Phew, still early access. I thought I was going lose my week there :p.
Not really a criticism of the developers choice but personally I find the prevalence of early access infuriating. I often play games for awhile and then move on. I also love that initial discovery side of a game. But of these facts are not overly compatible with early access.
Don’t buy it then? Buy it only when it is out of early access if it ever will be?
If you like chicken are you also infuriated by all the people who sell pork?
It is not like the developer had a choice between selling a ready version today vs a not-so-ready version today and they choose to release the not-so-ready version.
I'd rather have a ton of Early Access games, where players can take part to the development of the game (by giving valuable feedback to the developers and funding the development), than AAA games that are released incomplete and full of bugs like the CyberPunk fiasco. Or have a third of the content, then the rest as DLC like Paradox or EA does.
EA does seem to be used as a crutch by AAA games. “Look, we missed the deadline, but we’re releasing it anyways as an ‘early access,’ so don’t be mad if it sucks.” Maybe I’m just biased, but “indie” games that go early access make much more sense than AAA because it’s one person versus dozens or hundreds.
Games should not be released in early access because of a missed deadline. It's part of the release cycle: alpha -> beta -> early access -> full release.
And you stay in early access as long as it's needed.
I've seen a lot of AAA games do the following "Look the game is not finished, but we need the money, don't worry you'll be able to pay the rest as DLC"
Steam's Early Access is much preferable both for "enthusiast users" and the developer compared to the traditional opaque developer/publisher model. If you're not interested in Early Access, just ignore it and buy the game when it's out of Early Access.
Not really a criticism of the developers choice but personally I find the prevalence of early access infuriating. I often play games for awhile and then move on. I also love that initial discovery side of a game. But of these facts are not overly compatible with early access.