Steam Early Access

I am generally curious.
What have been the biggest disasters/scams via Steam Early Access?
Have there been any big successes?

Why do people still buy Early Access games?

I've been on the fence about Distance since I loved Nitronic Rush but esrly access always means a game that is nowhere near done and will stay that way for years.

I dont keep track of early access scams so I dont know many examples.

I am on the same boat, I don't see why people even buy Early Access games. Only examples I know of is DayZ being stuck in Early Access for like 3 years while I think Endless Legend progressed through it successfully?

Killing Floor 2 and Starbound comes to mind… along with every single early access game by Double Fine.

Although, I think Towns is the most infamous one.

Distance is unfinished? It's not the same game as Rush?

Project Zomboid is slowly starting to become a scam not because the devs are jews but because they're fucking retarded (anims from pic related still aren't out and will probably not be until at least March 2017).

Distance is completely inferior to NR. Don't make the same mistake I did.

DayZ, Starbound, pretty much any survival sandbox game ever.

Only game that I know of that ever went into Early Access, had frequent large updates and listened to players, and on top of that came out in the timeframe it was promised (though I think it was a month early or late), is Satellite Reign.

And it's really fun .

Day Z

Go read up on PrivacyShield and ask yourself seriously why the fuck do you have Steam still installed on your computer.

GET OUT

Here's a better question, are there any early access games that are no longer early access?

Star Forge - they are first and they are scum.

Rimworld, Factorio, Ark Survival Evolved.

Divinity, Broforce, Jewing Floor 2, Planet Explorers, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Factorio… There have been plently of them, ranging from shit to pretty good.

You forgot Amplitude games except Dungeon of Endless.

Rimworld is good especially with version 16

Tabletop Sim and Dirt Rally are successes.
Too many failures to list.

Wait what the fuck, when did factorio leave early access?

Nevermind I'm retarded, I played that shit so much I assumed it came out of early access. Sorry matey.

An example of a successful game would be TIS100. The game was pretty much finished, they just used EA for balancing.
Space Engineers hasn't left EA yet, but one good thing about it being in EA is that they added planets due to user feedback. That's an example of a company using EA properly instead of as an excuse to shit out a game.

Wasn't The War Z EA? That would be an example of a shitty EA game.

The only Early Access I can name that turned out good is Assault Android Cactus.

All the other I have through bundles for the most part so calm your tits did buy Vector Thrust though range from "it delivered but was shit anyways" to still nowhere since itstarted Early Access.

God damn it man, you got my hopes up.

Part of me can't help but feel sad. Poor Portuguese man got his passion project rushed out the door by a publisher.

whatever happened to audiosurf 2?

Overgrowth.

Subnautica and Prison Architect are the only games I can think of that didn't positively bomb as Early Access.

The Stomping Land is one EA game where the developer put a pre-alpha build for sale and then literally took the money and ran.

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Funny thing is I always told people wherever there was discussion about Early Acess, that some shit like this would happen and there would be little to nothing anyone would be able to do to stop it, but everyone just chided me for not embracing new ideas of content distribution, and that older games were released in episodes at that this was no different

Not a fuckin peep outta any of those people when this happened, or when that Dwarfort knockoff did a similar thing a few years ago, or the Spacebace DF-9 Fiasco

I don't know if it was a big success but…. I enjoyed Slime Rancher. Not for long, mind you, but it was a cute game.

It's a great game, regardless of early access status.

Some people never learn, user :^)

I also backed Star Citizen back in 2012

Dirt Rally. It was in Early Access for about half a year. It's also one of the few Early Access games which ended up being actually good and the devs not fucking up at all.

I never understood any of this backing projects and early access shit. Why pay money for incomplete games and games that could end up as shit? This is the logical path of pre-ordering games.

I have only bought 2 games on early access ever, and I have enjoyed them both so I guess I wouldn't personally know.

What's so bad about it? I'm curious because I enjoyed Nitronic Rush so much

WarZ had Big Rigs devs behind it, not EA.


I remember reading about them, at first it looked like a better Minecraft. Never touched it or heard since the first trailer, was there a reason for that?

The game used to run fine on my craptop with reasonable load times when it was in alpha fucking 100 something and now it struggles to render more than 2 rabbit dicks at once. I can't think of a bigger early access shitshow than this which is a shame because I was hoping for Redwall: The Game and instead I got Lugaru: The Loading Screen.

At least, and it sucks to say this, these fucks at Yiffirewill never be taken seriously again. Did you or anyone play Receiver? Aside from a gay pun for a title, the game was pretty cool and it went nowhere.

Subnautica, I'd say. I don't really like the direction they took the game (initially it was just about cozy coral reef diving) but I do think they're doing a good job.

Astroneer is awesome

It's very straightforward. There's not a whole lot of challenging sections, but rather a lot of single obstacles with 1km of eyecandy in between. Try to imagine the endgame tracks of NR for instance. You have to flip upside down dozens of times, dodge walls, switch from ground to air and back again, all in the span of a few seconds. By the end of your playthrough, every action was reduced from a fumbling key combination to a swift execution of muscle memory. It's game difficulty bliss.

There's nothing like that in Distance. There's good visuals and something resembling a show-don't-tell plot, but most of the tracks are "let's put a wall track here, a laser gate here, and call it a day". Also the soundtrack is dull.

Regardless of what I just told you, every month I think "huh maybe it got better" or "huh maybe I didn't make it very far and that's why it's easy" and I retry it, but every time I quit the game, bored as usual. In fact, I'm going to try it again right now because I give this garbage too much benefit of the doubt.

Better question: why do people us Steam?

Because GOG doesn't have everything.

Because anons and faggots love sucking digital cock all day instead of doing a little extra work and getting the game through different means.

Towns is literally the worst one of all. It's the reason the "early access" category exists, because it was completely unfinished but people bought it at full price. Valve created the category so people would know they were being jewed.

Grim Dawn
Divinity: Original Sin
Just about every other one

Basically this and when I don't feel like being a piratefag.

Because the shit on my Steam account has long outlasted the CDs I originally purchased.

All of them.

For me biggest scam will always be Towns.
Devs got a lot of money because game became viral on the web. When people stopped buying the game however they decided to give it to some other guy who was supposed to finish it, we are talking early beta here. The guy however was pretty sane and small % of sales he got was not enough as a payment for him, so he just left.
Game is unfinished since. It entered Steam as EA in 2012.

The worst part is game was decent. Casualized Dorf Fort where you run city on top of dungeon, pretty much Tristram Simulator. You were in charge of militia and resources but besides city you also cared about adventurers that ventured into dungeon.

I haven't bought it, I already got burned before it and was sane enough to not buy game until it is worth buying.


Because you can get a game for cheap as fuck. That is when you want to be official and buy a game in the first place.
Also

Don't forget Assault Android Cactus as a success!

Space Engineers
Endless Space 2
Ashes of Singularity

probably a dozen i don't know about had or currently have a successful early access phase.

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Damn, I even like Nitronic Rush's graphics better, the visuals in that .mp4 look a bit bland compared to NR

to play videogames?

next you re going to tell me to install linux

That thing was early access? I can't like it as a game, it feel like shortstack bait.

I don't understand how games that are 3 years old are still "Early access" they have had longer DEV times than CoD games.

I think Factorio, Starfarer, and Barkley 2 are the only unfinished games I've paid for. Barkley is the only one that was a straight up scam, the other two are developing extremely slow but fairly steadily. There's going to be a big update for Starfarer sometime soon.

straight off the top of my head:

the Kickstarter page still seems to show more signs of development from what i can tell

Divinity: Original Sin is probably the best example. It seems to be the case that games that enter EA for a funding boost mid development and have a timetable already laid out for release are the ones that do the best in Early Access. Indie devs who are just using it as an eternal welfare bank with no plan (or ability) to ever implement their grand plans on the other hand… yeah, they're the ones who are poisoning the well.

Mod it so you see shapes instead of the girls when you shoot at robots in an arena then, kinda like pic related. I got it early access when it was like 20% done and it just kept getting better until the release which didn't end up sucking rng dick like Nuclear Throne.

This is going to be an unpopular opinion but I think that The Forest is legitimately good, if just because of the interesting AI of the Cannibals.

Been waiting since 2011. This shit still isn't done?

If we are going for games stuck in Early Access hell?

Ark
Blitzkrieg 3
DayZ
Epsilon
Interstellar Marines
Medieval Engineers
Rust
Space Engineers

Those are a few off the top of my head.

you forgot Shroud of the Avatar. Microtransactions out the wazoo. Full priced Early Access game.
THANKS LORD BRITISH.

The EU is fucked. Don't worry Merkle, I'm sure uncle soros still believes in you.

That's really more Valve's fault. It started out in desura where it was very known to be a work in progress but they accepted them to the store anyhow. It would have taken all of a minute to find out. So, that ended up entirely demoralising the devs because of faggotry steam children.

Subnautica is still in early access, but it hasn't raised any red flags yet so there's that.


Shill it to me. As far as I can see it's another voxel indie sandbox thing, this time in space!™


I can attest to that too, it's playing like a completed game at this point, albeit one with a lackluster ending

As for OP's questions, of the non-bundle early access I bought most have been fairly satisfactory:
My less satisfactory purchases:
I maintain a strict pirate before buy policy, so I avoid a lot of the bad eggs early. Latest purchase was Software Inc. which is a gamble but I feel good about it

I bought age of decadence while it was in early access. It had some flaws but I had fun with it, hopefully their next game will be better

install gentoo :^)

Why every time I come here people hate Space Engineers?

They just released beta update and they adding more stuff pretty much regularly.

that fucking grind to make no progress in the game even when you set build times to 1 second. the shit optimization that gets shittier each update. the other game the devs made and lied about what it was going to be and got abandoned to make space engineers once they got all the money they wanted

Nope. Since that pic was posted they added metalworking, expanded the map a little and revamped the nutrition system that will penalize you if you don't have a good diet.
Animations will probably be fully released by summer next year. As for the 1.0, all bets are off. My guess is sometime by fall 2018-mid 2019 if their past incompetence is anything to go by.

Ok that is fair besides grind part.
It gets quite fast when you get proper mining ship and few refineries.

Also this still doesn't mean it belongs in EA hell. It is going it hasn't dropped.

this is minecraft in space. the only time its going to release is when they don't want to work on it anymore or add a teleporter you can build where you fight a space dragon and the game ends when you beat it :^)

Look ID changed but it is like I said here:
Minecraft was worth buying in beta same is Space Engi, after all it is Minecraft in Space :^).

point im making is its in early access hell. it will never be finished. there was a big shitstorm on minecraft when they did the dragon level and were like "game is 1.0 now :^)"

regardless if you think its good or not its still open to having awful changes that tend to happen in EA

I've been really appreciating Factorio and From the Depths. But they've been getting updated for years now. Factorio wasn't even on Steam at first. Kerbal Space Program is pretty good too, not sure why everyone cries about the new completely optional gamemodes.

Yeah, nah. That game is anything but a success. Game is still poorly optimized because they use the Unreal4 engine, the devs pumped out equally shitty paid dlc that's the same price as the game even though it's still in Early Access and it takes 100 odd mods to make the game even remotely bearable.

I'll give props to the devs that after what seemed jack shit updates forever they're now starting to drop upodates to tell the story behind the game. I just wonder if they'll increase the map size at some point.

What's wrong with privacy shield? EU has much stricter privacy laws than the US. *Prism & The Patriot act comes to mind*

There really should be rules in place to force devs to take responsibility for Early Access games. It's nice when done right.
Klei, the company that made Don't Starve, is really good about using it, and rewards the fans that invest in their Early Access games. Like those who bought DS Together got their own copy of the original DS when DST came out of Early Access.

How so? I stopped following it after a free weekend and figured I wasn't interested in it, but it wasn't bad at the time I think.

A mix between false promises of Early Access done right, updates taking forever for no good reason, bullshit balancing and steam market being implemented before the game released.
The game is nowhere as bad as it was before if you choose to ignore the microtransactions jewery.

For games you can only get on Steam.

What the other user said, they even said it took them 200 work days to get out one new map. Thats when I knew they werent ever going to finish the game

We knew KF2 would be bad long before EA release, though, when the team started to show signs that they'd gone the SJW route. The game was no longer campy, and more edgy, too.

Every single one of them without exception

And there's also how multiplayer is about as fun as shoving a running chainsaw up your ass since the developers refuse to fix skips and not only is the track making community shit they often purposefully make unfun tracks meant to be abused by having some twat just do a jump to the side, turn on his wings and land in the final gate at the very beggining

Verdun is pretty fun. Could use more players but its comfy seeing the sane people whenever I get on

The only redeeming feature is using the trackmogrifier to make shit that runs at 2fps and burns your eyes

Not enough.

Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound, Starbound.

Also Cubeworld and Overgrowth ;_; but thats not through steam and perhaps they are just developing reallyreally slow.

And everything elses everyone said

no such thing user

The worst part about early access is that even if they eventually fully release and they are actually somewhat fun, even if a bit underwhelming - the game has no real hope because all hype and interest has died for the game at that point, so it will instantly kill any multiplayer games.

Big successes I would go with Risk Of Rain.

Retardation and fluoride in the water supply.

Kerbal Space Program and Prison Architect come to mind. I assume Rimworld is approaching feature-complete relatively soon as well.

it's dead bro

I seem to recall that War Z game caused a huge shitstorm

Space Engineers is still going strong with constant updates. There's planets and AI controlled enemy ships and shit now.

Rust.

The dev literally told the old playerbase to fuck off if they don't like the changes.

bump

Road Redemption is an early access game that is being developed slower than I would like but is fun as fuck because everyone loves Road Rash

also posting this image because it made me feel real genuine hate and sadness in my heart but this is the only thread about (((steam)))

BeamNG.drive is coming along pretty nicely, but it's a massive autism simulator.

I voted RE4 because I enjoyed myself as much I as did playing the HD remaster than when I played it on GC. The only decent pick here is AoE II (Terraria isn't really an old game).
I wish TF2 was as good as it was near its release but it started going downhill really quick after the Scout update.

Well dress me up and call me Rudolph, they actually managed to surprise me.

I've never bought an early access game.

i think they should have time limits on them. a game shouldn't be 3 years old and still be "early access" fuck that

But how else are karmawhoring mods going to dismiss criticism as "it's just a beta"?

The only games that work on EA are games that are already in a playable state but don't have quite enough content to be called complete.

Good examples include Nuclear Throne, Dungeon Souls, etc.

what did you expect when the guy behind the entire premise left the company and the game itself has been surpassed in quality by several other games since it started?

Hell, there's a Minecraft mod that does practically the same thing, only with swords and bows instead of guns.

La-la-la not listening. Your wrong. ;_;

Is it okay to buy early access games from reliable developers, and/or semi-big ones?

There is literally no reason to do that at all, same with preordering it accomplishes nothing and you only do it if you are really intent on playing it instantly/as soon as it comes out or are retarded.

Fucking even South Park got it right

I liked Factorio a lot. It is pretty simple once you understand the basic lay out and establish your supply lines. It just sort of tickles my autism building these increasingly more elaborate factories and defenses. Shame it will never be developed beyond where it is now.

KSP
ARMA 3
Banished
BeamNG
Automation


Personally I still buy them because indie devs need money early to finish their game and the ~12 early access games I have brought have given me hundreds of hours of entertainment cheaper than a single AAA game.

They're rebalancing combat and adding nuclear powet in 0.15 of factorio. Plus there are tons of good mods.

I would add Darkest Dungeon. Regardless of what you think of the balance changes, the game is prime example of EA success.

If it didnt go through EA the devs wouldnt have fucked the game over this much.

Honesty, you have to be borderline retarded to not get it immediately.

Every single one of those are half-warmed trash.

There's nothing wrong with buying an early access game.
You just have to buy it for the game it currently is, not the game it 'will' be.

I bought Starbound early on. That game was pretty okay, when I picked it up. Same amount if not more content than Terraria at the time, neater background, more stuff to explore, and had a bit of an RPG element to it that let me build my own story.
Unfortunately, for Starbound later updates is what hurt that for me. As it went on, things got shittier here and there, and it sort of died out for a bit. Recently released proper, now. Not very good, but still, worth the small amount I payed. Never actually kept a lot of their promises, but like I said, don't buy for the game it 'could' be. Never pans out.
Worst thing I find about it is the 'campaign'. But, I'm some weirdo what actually roleplays in games, so that's probably just me.

Best early access game I've got is From the Depths. Again, buy for the game it is.
Pretty sweet, but I worry about update issues again. Still, dev seems to have his shit together, and game's got a damn load of content for something so simple.

Was a thing before the EA cancer began in earnest, but delivered massively.

Battle Brothers is another EA game where the devs seem to know what the fuck they're doing.

Only early access game I've ever given money to was Besiege, and it was some of the best vidya money I've spent in the last couple years.

Those nominees always make me want to throw up in rage. Something like Doom should be on there not fucking Skyrim, Terraria or Civilization V.

For fucks sake.

Biggest scam is Spacease DF-9. At the time, Mr Shitface had at least 5 ongoing projects. Spacebase was one of them, and the one that got the axe… except they had already been selling the damn thing via Early Access. Oops. So they just called one of the alpha builds "finished" and called it a day. And he still has the balls to keep selling it.


The game had been running in a permanent development-style, but at the time Steam only accepted finished games. So he just called the latest build finished (it really was far more deeloped than Spacebase DF-9 tho) and realeased it… and a couple of weeks later Valve rolled out Early Access kek

After that, the game got a shit-ton of flak, and apparently it fucked the dev's real life a bit. He hired a guy to resume development but it was a terrible deal and the guy backed off.

This.
Also Grim Dawn & the games from Klei come to mind

I'll shill for the Factorio guys.

Other exception would be Zachtronics (Spacechem, TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O, Infinifactory). Their games are practically done and just have some balancing/tweaks based on EA feedback.

Subnautica's doing well with constant updates and currently having plenty of content so far. Out of the EA games I've played, this feels like the most "complete" one.
The devs for squad are doing monthly updates adding new vehicles, maps, guns, and UI improvements. Still far from finished though.

Someone even remembering this thing.

At the time Gnomoria seemed like a decent alternative in the "DF-like with a a human operable UI that still has Z-levels" when Towns went to shit but it succumbed to the same thing later.
The roadmap including a lot of planned release and post-release features was removed. Content updates were slow at this point already and dev decided to spend weeks/months apparently reorganising games files structure for scalability/modding purposes or whatever so it seemed like he was going for long term plans, released it as 1.0, vanished without announcement soon after.

Early Access is a retarded concept, the only games who did "Good EA" are those who didn't need it. As in getting your money worth even if they mostly stopped developing the game at that point.
Terraria is a good example, they didn't need Early Access, yet the game looks almost like a sequel compared to what it was at release.

What is going on with Barkley 2? Is it canned?

Street Fighter V, what's even worse it was 60$ for 1/3 of a game and they still haven't finished it.

They're both garbage but at least Holla Forums can recognize rust for the garbage it is

That reminds me, Rimworld was put up on EA onoly recently, for the logest time it was direct purchase only. In fact, that's how I bought it, back in Alpha 8. Nowadays, it's evolving into something that can stand on its own, with A16 adding a simulated world map which you can navigate across with the help of caravans. It's become less of a DF clone and more if a DF derivative.

I'm not sure but i think Sergey Titov re-branded WarZ like the third time now? I'm wondering; How is he still allowed on Steam?

Early Access disappointments for me were Cosmonautica and Lichdom: Battlemage. I gotta say that The Forest and War for the Overworld are the few positive examples, though. But i'll never buy early access again. Got Cosmaonautica because i was bored and when i wanted to return it, it was too late.

Yeah, forget to mention Starbound

That one is out?

The Forest is probably one of the best surprise i had from early access and i didn't even pay for it thanks to a friend: i have to say though the game feels a bit empty and it becomes repetitive but the cannibals are fucking spooky and a bunch of fucking niggers that destroy everything i build, the white man burden is real

It's still in Early Access. Updates are frequent, the devs listen to the community. Maybe a bit too much. They should finally announce a release date.

I want underaged to leave.

Sky Rogue is okay for Early Access and $10 on itch.io for DRM free copies. If it had a real campaign instead of random targets to blow up, I'd shill it harder but as is, it's just alright. Pocket Rumble is okay and slowly coming along. Most of anything else I can think of is probably shit or dead now. Joylancer hasn't updated in a while despite being mostly done, Dungeon Dashers is fucking dead.

To be fair, I don't think terraria was technically EA, it's just all the free updates make it feel that way.

I see this as about as much of a problem as amiibos, nickle and dime dlcs, and other kike tier schemes. This won't get better until the normalfags are either more informed that will not happen, they are too indoctrinated or are expelled from the hobby. Right now we are seeing large businesses taking advantage of good goyim while the good goyim defend this whole practice.

At least baby boomers were tricked. Millennials are the biggest cancer I have ever seen. They know its all a scam but they will still defend it, tooth and nail.

It's Castle Story user learn to fucking read

I bought 2 early access games on steam and only 1 i liked.

Exanima - i got it free from gift, good interesting ragdoll combat but too i'm old to git gud but will try when i'm in the mood.
Fragmented - Semi scammed, fps performance is all over the floors
Machrace - bretty good turbo game, thats it and i wasn't expecting much.

To add to and , Darkest Dungeon. It turned out to be really fucking amazing. A DLC is in the works now.

Have you been to the weald past veteran dungeons? Risk management your healer getting crit for 100 then killed from toxin.

I'll be honest with you user, I only have a couple of hours on it, and I'm getting ass-raped because I'm not familiar with these kind of games I'm more of a FPS kinda guy, just trying to diversify now but I'm still enjoying it. I'll let you know once I get there.

Also, what about the art direction? looks pretty cool to me IMO.


Some of us consider the convenience of having any game one wants readily available for download, along with automatic patching worthwhile, user.

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