Valve Tightens Its Early Access Rules

[RandV80]

I think the deal people make over early access is silly. People seem to want a way to support their own judgement whether it was good or bad so it has no consequences. It's really simple, any early access game is a risk. Realize it may be a total loss. That's on the buyer and it is easy.

Now more guidelines are fine, but not necessary in my mind.

It's kind of gamer equivalent to an old man "get off my lawn!!!" thing. Take the worst example of early access you can find, like on Jim Sterling's youtube channel I saw a video for some barely playable dragon game. Is it embarassing to Steam that this is on the store page? Definitely. Is it ripping people off? That I really doubt. I mean unless you're aiming to make a humorous lets play video or maybe you know the developers and want to support them, you'd have to be an idiot to be tricked into buying that game. I'd be surprised if they have more than double digits in sales.

That Dayz clone maybe pulled off a successful scam, but apart from that it's pretty damn obvious when not to buy an early access game. I don't know if this is something a dev can turn off, but if you look at one of the games pages on Steam it will tell you how many people are currently playing it. Good early access games will have a few hundred to a few thousand playing them at any given time. But go ahead and look through the first page of new early access games to see if anyone's palying, just watch out for that tumbleweed blowing behind you.

Ultimately what people need to understand is Valve is a privately held corporation which means Gabe Newell can do what he wants, and he's very much a pro developer kind of guy. Early Access is useful to start up developers and there are a number of success stories, so even if there are some bad apples it's not going anywhere. Of course he likes us customers too, but he's not going to start going all Walmart on the 'suppliers' just for our sakes.

 

[Signa]

personally, i think its not enough, guaranteed refunds would truthly force devs to work on their games, theyll think twice before abandoning development

That's simply too extreme to be feasible. They wouldn't be able to afford giving a refund to every customer, so all it would do is kick the people on the development out of the video game industry forever, put debt on the people on the development team, and give a partial refund for in-store credit to the people who bought and played an incomplete game.

And besides that, devs not finishing EA projects isn't much of an issue, imo. Unless your game gets mega-popular, most players will get the soul of the game when it first goes up on the store. When you make a game, you're presenting its soul to people, and all you can do once you've captured that soul is improve the way you present it. There's no point on working on the presentation if most of the people who will play the game have already come to understand it.

At least you're being consistent. I know this conversation isn't about piracy, but you do seem to overvalue what a dev does from the quote below. I don't know how you think that allowing full refunds wouldn't help fix this EA problem. Make devs work for their money, and not just lazily throw some code together to get some bucks flowing on empty promises. No one is going to ask for refunds on games that are worth playing, so this can only screw over bad devs that don't deserve to be paid.

...your desire to play a game is simply not as important as paying the developer for its work, and you have no right to play a game unless you pay the owner whatever price it has decided to charge.

 

[Signa]

I think the deal people make over early access is silly. People seem to want a way to support their own judgement whether it was good or bad so it has no consequences. It's really simple, any early access game is a risk. Realize it may be a total loss. That's on the buyer and it is easy.

Now more guidelines are fine, but not necessary in my mind.

When your solution to a problem is to tell everyone who doesn't think like you to change the way they act to be more like you, it isn't a solution, it's idealism. I agree with what you are saying, but it just will never work that way.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

I think the deal people make over early access is silly. People seem to want a way to support their own judgement whether it was good or bad so it has no consequences. It's really simple, any early access game is a risk. Realize it may be a total loss. That's on the buyer and it is easy.

Now more guidelines are fine, but not necessary in my mind.

When your solution to a problem is to tell everyone who doesn't think like you to change the way they act to be more like you, it isn't a solution, it's idealism. I agree with what you are saying, but it just will never work that way.

I don't think there is an actual problem. I think people are blaming their own mistakes on others and claiming it is a problem.

If they are aware enough of the perils associated with early access to complain then they are aware enough to modify their habits anyways

Of course Valve should do something... Not because the customers deserve it but because in a business being right isn't always enough and solutions of this nature, such as better guidelines, are not exactly expensive or difficult

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

I think the deal people make over early access is silly. People seem to want a way to support their own judgement whether it was good or bad so it has no consequences. It's really simple, any early access game is a risk. Realize it may be a total loss. That's on the buyer and it is easy.

Now more guidelines are fine, but not necessary in my mind.

It's kind of gamer equivalent to an old man "get off my lawn!!!" thing. Take the worst example of early access you can find, like on Jim Sterling's youtube channel I saw a video for some barely playable dragon game. Is it embarassing to Steam that this is on the store page? Definitely. Is it ripping people off? That I really doubt. I mean unless you're aiming to make a humorous lets play video or maybe you know the developers and want to support them, you'd have to be an idiot to be tricked into buying that game. I'd be surprised if they have more than double digits in sales.

That Dayz clone maybe pulled off a successful scam, but apart from that it's pretty damn obvious when not to buy an early access game. I don't know if this is something a dev can turn off, but if you look at one of the games pages on Steam it will tell you how many people are currently playing it. Good early access games will have a few hundred to a few thousand playing them at any given time. But go ahead and look through the first page of new early access games to see if anyone's palying, just watch out for that tumbleweed blowing behind you.

Ultimately what people need to understand is Valve is a privately held corporation which means Gabe Newell can do what he wants, and he's very much a pro developer kind of guy. Early Access is useful to start up developers and there are a number of success stories, so even if there are some bad apples it's not going anywhere. Of course he likes us customers too, but he's not going to start going all Walmart on the 'suppliers' just for our sakes.

Hey my best friend got that dragon game! XD

She knew it was at a shitty stage she just loves dragons too much to care XD

But yeah, I agree with you. I don't tend to dabble in early access but if I do consider it I know what to look for

 

[Vigormortis]

Thank you both. It is a big help. I had mostly ignored the new features mainly because I could not be arsed to explore what had been added.

You're welcome.

Give some thought to at least glancing through some of the updates and changes Valve brought to Steam over the past year or so. There's been quite a lot of great new features, infrastructure updates, and other additions.

For example, wile I don't really make use of it, the Curator system seems to be a popular one. As is the new Workshop voting system.

Anyway, glad I (we) could help.

 

[AtomChicken]

About damn time. I'm surprised Early Access didn't go down in flames because of a legal brouhaha.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Be very good or else we'll slap you with this limp lettuce leaf and be very cross" - Steam.

These guidelines are a sop, nothing less. Steam obviously prefers to keep taking everyone's money for all half-finished games they advertise on there.

 

[dtgenshiken7]

For all the cynicism in these comments I'm personally glad Valve is starting to make an effort to control the flow. I personally have no issue supporting Early Access and I do understand that it is always a gamble on whether or not I'll get my money's worth, or anything for that matter, it's just all part of the plan at this point.

However, this is a great way to weed out some of the awful, moneygrubbing subculture that has developed in the Early Access slums, where an entrepreneurial Developer can take two stories from popular games, mash them together, spend about a week in Unity or Unreal Development Kit, make some promises and watch as the next months rent on their house rolls in.

Granted, this isn't going to solve the problem entirely, but I like it. Valve is showing that they do, on some level, care about what happens to us as customers. Even if it's just because we can go other places.

 

[templar1138a]

Glad they're doing something about Early Access. Now if only they'd drop the hammer when it comes to Greenlight spam.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

PFFFFF HAHAHAHA

alright let me give you this little bit of news pal, i AM a software engineer, we are talking about games that have not been updated in MONTHS, no bug fixes, no nothing

Not a very good one if you've already missed the point.

Mandatory updates would basically mean meaningless updates , updates for the sake of updating ... they add two lines of code and can claim it as a stability tweak, , remove the same two lines a week later .. optimization update.. repeat as needed.


See game development takes time. heck early Access has been barely out for a year. Do you know that most games have a dev cycle of about 3 years. these days... well unless you're doing a crappy RPG Maker hack... heck Good Campaign Mods for games take almost year and that is when they're just tweaking someone else's work not creating something from the ground up.


Point is... the system is fine... problem is with the idjit consumers. And sadly there is no patch for stupid.

should i show you my grades? or should i hook you up with the people ive done business with?

im not a worse software engineer just because i dont agree with you hahahaha

and no the system is not fine, we already have abandonware, games with dozens of missed milestones, etc

do you know how we call those in the biz pal? a fucking terrible software development cycle

 

[Metalrocks]

always ignored games that are in "early access". dont want to take the risk paying for something that is not finished and we heard few times, it does not work all the time.
but they should give the list to ubisoft. they seem to ignore or have forgotten these rules.

 

[Aerotrain]

Basically this is a clarification that you're paying for the game as is and not for how the game might turn out later in the dev cycle and some guidelines that Valve can point to when they feel the need to intervene. Doesn't hurt and depending on how they enforce it might solve some problems.

However I still feel that a mandatory extended trial-period of anywhere from 3 to 12 hours applied to every game on Early Access so that people can try it seems like the ideal solution. A free time-limited trial version that can be downloaded only once per user would negate most of the complaints about being swindled.

After the consumer is warned that he's buying the game as is (with no promises that it'll get better) and has played it for a few hours, then he'd mostly have no standing to complain about his expectations not being met if he purchases it. It provides a counter-balance for the risk of Early Access for consumers (might even rejuvenate interest and some trust in the format) while not hurting the good upstanding developers that're working up to releasing a good solid product. It's not perfect but might be the shake-up that Early Access needs.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

PFFFFF HAHAHAHA

alright let me give you this little bit of news pal, i AM a software engineer, we are talking about games that have not been updated in MONTHS, no bug fixes, no nothing

Not a very good one if you've already missed the point.

Mandatory updates would basically mean meaningless updates , updates for the sake of updating ... they add two lines of code and can claim it as a stability tweak, , remove the same two lines a week later .. optimization update.. repeat as needed.


See game development takes time. heck early Access has been barely out for a year. Do you know that most games have a dev cycle of about 3 years. these days... well unless you're doing a crappy RPG Maker hack... heck Good Campaign Mods for games take almost year and that is when they're just tweaking someone else's work not creating something from the ground up.


Point is... the system is fine... problem is with the idjit consumers. And sadly there is no patch for stupid.

should i show you my grades? or should i hook you up with the people ive done business with?

im not a worse software engineer just because i dont agree with you hahahaha

and no the system is not fine, we already have abandonware, games with dozens of missed milestones, etc

do you know how we call those in the biz pal? a fucking terrible software development cycle

And yet your suggestion would do nothing to stop scammers from scamming and would only be a timesink for devs which more or less may hurt development...and be an annoyance to consumers who will likely wind up having to download updates every time they start the game..

So Four solution fixes nothing and actually hurts the devs and consumers.

All in the name of preventing stupid buyers with two much money and not enough common sense from screwing themselves over. I say let them get screwed over... pain and loss is a very powerful teacher . Best way to learn how to tell a good dev team from a bad one...

And I didn't call you bad because I didn't agree with you.. I called you bad because you suggested something that would cause the meaningless waste of time and energy... since it would benefit no one and protect no one. Now calm down.. go drink some Chamomile tea or something.

the fundamental problem here, is that steam is selling unfinished products with no developer accountability, you shouldnt have the customer carry all of the burden

and guess what, if people dont like contant updates that do nothing, they could STILL ask for a refund over that, so theres your incentive for the developer to not do that

oh im calm, i even laughed at your preposterous and self-centered post

 

[Rozalia1]

Launch on other platforms at the same time... where have I heard that nugget... its my imagination I'm sure. The wording is slightly different and that makes a world of difference I'm sure.

Anyway put me on the list of people that see this as meaningless (in doing what it says it'll do), after all Valve's brand isn't hurt by the practice and they make money out of it.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

the fundamental problem here, is that steam is selling unfinished products with no developer accountability, you shouldnt have the customer carry all of the burden

and guess what, if people dont like contant updates that do nothing, they could STILL ask for a refund over that, so theres your incentive for the developer to not do that

oh im calm, i even laughed at your preposterous and self-centered post

I suppose you maybe right COnsidering I never considered Early Access to be a purchase as it was a contribution/donation like what i'd do on kickstarter. I think maybe then what valve needs to do is consumer education.

steam is a store not a charity, you pay for products and services, not unfullfilled promises

Uhm... also question.. how does the user prove the updates are doing nothing? That refund request would be tossed out so fast it wouldn't be funny. Since quite the opposite it gives the outward appearance of very busy devs and again.. how do you distinguish between the scammers and the genuinely hardworking devs under your system... because from what I'm seeing you can't which again means your solution again....basically throws the baby out but keeps the dirty bath water.

what i propose is a system that automatically grands refunds, not unlike the system in place on steam right now for pre-purchases

the customer should be given a good amount of time to evaluate if they like whats being sold to them as early access and if they are confident development of the game will continue at a reasonable pace

Before you suggest something ask yourself three questions.

1. If I were honest what effect would this suggestion have on me?
2. If I were a crook, how would I exploit this suggestion for my own personal gain?
3. If I were tasked with over seeing the system as suggested.. how much work would it take?

You see your suggestion fails with little more than a slight logical extension.

1. To the consumer it has no real effect, to the honest dev it basically forces them to make rushed updates just for the sake of meeting milestones.

2. If one were a crooked dev well, I've already outlined that. SImply create a do nothing functon and add it to your code... bam... update.. and you could even make sure you make the change in one of the larger files so the customer has a substantial looking 100mb dload every time.

3. So how does such a scenario look from steam... well they have a lot of users bitching about either buggy glitchy patches that seem to break more than they fix... and another set just bitching about how the games always requiring 100mb downloads.

word of mouth

plus do you prefer the current system? with no dev oversight, no dev accountability, no estimated release date, no quality control on release

we have seen games abandoned, we have seen games with MONTHS without mayor updates, we have seen games being released from early access that are still a mess and/or with tons of missing features

just off the top of my mind

stomping land
starbound
planetary annihilation
space station DF-9


lack of consumer trust is already killing kickstarter, early access is soon to follow if proper meansures are not taken

So It doesn't improve anything for the honest devs, it doesn't impede the scammers and it doesn't mreduce the number of complaints steam has to field on the issue.


Hence I propose public re-education. Because the only cure for stupid consumers is to purge the stupid with knowledge. It doesn't always work, but again, you can't pretect people from their own stupidity. Either they use their brains or they regret. If they regret, learn from the experience and move on,.. bethankful it happened with a 10 dollar game as opposed to a car, a house, a large appliance or a loan.

boy its always the customer's fault isnt it?

did i mention some of these failed early access games costed up to 100 dollars?

 

[Rozalia1]

When Microsoft said it, they were trying to force devs to put a higher priority on the Xbone than the developer might want to (with an explicit 'talk to us if this is not feasible').

Now that Valve are saying it, they are just trying to enforce fair play (without any kind of 'talk to us if this is not feasible').

Microsoft = bad, Valve = good. Easy to see the difference when you take that as your starting point

Steam is the biggest on PC so in a sense they are already highest priority there, but why don't you see this as enforcing that? Its I said worded differently but the message is the same. Other platforms = expendable, spite us and we will deny you.
What if Micrsoft had domination in terms of units, would you be lauding their gambit as a brilliant move for the betterment of everyone? What'd be the difference really?

I'm sure they are all about that yeah...

Well what a popular starting point that is these days. They'd do it all for free if they could and all that.