust early access unless the devs have said something every week for the last 6 months.
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Nope, but I cursorily happened to check out some threads due to potential slight interest on the game, and discovered that the devs. lost the lease on their office building, or were late paying it, and thus had some troubles. What this means for the future of the game / credibility of the devs, I do not know.
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Adding to the discussion:
Extra Credits - Early Access - The Problem with Unfinished Games
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this is much better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyGbbIB5eaM
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If you buy Early Access, you're buying a hope and a dream. You're gambling away your money, and all you're entitled to is what's already there.
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I've supported a few early access ideas, like Full Mojo Rampage, which has recently finished early access and is an amazingly fun game and Starbound, which I haven't enjoyed as much sadly. The only other early access game I got was in a bundle which I care nothing about.
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Only early access games I have are from free money (CSGO cases being sold) or my cousin giving me a copy of rust. Rust keeps getting updated and Contagion was fully released. I picked up nether for $3 and I regret it. I still think it's in early access and it's really misleading that they took that tag off. Other than that I don't actually purchase early access games with my money since I find it the same as pre-ordering which I never do.
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Didn't pick that one up, but have had luck with the early access games I've been interested in.
First Steam early access was Don't Starve, probably played it more before it was actually released though. I've also been happy with Project Zomboid, Starbound(haven't played in awhile), and Pixel Piracy.
Grabbed my first kickstarter the other week, Sheltered, here is to hoping my first isn't a let down.
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Never heard of it, and that's what happens when you buy an early access multiplayer-only game.
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STOP buying Early Access! The devs get a huge influx of cash when the hype train rolls into town, they take their thousands of sales and they abandon the game. There is no reason not to, why bother to keep working on a game when 80% of profit has already been made. To make it worse, Valve says in the FAQ that this is acceptable.
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I think it needs to be judge on a developer by developer basis.
Don't Starve was updated rather frequently even after release.
Project Zomboid dev disappeared for a bit it seemed, but seem to be pretty active now.
Pixel Piracy updates all over the place.
Check out the forums, what others are saying, you're still taking a risk, but do a bit of research before you jump in.
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Why bother with any risk? Just add the game to your wishlist and come when if/when it's done. In the meantime, play one of the thousands of working and complete games already on Steam.
Buying a game shouldn't be a "risky investment" that you hope pays dividends of a full game at some point down the road.
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Ugh, so like play my back log? I agree with ya, but if the investment is smaller, and I can still have fun I find it worth it. Going back to Don't Starve, adapting to the changes as the game developed, or getting something new put in added to the enjoyment I thought.
Would I ever spend 50 bucks on an early access, heck no. 10-15 bucks and the developer looks pretty active in it's development, sure.
There are also quite a few early access games in my library much more enjoyable then some fully released games I've come across. If you look at it from an enjoyment standpoint, the risk will always be there with a new game.
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Don't Starve was one of the only games that I bought in Early Access and I agree they did it well (even if I hated the game, it was still a well made product). My concern is that it seems for every good Early Access game there are 5 terrible ones that people still seem to latch onto instantly. I mean, look at the outcry over Towns, Starbound, Starforge(?) and now the very topic of this thread. There are likely many more but I can't think of them at the moment; however I do hear people complaining about Early Access "scams" all the time.
Is $10-15 a big deal to waste? Well, that depends on the person. Maybe for some it's less of a big deal than for others. I think for me, it's less about the actual cost and more about the principal of potentially being ripped off.
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In regards to Don't Starve, I loved getting to see the game evolve as it wen through its early access days. I'm also enjoying seeing Project Zomboid and Starbound evolve as well, even if those two are moving along more slowly. Seeing games as they go through their development is quite enjoyable for me.
In regards to "risky investment", honestly, I've had less regrets with Early Access than I have with fully released games. With Early Access I do shit tons of research before I even consider buying the game, with fully released titles I normally just buy them on sale for a few bucks with very little research cause it's just a few bucks, then later if the game sucks I kinda go "Dang, I coulda gotten a couple tacos with that money".
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Yes, and the devs who do that will NEVER make money again. There's also plenty of people who wait to buy a game until it's fully released, and there are always TONS of buyers later down the road.
Take Don't Starve for instance. I'm sure they made quite a bit of money while it was in Early Access. If it had been abandoned then Klei would have had that money, sure, but when it goes on sale you wouldn't see it among the "Top Sellers" like you do now. There are still people looking to buy it, as I'm sure there will be when they release the co-op patch. But I digress.
TL;DR, Devs that dump their Early Access games will never make profit in the future, from sales, or other games they make, which is a huge reason NOT to do it.
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I'd love to believe that every Early Access game will launch as a wonderful experience down the road, but that just hasn't been the case with many examples. Are there a few good ones? Sure. Are there many crappy ones? Yup.
So why take the risk? Just add the game to your wishlist and wait for the dev to finish the game. If they finish it, great, buy it up. If not, you just saved your time and money!
So yet again, DON'T buy Early Access - there is no good reason to do so.
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there is plenty of reason to.. cause I damn well want to. Good enough reason.
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"So yet again, DON'T buy Early Access - there is no good reason to do so."
yeah, not a single reason whatsoever. one of the biggest pros of early access is that you can give feedback as the game is being made, something that has helped many games get to a better place. i'm not saying people should buy every early access game one sees, but if people use common sense and buy from trusted/proven developers and sift through early access steam reviews to see which games have been regularly updated consistently over a long period of time and you'll be unlucky to ever be disappointed. it's a system that is abused, but used right it's a great for people who actually want to help developers. anyone who treats early access or kickstarter as a pre-order shop deserves to be upset because that's not what it's for.
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Unless there is huge community outcry for a change, it's very rare an Early Access dev will make changes based on your feedback. And guess what? Many big, finished games still make changes based on community feedback, so that's not something unique to Early Access.
At the end of the day, it's still a big risk to throw full-price money at a half finished game that may never be finished. There is nothing wrong with adding the game to your wishlist and just grabbing it later once the dev has finished development.
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I don't like to buy early access games unless it is a proven game like Dayz.
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Let's see, counting only the people who actually played the game: 3889 x $ 24.99 = $98.000, however there are people who bought the game after the release, and there are people who haven't ever started the game up. I'd add around 175% to the final value so they made around $ 200-250.000 (could be way more though)
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Early Access is one of the worst things to ever grace Steam.
I wonder how many Early Access games actually are scam or abandoned. Must be quite many by now ...
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"Ostrich Corner
Postby GovernorOstrich » Mon Jul 07, 2014 8:23 pm
Hello! It's Monday!
This is still what's being focused on.
Some FAQ:
Was the screen shot of a message from Vlad true or a shop?
Vlad is currently working on the Therizinosaurus model and the Psittacosaurus. IIRC, those are the last two dinosaurs needing models.
Is Jig alive?
Yes. Alive and well.
What news does Jig bring?
Unfortunately NDA prevents me from speaking about new news. Sorry :(
Why don't you do weekly dev diaries?
We've always shown big land mark advancements in The Stomping Land's development (i.e. a new feature being fully implemented, a new dinosaur model being completed, etc.) SuperCrit has never made piecemeal updates of what we were doing in the past (unless you count Kcin's modelling streams) and I don't expect that to change.
Why did you say weekly a month ago if it wasn't going to be weekly?
We expected updates to be weekly. Maybe after optimization is done and everything is stable we can return to that intent. We have models and features done and complete (mostly; might need an animation or some polish, but the stuff is there) like the catapult and other dinosaurs. It's a matter of time more than anything at the moment.
That's all for now."
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Do you remember Stomping Land? Yeah that top selling over-hyped game on Steam.
The game was a blast when it was released on Steam, thousands of players and purchasers. I kept myself from buying it, even though I really liked the concept. Now the game barely has 160 players online at peak hours.
No update in 42 days, not even an announcement from the devs. False advertising: the game looks and plays nothing like what's shown in the videos, pictures. People are raging on the forums demanding refunds. I wonder if you bought the game what is your opinion/experience?
I own quite a few Early Access games, but I bought them solely for the reason of supporting the devs, and liking the concept (like kickstarter). There are also Early Access games that are nearly finished, like Kerbal Space Program or Prison Architect.
However I still can't justify buying Early Access is a risky thing, and I do not like the way Steam is handling it at the moment. I'm pretty sure the Stomping Land devs could be sue over the claim of false advertising.
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