Early Access Has A HUGE Problem

Today we discuss a recent case study in the pitfalls of Early Access. Lack of updates, declining playerbase, is any of this a problem if people love your game? Let's dive in.

[NuclearWinter]

Remember when we played a game. Beat it then got another game?

[DafuqModeOn]

Live service mindset is such a cancer on the industry.

[rrc]

Weird to call out Manor Lords which came out fully playable with developed systems which will keep you busy for tens of hours. There's plenty of other games that never should have seen early access demonstrating the real pitfalls of early access.

[ggsunshiners]

Manor Lord is the worse example of for "pitfall of early access game"

Its a game that will die between update, but once every big update, people will come back to check whats going on with it. Its also a single player game so there's literally no disadvantage of not having player base between update. If only 1 person come back for an update, that person will not have a bad time.

[Fantic]

Not every game has be be a live service that's supported forever.

[HammyLIVE]

I'm not sure why everyone is SO OBSESSED with Concurrent Playercount Numbers - I don't get it at all, unless you're talking about MMOs or Massive Multiplayer game experiences, these numbers basically do not matter in the slightest. So what if Manor Lords doesn't have a constant 150k players online at all times, it doesn't mean the people who bought the game hate it, they just played it and are now waiting on updates and playing other games, it's perfectly fine. Not every game needs to be this insane grindset live service game with infinity content always being pumped out, that's not the standard, nor should it be, that mindset is weird, especially when using an example from a solo game dev.
This is totally normal, the standard even. Too many big creators like to use concurrent playercount data as if it means something so they can craft clickbait "GAME IS DEAD" videos for easy views, when in most cases it doesn't matter unless your game pretty much only exists with online multiplayer in mind.

[tex]

In my region Manor Lords was $20. I am more than happy for the playtime i have for that price point. Yes Early Access can be hit and miss, but this developer has shown his level of engagement long before the launch, so im confident we'll get many more improvments and additions to the game.

[lordrams]

Concurrent players is only a meaningful metric for live services. We look at them on traditional games only to estimate sales, cuz we can't see them directly.

[CorvianScythe]

Raph from hinterland hasnt even finish the story of his game like 7 years later, still need the last part apparently coming soon lol

[Bob]

Greg gave me 30 hours of fun. I gave him $30. Seems like a sweet deal AND I'm gonna jump back in when a few updates pile up. Thank you, Greg!

Stop looking at player numbers, have fun with games you love to play, touch grass or play something else instead of complaining. This isn't mid 2000s played and lived that one game!

[Rich]

Early Access does have a huge problem, in that there is little financial benefit to finishing your game after an EA launch. Some large companies seem to be making that judgement. You hype your game, promise the moon, have a big glorious launch and then take the money and run. Check out what happened with Kerbal Space Program 2. It could be the end of actual early access. You can call it early, but if that's the end of development is it really?

[MaTtRoSiTy]

Problem I have had with EA games is that I play them in EA and I get all I want out of them so that if/when they get finished later on I never end up playing them again as I already had enough of the experience to not want to do it again. Trouble is, that experience is always incomplete and sometimes bordering on broken if its really early on in development... so I stopped buying EA games as I want to only play finished games

[PeachAU]

Theres a video by soviet womble talking about early access, he is essentially a QA for game developers and he said, You can label it whatever you want but "early access" IS your release, you dont get a second first impression.

[Osirus]

Pretty sure the dev did warn people too...several times. It feels like whoever wrote that article just wants to stir some shit up for no reason.

[olozzob]

Early access has been A point of talk between me and my friends, we all brought sons of the forest in early access, played a lot, but when the 1.0 released, no one wanted to play it, the same happened with core keeper.
It is a good feature that helps devs make games, but in the end it takes out all that magic that is playing a game for the first time

[jackastor]

I refuse to pay for early access games. I have had some games on my wishlist for the better part of a DECADE that never seem to actually release. They just stay on early access forever. I'm just not that desperate. Release a full version of your game or piss off.

[RRP]

This mindset is not just limited to gaming. Any sales job I’ve ever had shares the same “success = higher expectations” and it never ends.

[jecasey]

Hinterlands CEO “I’m jealous they sold 2 million copies. I sold way less. “

[imjustadrummer]

The push for never-ending content and high player counts is directly related to all the absolute garbage shoveled at gamers on a daily basis. Quantity over quality.

[eknick]

The problem is most early access games you have no idea when they are going to be out of early access. It may take several years and the end product can be very different than what was first presented. That is often OK with single player games, because people play at their own pace and the experience is often a personal one. But for some games that has a core co-op or multiplayer element, it can be detrimental in the sense that you are spreading your player base thin, and that player base is crucial in buliding up and maintainly a core player count that is needed to keep the game alive. The perfect example of this is V Rising, amazing game that reviewed well and sold well, I only started playing after full release, but only a month or two after release it is like a dead game now. It forced me to stop playing because I can't find a stable server where the player count didn't dimish to zero after 2 weeks. This is the real problem with early access titles.