Agreed, I don’t blame the publishers for this. It’s clearly working on some amount of population that makes it worthwhile when they do the spreadsheets. The only beta game I’ve purchased recently lets you self-host servers and I was happy with the state it was in even if it was dropped and died all together. I refuse to purchase just about anything else that is still in “beta” or “early access”. I remember when “Beta” meant “download this game and play it… If you like it you can buy it next month”.
It’s that population that actively makes games worse for all of us as publishers can choose to just be lazy. I was stupid happy when BG3 got the praise it got on launch. That’s what it used to be… that’s how it should be.
I’ll grab early access for either a new studio or a studio with a history of taking their early access to full completion so that there can be more options, but not for IP that’s in the hands of mega studios/ones with a long history or ones with a history of giving up on previous early access projects.
I got Valheim, Rust, and Raft all early access and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them as well as seeing how they have been developed since I don’t know much about game dev and it’s interesting to me.
Kinda like watching plants grow.
It’s that population that actively makes games worse for all of us
That’s exactly why I don’t cut them any slack. Their dumb choices don’t just harm themselves - they harm me and all other gamers, insofar as they’ve made it so that publishers can get away with putting out unfinished, buggy, unbalanced crap.
Sure - the gamers might spend a while ineffectually bitching on forums and handing out 1 star reviews, but that’s just meaningless noise. The ONLY thing that matters to the publishers is whether or not people buy the game, and those dunderheads not only buy the game - they line right up to buy the next one too.
Or, now, line right up to pay extra for early access to the next one.
Agreed, I don’t blame the publishers for this. It’s clearly working on some amount of population that makes it worthwhile when they do the spreadsheets. The only beta game I’ve purchased recently lets you self-host servers and I was happy with the state it was in even if it was dropped and died all together. I refuse to purchase just about anything else that is still in “beta” or “early access”. I remember when “Beta” meant “download this game and play it… If you like it you can buy it next month”.
It’s that population that actively makes games worse for all of us as publishers can choose to just be lazy. I was stupid happy when BG3 got the praise it got on launch. That’s what it used to be… that’s how it should be.
I’ll grab early access for either a new studio or a studio with a history of taking their early access to full completion so that there can be more options, but not for IP that’s in the hands of mega studios/ones with a long history or ones with a history of giving up on previous early access projects.
I got Valheim, Rust, and Raft all early access and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them as well as seeing how they have been developed since I don’t know much about game dev and it’s interesting to me. Kinda like watching plants grow.
That’s exactly why I don’t cut them any slack. Their dumb choices don’t just harm themselves - they harm me and all other gamers, insofar as they’ve made it so that publishers can get away with putting out unfinished, buggy, unbalanced crap.
Sure - the gamers might spend a while ineffectually bitching on forums and handing out 1 star reviews, but that’s just meaningless noise. The ONLY thing that matters to the publishers is whether or not people buy the game, and those dunderheads not only buy the game - they line right up to buy the next one too.
Or, now, line right up to pay extra for early access to the next one.