Valve Tightens Its Early Access Rules

[SecondPrize]

Steam isn't going to give refunds. They sell the games, they don't take on the responsibility that the people who purchase the games will be satisfied with them. Nor should they.

 

[Rozalia1]

I was poking fun at the idea that despite doing the same thing, Microsoft got bashed for it. Haven't had coffee yet though, so I probably didn't make it clear

I think the release-timing clause seems reasonable, as neither of them said "launch with us first", they both explicitly said "launch with us at the same time as everybody else", which would ensure that their platform doesn't get special treatment, and precludes a timed exclusive.

Than I apologise, its so common that I took it as completely straight/serious.

 

[Strazdas]

And where'd the refunds come from after the devs have already spent hmm?

irrelevant where it comes from. when you take a bank loan to open a developer studio the bank wont go "oh well they already spent the money we dont want it back anymore". the developer should NOT put his game on early access if he thinks the refunds will be so great it will bancrupt him. that is to say he should only put it on early access if people will enjoy it and not go the refund route. Steam has a lot of bad, worse and even illegal refund policies already. they should really work on getting those down.

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.

If your trying to release a game so awful that ALL of your costumers want a refund i think thats more than fair response. Heres the thing: if your game is awful - dont release it. The problem with early access is that 90% of the games there are something we saw for free on flash game sites or so awful that people were ashamed to release them. these needs to go, the harsher the better.

You're counting DayZ as a success story? Because their hacker friendly, terminally delayed, worse-than-ARMA-mod version doesn't seem like a particularly successful version of how to do early access. It just had better marketing than the other cynical cash-grabs that never intend to complete their game.

they already sold enough to cover all developement costs and make a profit, so technically a success.

Also Rocket rebuilt the entire engine (because ARMA's engine is horrible) so now that under the hood stuff is change they may finally start moving forward. but i agree that in its current state it is worse than the mod we had.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Eh. Only 'early access' game I own is Starbound.

And while it's current incarnation falls far short of what they were describing when they started making it. It IS a working game even in it's current state. A pretty decent one even, not too far off Terraria, which it resembles in style...

So... On the whole, while I would like them to add what they originally said they would, I'm OK with it being in the state it's in now...


But... to get to the actual topic, I am guessing this is a good thing, given what I've seen when I looked at the 'early access' section of steam...

There definitely need to be some improvements to the guidelines...

 

[SilverUchiha]

Do not ask your customers to bet on the future of your game.

Isn't that more or less contrary to, well....everything? I mean, Steam even advertises these games by saying you can follow their development and such.

i think they meant

"your game must already be worth money"


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

The problem here is that money spent on an early access title goes to fund the future development of the game (ideally). Therefore, if someone's truly working on it, that money will have been used towards the game and refunds (at a certain point) would theoretically be undoable without taking money from the dev(s) personally. I agree that some type of refund scenario would work best, but I can't think of a valid way around it.

My thinking is that Steam/Valve would pay the money back but then that dev is banned permanently from making anything on their services again. But even that's not ideal because, for as much money as Steam has, I can't imagine doing that wouldn't be without a significant cost. Not to mention that this wouldn't stop bad devs from doing this because they'd still get the money from the sales before their ban. Thus not being penalized enough for their shady behavior.

I think the best idea would be for Steam to have some kind of community run organization (that they would pick/pay) to try these games out for free and decide if they can get approved for early access. And maybe even decide when, at a certain point, to cut the game off of Steam should they determine bad behavior on the dev. This would likely be the best solution, having a team of community members policing the Early Access games (and maybe even some greenlight games). But I don't think Valve would make this happen.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

Do not ask your customers to bet on the future of your game.

Isn't that more or less contrary to, well....everything? I mean, Steam even advertises these games by saying you can follow their development and such.

i think they meant

"your game must already be worth money"


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

The problem here is that money spent on an early access title goes to fund the future development of the game (ideally). Therefore, if someone's truly working on it, that money will have been used towards the game and refunds (at a certain point) would theoretically be undoable without taking money from the dev(s) personally. I agree that some type of refund scenario would work best, but I can't think of a valid way around it.

My thinking is that Steam/Valve would pay the money back but then that dev is banned permanently from making anything on their services again. But even that's not ideal because, for as much money as Steam has, I can't imagine doing that wouldn't be without a significant cost. Not to mention that this wouldn't stop bad devs from doing this because they'd still get the money from the sales before their ban. Thus not being penalized enough for their shady behavior.

I think the best idea would be for Steam to have some kind of community run organization (that they would pick/pay) to try these games out for free and decide if they can get approved for early access. And maybe even decide when, at a certain point, to cut the game off of Steam should they determine bad behavior on the dev. This would likely be the best solution, having a team of community members policing the Early Access games (and maybe even some greenlight games). But I don't think Valve would make this happen.

easy, give customers a grace period of a week/month in which they can claim a refund for their purchase, during this period, valve will hold the devs money, once the period is over, the money is given to the dev

i doubt many game projects will fail due to a week/month of delayed payment

 

[StriderShinryu]

I am glad they are trying to do something about this (finaly) but I would be happy if they simply had a filter on the main page that would allow me to remove early access and indi games from appearing. You can already do it with dlc so I don't imagine it would be difficult.

I agree with this and actually feel that it should be off by default. There is nothing wrong with Early Access as a development tool to get player feedback (and funding) earlier in the process, but Early Access games should not be sold alongside completed games as if they are one and the same. The system right now, even under Valve's new rules, basically allows developers to park their games in Early Access while they work (or don't work) on these games while avoiding criticism but while still making money off of them. In fact, under Valve's new rules, this sort of suspended animation is almost encouraged given that Valve is specifically stating that developers can't make promises about when their game is actually going to be finished or what features it is definitely going to have or not have. More needs to be done to actually encourage developers who do make use of Early Access to actually use Early Access as a transitional period during development as opposed to basically the entire development period for a game that may never leave it.

 

[direkiller]

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.

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

Also I think it's just digital PC platforms, not x-box vs PC
as games launching on multi-platforms typically have the credentials to avoid Green light anyway I don't think it will ever come up as a PC vs console version.

 

[bdcjacko]

Sounds like a good move on Steam/Valves part. But will it work? Only time will tell.

 

[Spade Lead]

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...

Yeah, but if a great game comes out, and I have been burned in the past by what looked like a legitimate game, I am not going to invest in the actual good game BECAUSE I have been burned in the past. If you allow your potential customers to get screwed and laugh it off as "They should have known better," they won't support you when you release something because they won't trust YOU, either.

I would certainly never buy a game from someone who talked the way you have in this thread, because I would assume you are one of those people trying to run a scam.

 

[Spade Lead]

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.

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

Valve wants it released on Origin or something similar, IN ADDITION to on Steam. Not Xbox one, PS4, and Wii U. Just other digital sales sites. That should be seen as a good thing.

 

[Signa]

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...

Yeah, but if a great game comes out, and I have been burned in the past by what looked like a legitimate game, I am not going to invest in the actual good game BECAUSE I have been burned in the past. If you allow your potential customers to get screwed and laugh it off as "They should have known better," they won't support you when you release something because they won't trust YOU, either.

I would certainly never buy a game from someone who talked the way you have in this thread, because I would assume you are one of those people trying to run a scam.

Well for starters.. the ration of decent games to Bulls**t games is roughly 1:10. No seriously. Go to any platforms library of games and pick one at random and it will be a crappy game in most cases. Secondly. There are ways to easily tell a good game from a bad game, just from the material the devs put up about it.

It's actually painfully easy to tell them appart. Is the promo material showing mostly prerendered cinmatics and cutscenes? CHances are the game play is crappy. In short the less actual game play that is shown... the less likely the game is to be good.

How to tell if an EA game will likely fail? Look at what the devs want to add, the feature list. Does it sound like something Pete Molyneux would say? Then it will never work out. However a small, but focused feature list usually implies that the devs have some idea of what they can actually achieve and thusly are more likely to succeed.

See.. easy enough... or better to say this: \

(No. Of features)/[(no. of games the developer has successfully brought to market)-(no of games rated poorly)]

See how that works? The result will be a number. The lower the number... the better the odds that the dev team can pull it off. A dev with 1 or less games brought to market that puts up a list of 10 or so features...is going to score very badly.



Also while I would mourn the loss of your Early Access purchase I'd sleep well knowing you'll probably wind up buying it anyway when it score a 78 on metacritic after release


See that is the trump[ card of the consumer.. it needn't be a risk. You can simply WAIT until the gamne is finished (like I do) then buy it after you've checked the feed back and a maybe a let's play vid. Then you can make your purchase...yeah I know, it's a lot of work but hey if you can't be bothered to practice a little patience or due diligence... well.. maybe you're not ready for financial independence.

I'm not really disagreeing with you, but if everyone did that, then EA would be a failure. The point of EA is to get games funded while in production to help indie devs get off the ground easier. I have no problem with that concept in theory, but as we've seen, EA just gets a ton of scam artist to throw together a weekend's worth of work and charge $7 for the effort. Zero gameplay features required.

 

[Rozalia1]

Valve wants it released on Origin or something similar, IN ADDITION to on Steam. Not Xbox one, PS4, and Wii U. Just other digital sales sites. That should be seen as a good thing.

Microsoft = bad, Valve = good, many people have made that stance clear don't worry. What is said is irrelevant, the speaker is what matters on determining if its good or bad apparently.

 

[Mydnyght]

"Customers should be buying your game based on its current state, not on promises of a future that may or may not be realized."

That's basically what Jim Sterling says about Early Access on his YouTube channel.

Well, maybe these "guidelines" will result in more frequent not-shit games from his Early Access Squirt series.
I mean, they shouldn't be much worse than... (ugh, forgive me for saying this) Grass Simulator, right?

 

[Thebazilly]

"Customers should be buying your game based on its current state, not on promises of a future that may or may not be realized."

That's basically what Jim Sterling says about Early Access on his YouTube channel.

Well, maybe these "guidelines" will result in more frequent not-shit games from his Early Access Squirt series.
I mean, they shouldn't be much worse than... (ugh, forgive me for saying this) Grass Simulator, right?

I think a lot of people don't really realize how terrible the state of Early Access is right now. Pick any of Jim's Squirty Plays at random and you're probably going to end up with a piece of trash cobbled together in one week in Unity engine.

How about the recent video on "Dragon," for instance? A game that promises to be an open world action RPG, but currently has... no sound, no NPCs, no evident gameplay concept, and no features.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDp6ydo4ipo&list=PLlRceUcRZcK246t3-pSiAausEcNxrCsLx

Anyone remember all the hullabaloo about The Slaughtering Grounds? That was fun, wasn't it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT0GSPxf0vw&list=PLlRceUcRZcK0zAt8sV33ZsMCVlOgWjVoy

Pick literally any Early Access game with the word "Simulator" in the title, and you'll find an ugly, broken mess nonetheless asking you for your money:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WImXoC9wBY&list=PLlRceUcRZcK0zAt8sV33ZsMCVlOgWjVoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Rx6Sa2kWU&list=PLlRceUcRZcK0zAt8sV33ZsMCVlOgWjVoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q2MeqPvEXU&list=PLlRceUcRZcK0zAt8sV33ZsMCVlOgWjVoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxNqXwGBjMs&list=UUWCw2Sd7RlYJ2yuNVHDWNOA

Why the hell are these people allowed to charge money for this? It's an embarrassment that such "games" are even allowed to exist on Steam. I see no problem with the rule of "your game must be worth money," because right now there are so many games that are clearly NOT.