it allows some games to get enough funding to be finished. indi devs can basically start with a strong demo & then work on their project with an actual budget
and it allows other games to never be finished and still sold, indi devs can start strong, and then give up, and still make passive income out of people who don’t scroll down to reviews to check if people aren’t complaining about the game being abandoned, or in forever-early-acess-hell
The funding is great for indy devs. My main issue with it to be honest isn’t even unfinished games. It’s that you’re essentially paying to be a beta tester. A position normally that has to be paid for is now somehow turning a profit it’s really weird
eh not quite, a paid beta tester is hired to create standardised, and well written bug reports. when someone buys an early access game it’s the same as a game foundriser with a donation tier that gives them access to beta versions, you’re not required (and barely even expected) to provide well written bug reports. quite frankly i think it’d be an infuriating experience if a dev decided to relay on their early access players’ “bug reports” for their beta testing, since most of those are just a screenshot of their game with words “found bug fix please”, what did they do to get that bug? they don’t remember. what’s their specs? they say windows10. what version of game were they running? they say they took the screenshot 10 minutes ago (have they updated the game? maybe, maybe not)
it’s a double edged sword really,
it allows some games to get enough funding to be finished. indi devs can basically start with a strong demo & then work on their project with an actual budget
and it allows other games to never be finished and still sold, indi devs can start strong, and then give up, and still make passive income out of people who don’t scroll down to reviews to check if people aren’t complaining about the game being abandoned, or in forever-early-acess-hell
The funding is great for indy devs. My main issue with it to be honest isn’t even unfinished games. It’s that you’re essentially paying to be a beta tester. A position normally that has to be paid for is now somehow turning a profit it’s really weird
eh not quite, a paid beta tester is hired to create standardised, and well written bug reports. when someone buys an early access game it’s the same as a game foundriser with a donation tier that gives them access to beta versions, you’re not required (and barely even expected) to provide well written bug reports. quite frankly i think it’d be an infuriating experience if a dev decided to relay on their early access players’ “bug reports” for their beta testing, since most of those are just a screenshot of their game with words “found bug fix please”, what did they do to get that bug? they don’t remember. what’s their specs? they say windows10. what version of game were they running? they say they took the screenshot 10 minutes ago (have they updated the game? maybe, maybe not)