Free To Play Weekly – Is Early Access Good For The Industry? Ep 219

The only thing that has been proven to be good for the industry is "beta tests" true beta tests,
not the "paid for" so called betas ( i.e. early access etc.. =money schemes,)
this has just become a infestation, a reason for greed for doing nothing!
Its like being financed to trickle your way into gaming with no real obligations to succeed at all,
as in their eyes (the so called new devs), they have succeeded! by getting money in advance for doing
nothing, not much at all, neither do they have to achieve any further but to watch a bank balance
grow by subscribers money stupidity, this way, just breeds contentment.
As a alpha, beta, tester of many games in the past I saw a greater trend of help in those times,
The old school of testing achieved milestone results as is shown for what gaming is today,
with testers of days gone the help from them was enjoyed in droves & it held its head high with the
far greater feedback of the games mistakes & mechanical problems.
it was the help! not a burden!

Early access,,, is joke some times more cash grab! in my opnion it´s sad cuz some erly access games is even dropt after some time, and ppl dont get refunds. tho it culd be good for the game to use erly access to get seriuse respons from players to help out surt out buggs and so on! but! still shuld it not be way arund ? company pays the games to do this thing?

How about as long as the game is in early access, you can get a refund no matter what happens.
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Well this can go from good to bad, but mostly bad. Now devs have an incentive to finish their game.
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But most devs will probably just throw in an unfinished game and call it finished just to avoid the refund.

For the industry? For sure, It's good for them. They are getting money just to allow people to beta test their games, and even then, they have no obligation to finish actually finish and can stop development after getting a profitable return on their investment.
For us consumers though? Hell no. The industry knows gamers are a fairly impatient bunch.

I think most of the current issues with early access are easily fixable simply by Valve implementing a limit on how long a game can be in early access and also possibly beta. 1 to 2 years max seems fair and would encourage developers to actually finish the game instead of leaving it in Early Access limbo like many have.

Make love to it ??? Lol maybe give it some love would have sounded better, but funny :)

early access is now completely new genre of games. and most games never leave that genre