Winter wrote:Honestly some early access is perfectly fine.. Just never expect it to get finished and ask yourself if you would pay for the product as is..
Speaking of which I do believe I have don't starve as well, did you need to buy something else for the multiplayer bit while it was still in development?
Yes, some are fine and the general concept isn't bad either. However if it wouldn't have been shamelessly abused by several game “developers“ I would certainly be more open minded towards early access.
Let's for example pick minecraft. The game is officially released but started in early access too. It's vanilla game experience hasn't changed a lot from alpha to release. The only reason why this became so popular is that it was unique and something new. Minecrafts biggest achievement is the giant modding community behind the game which adds huge amount of creative content to keep the game alive and fix it's issues. The vanilla experience is pretty dull and mojang isn't really doing anything for the game anymore. Why should they? The money is earned and the mod community does the rest.
I am going to post a video of Jim Sterling who I think has pretty much summed up whats wrong with early access:
Again, early access => generally good idea but the reputation it has gained from getting abused i.e. throw a game which is barely playable on the market, get the money for the investment back plus something extra and then don't bother with fixing or adding more to the game anymore, is why i don't trust any early access product. If i want it i will wait until it's released.