Valve Tightens Its Early Access Rules

[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.

 

[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.