Early Access is a coinflip.

For every game that’s a success story — Caves of Qud taking a month shy of a decade to release its phenomenally bizarre take on old-school roguelike adventures, for example — there are three more that just get abandoned. These include the likes of the experimental FPS Fancy Skulls, or the perpetually “in development” games that never quite reach 1.0. Sure, it’s a way to invite people into the process, get real-time player feedback for your game, and generate bug reports quickly. The gestation process is just as often a way to get an unfinished product into the storefront as it is a way to use the service as intended. Some games even go up without a release date just to generate wish-listing and demand, with a “soon” and a couple of images purporting to be in-game. It’s a frustrating state of affairs, which has us wondering, where do we draw the line?

It’s worth noting right away that most developers and publishers don’t abuse early access/prerelease listings. Prerelease periods are a godsend for smaller creators, allowing them both to generate interest and metrics for their game (which help get it a decent spot to find its niche on Steam) and giving them enough time to refine their game to its best and most ambitious possible form. One need only look at the success stories like Caves of Qud, Stardew Valley, or even to some degree Dwarf Fortress to see that the model does work, or to know about some games that just couldn’t make it over the line (like one of my favorite obtuse games, Phenomenon 32) that might have benefited.

That doesn’t excuse what a large number of developers and creators do with the format. While World of Horror was the work of one creator, the vast amount of time between updates and said creator vanishing off the face of the Earth for significant periods of time (several parts of the game even in 1.0 still read “coming soon!” and have since before 1.0) are a rather egregious example. Similarly, the games that merely have a “coming soon” page with an eye towards eventually delivering a game but mainly serve as a way to generate interest similar to a Kickstarter proof of concept, flooding Steam with listings for games that are more concept art than reality (On this writer’s wishlist alone, the entries for Asylopole and Total Alarm have been listed as coming soon on Steam for 6-8 years).

It makes purchasing and even keeping track of games an exercise in frustration. How many times have you seen an ad for a game that looks really cool only to find that it’s going to be in early access for the next three years at the least and is barely playable, or worse still, is only a “coming soon” page for an eventual game? What good is it even putting these on your wishlist to follow them if they’re never going to come out? At the very least, Steam should put a cap on these games, either a certain number of years, a certain percentage of completion, or a definitive year deadline in which people can expect the game.

While there’s no easy answer for how to handle this, it’s clear the current state of affairs in early access is something that must change. Even beyond the toxicity of preorder culture (a subject for another essay), there’s something unnervingly shady about a vast wasteland of digital store pages for products that might never come out, or might remain unfinished forever while still collecting money.

Tell us what you think! How do you feel about massively long early access periods? Should there be a cap on how long without release a prerelease page should have? Share your reactions in the comments below or join the discussion on Boss Rush Network’s Discord, Facebook, and Twitter.

Featured Image: Ysbyrd Games

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