Will publishers abuse the gaining access early schtick?

[Zed Clampet]

Will we eventually see that you can pay $50 or more to get the game before people who pay the regular price?

I could see this backfiring and causing games to have bad launches. Then again, people seem to be willing to pay whatever it takes to get a game right now.

 

[BeardyHat]

Of course. Publishers will push as much as they can until they get significant pushback, but there's always some suckers out there that will pay exorbitant prices just so they can say they were first

 

[Pifanjr]

It's already surprising to me that so many people are still willing to buy a game at the regular launch date, let alone pay extra for an even more buggy early version.

 

[Johnway]

Of course. Publishers will push as much as they can until they get significant pushback, but there's always some suckers out there that will pay exorbitant prices just so they can say they were first

I share a similar opinion. Publishers will milk the hell out of their player base and have done so. There have been some games released in beta or EA thats failed. Star citizen is looking increasingly like a never ending nightmare to release. I wouldn't be surprised we might not see the game ever released in 1.0 and if it did it won't be that great.


POE2 maybe a good game, but i can't help but wonder why people would pay for a game that will eventually be f2p, but i guess someone wants to be in the beta. Payday 3 springs to mind as well where people preorder the game to get access to the beta and they slowly patch the thing together.

 

[Zloth]

They used to do that with MMOs a lot because paying more meant you had a better chance of getting the character names you want. Now, I expect you can get your review out on social media before others and thus get paid more for the clicks.

From the publisher's perspective.... I don't know. If your game is solid at pre-release, it could be a great way to generate more hype. If it isn't, though, or if the influencers just think they can get more clicks hating the game than loving it, it could lead to a ton of cancelled pre-orders and de-wishing.

 

[Colif]

It's already surprising to me that so many people are still willing to buy a game at the regular launch date, let alone pay extra for an even more buggy early version.

How dare you stop them using alpha builds

Paying early access for bugs is an almost 85% guarantee on AAA games now... why pay to get them early when they still be there on release?

Stuff buying a game that lets people pay $50 extra to play early. Don't reward greed.

5 days early isn't early access. One year early is... now if AAA companies want to stall release of a completed game for one year to let early access people play, be my guest. But real early access games change as they age, and the devs listen to players feedback... two things AAA don't do.

 

[dxchase]

Its not abuse and more just a selling point. If its widely accepted and you look at examples of games like POE 2 or even Diablo 4, players will pay to access the game early for whatever reason. Being given the option isnt bad, you can simply not play early and wait for the release day. Gaming companies also like to create FOMO. So if you can resist the urge, good for you, but its not an abusive tactic, no more than including DLCs with more expensive version of the game in my opinion.

POE2 maybe a good game, but i can't help but wonder why people would pay for a game that will eventually be f2p

I have roughly 30-50 hours of game time in POE, which isnt a lot, but i did enough in there for myself that paying 30 bucks to play the games successor well before it releases to see the game go through changes wasnt a hefty price. Had nothing to really do with the early access part and more for wanting to support the devs, they are nothing like Blizzard or Bungie and for what POE 2 released so far, it is quite a lot of content in an early access eventually f2p game.

Now, I expect you can get your review out on social media before others and thus get paid more for the clicks.

This right here, plenty of gaming personalities that want to be the first with reviews, playthroughs, cheats, "10 things you should blah blah blah in this game" videos.

 

[JCgames]

They have done this for a long time. Back in the era of mmos, a whole bunch let people onto beta's with a purchase. Other games you could have purchased other current games by them and get beta access. I'm going back 20+ years with this sort of thing. It might be new to some but it's hardly new. I played tropico 5 and star trek online with pre purchase. My buddy played galaxies for a few months. People bought into mech warrior online 6 months early with a founders package.

It's a good thing. Soft launches don't stress servers as much and give the chance to find rarer system or hard to trigger bugs and get them fixed before launch.

Also reviewers always played games before the masses, so nothing new on that end either.

Games have always been, pay more play early, pay less play later. I typically prefer the later.

 

[neogunhero]

Will we eventually see that you can pay $50 or more to get the game before people who pay the regular price?

I could see this backfiring and causing games to have bad launches. Then again, people seem to be willing to pay whatever it takes to get a game right now.

AAA games are increasingly offering "advanced access" or more money. Pay $90 instead of the standard $70 and the only difference is you get to play 5 days early and maybe get a few extra skins.

Publishers and devs should be 100% confident with the state of their game to offer this, but of course that is just not the case. More often than not, the game is still buggy or at least not as good as it should be to be offering that kind of incentive, yet people go for it all the time. They probably don't think of it like "pay more money for a worse experience" which is the reality, to them they just want to get in on a brand-new game as soon as possible to soak in all the hype surrounding it.

I understand that launch day hype, I've been part of it many times, it is a very exciting time to be playing a brand-new video game as soon as it launches, but over the past decade or so we've all seen how poor a lot of game launches are. For people like me, I had to touch the oven a few times before realizing it's hot. Others have not figured that out yet. Beyond that, others realize it's just not worth it to buy games on launch day knowing fully well that it will go on sale in a few months. Patience is the most important factor here I believe.

 

[Zed Clampet]

AAA games are increasingly offering "advanced access" or more money. Pay $90 instead of the standard $70 and the only difference is you get to play 5 days early and maybe get a few extra skins.

Publishers and devs should be 100% confident with the state of their game to offer this, but of course that is just not the case. More often than not, the game is still buggy or at least not as good as it should be to be offering that kind of incentive, yet people go for it all the time. They probably don't think of it like "pay more money for a worse experience" which is the reality, to them they just want to get in on a brand-new game as soon as possible to soak in all the hype surrounding it.

I understand that launch day hype, I've been part of it many times, it is a very exciting time to be playing a brand-new video game as soon as it launches, but over the past decade or so we've all seen how poor a lot of game launches are. For people like me, I had to touch the oven a few times before realizing it's hot. Others have not figured that out yet. Beyond that, others realize it's just not worth it to buy games on launch day knowing fully well that it will go on sale in a few months. Patience is the most important factor here I believe.

Patience uses up our main finite resource, and we have no idea how much of it we have left--time. We had a good friend here who made that abundantly clear. While we shouldn't mortgage our potential futures, we also need to live for today.

 

[Colif]

Steam needs to set a minimum time allowed for Early Access at 1 month and let the AAA companies cry. 7 to 14 days days is not early enough. Give your players, who want to start early, one month. And make sure servers actually work before then and there aren't any game breaking bugs that conveniently make players need to start again just a few days before launch...

Sure, means shop needs to be live but since its biggest priority, thats probably not a problem. Amazing how shops are never bugged on launch... for long.

And it also means game has to have enough content to keep people playing for more than one month... or people will learn lol.

Last game I stayed awake all night for was Diablo 3. All night because it was a midnight launch and I am slightly ahead of the timezone where it was midnight then. 8 hours in fact. Timezone differences mean I rarely see any midnight releases.

Zed acting like he knows what time is.

 

[BeardyHat]

Patience uses up our main finite resource, and we have no idea how much of it we have left--time. We had a good friend here who made that abundantly clear. While we shouldn't mortgage our potential futures, we also need to live for today.

This is fair, but also misapplied, I think.

I haven't yet finished Elden Ring, but do I need to jump on the bandwagon for the new ER content for fear of missing out on a one of a kind experience, or is it pretty much going to be more of the same, but tweaked?

Same goes for something like Veilguard. Am I really missing out if I don't jump on the bandwagon or would it be more prudent to buy something like Disco Elysium when it's $10 and play that? Are the experiences so vastly different I can't miss out?

There's an opportunity cost here too. Could I take that extra $30-$50 and take my kids out to ice cream instead? Isn't that a better use of my time and my money than buying another game I'll probably play for ten hours and then forget about completely?

 

[neogunhero]

Patience uses up our main finite resource, and we have no idea how much of it we have left--time. We had a good friend here who made that abundantly clear. While we shouldn't mortgage our potential futures, we also need to live for today.

Patience to wait for a game to go on sale and get some updates vs jumping on the hype train are two different things. Time and patience are very finite, but we can occupy it with other things instead of needing to buy and play every game when it's brand spanking new. Live for today by not buying that brand new game, play something older as you wait for new games to go on sale. Increasingly, new games are going on sale within months of launch.

 

[JCgames]

This is fair, but also misapplied, I think.

I haven't yet finished Elden Ring, but do I need to jump on the bandwagon for the new ER content for fear of missing out on a one of a kind experience, or is it pretty much going to be more of the same, but tweaked?

Same goes for something like Veilguard. Am I really missing out if I don't jump on the bandwagon or would it be more prudent to buy something like Disco Elysium when it's $10 and play that? Are the experiences so vastly different I can't miss out?

There's an opportunity cost here too. Could I take that extra $30-$50 and take my kids out to ice cream instead? Isn't that a better use of my time and my money than buying another game I'll probably play for ten hours and then forget about completely?

It would take me a year playing nearly ever day to just play each game I own on steam. (I literally mean lauching and playing an hour. If you include the freebies on epic and gog i definatly could list 365 i could say are worth trying, but I wouldn't be close to finishing 95% I probably have 20 that I could do in 3-5 hours, the rest would take longer.

Sure it's a product of being an older gamer, but the point is there is zero way I can't play everything I like even if I spent 8 hours a day and honestly that would not be fun.

The only thing I'd be missing by picking up every new game is life.


That said this whole fomo thing people complain about is an actual disorder that some people really should seek help with. if missing a game or collecting an item In game is effecting you, then that's a huge problem. but it sounds like your doing OK with that one.

Goto the movies and I'll keep going to concerts and the beach and gaming in the past as it's so much more economical. Besides typically a year later things are in much better shape anyway. 🙂

 

[Rolfil]

I think there are two things here, Early Access and Early Release.

Early release is where you pay more, get a few cosmetics and get to play the game a few days early. I cannot understand why anyone would do this if it's a multiplayer game. They are just always problems with servers and the games are always full of bugs.

Early Access is your paying the developer to help develop that actual game. The game is often incomplete, buggy but your helping finding issues. You know that this is the case.

POE2 maybe a good game, but i can't help but wonder why people would pay for a game that will eventually be f2p

With POE2 your actually getting a number of store points that you can use for cosmetics or stash tabs as well as early access. Also people have put in hundreds, if not thousands of hours playing POE and they really want to play the next game.

For me I'm willing to wait on POE2 as I've heard it's a much harder game so might not suite me.

 

[Colif]

Early release has been around for years. I think I had it as part of the collectors edition of Age of Conan, but it wasn't the main reason I bought it. It included ingame items that were useful at the start of every character. Game was released too soon and needed time after launch to be finished.
I wouldn't buy it just for cosmetics though.
In some games it makes sense. Mmo for instance.

A lot of games I buy are early access since most are just small games.

 

[JCgames]

Early access and early release to me both are fine. Basically if it makes you happy go for it.

Often with ea if games don't get enough funding they crumble and that is a big part of why devs do dlc model.

And let's be real, even we'll developed, bug free incredible games doesn't mean the will be a success. By all Normal metrics midnight suns is a fantastic AAA game and lamplighters is a really good indy project. Both complete and very well done yet neither did well for what ever reason.

So people do what they have too. If a ea project isn't going anywhere they should shut down. It doesn't mean it couldn't be good for a niche product, but unless some one wants to throw a million or two at the project to get it done and it doesn't seam to be catching on why shouldn't they shut it down?

Just because a game is good doesn't mean it will sell and what does break banks has zero formula. It certainly is a paradox of how to fund and what for sure